The BFF Business

 We were unfortunately introduced to the girls' BFF business not long enough and I was floored at how stressful the whole thing is.  For a third-grader, BFF business has no business in Neva's life, to be honest.  It is my job as a parent to introduce Neva to as many people as I can and to ensure that she embraces the notion that the people she meets are her potential life teachers.  To be assigned to a selected few and hopefully gain status as one of the popular kids is not going to make a child like Neva wholesome.  I realize as I type this, I may offend some people but I am speaking from the heart and my hope out of writing this is to educate.

When the silly BFF business was thrust into our lives, I did a lot of research because I wanted to know why people are inclined to fall into that pattern of living.  I also wanted to learn if this is the normalcy among people out there or if it is really just an isolated situation within our community.  With what I have found after many hours and several days of researching and reading articles, this is the trend.  Parents push for their children to identify their BFF's so that this can almost guarantee that their children will not be bullied.  Other results showed that insecurity and low self-esteem among parents are several factors which cause them to push BFF business onto their children. 

Ouch.

Wow.

That was my first few responses.  As a strong supporter of an anti-bullying campaign, I feel it is my responsibility as a parent of a daughter to raise awareness and encourage parents to work together and get the community involved such as PTCA.  I acknowledge that one on one relationships have so many benefits as evidenced through Neva and my niece Cha'Risa through her month visit to Maryland. 

However, to prevent bullying to continue its vicious cycle is to build a team of parents to educate other parents on how to teach our daughters to interact appropriately and to supervise them when girls are together (somewhat a community accountability effort and collaboration with parents). With our guidance, they will go far. Technology has somewhat robbed their opportunities from the type of experiences we had back then where we had more interaction with people (social skills).  So with that being said, we have to be vigilant.

Knowledge is power.

Instead of all that BFF business, celebrate girlfriends.  Celebrate diversity.

We can't go wrong with that.