Why chasing the cool group in school is a bad idea …

The teenage years are when we learn some of our toughest friendship lessons.

Here’s one of them.

So after Christmas we went to a big family/family friends bbq and I got chatting to one of the teen girls who was there since we were both buttering hamburger buns together.

Let’s call her Alice.

And she’s 15.

And she’s awesome. Smart. Funny. We bonded over our shared love of Stranger Things and how Nancy is the true MVP.

ANYWAY, after I told Alice what I did for a living (Friendship educator, book club host) – she told that she really messed up her friendships last year.

“What happened,” I asked her.

So she told me.

She had been in a really nice friendship group. It was about 3 girls and it was very calm and fun and supportive.And she could be herself. TICK TICK TICK TICK. Great! No issues, right?

Well …. the thing is the group wasn’t ‘cool’ which grated on Alice. She didn’t like being in a group that was low on the social ladder. She wanted to hang out with cooler people. (She knows this sounds terrible but I thought it was very brave of her to be so honest with me. I remember being 15. and how popularity is everything for some kids).

So she made the bold decision to ditch her safe friendship group and move over to the cooler girls and it was a DISASTER. The cooler group were not great friends to her. And Alice spent the rest of the year with a group who smoked pot and routinely got drunk. They would make plans and then turn up 2 hours late. They threw her a birthday party but it was just an excuse for them to get wasted.

She ended the year feeling really alone and she could see how badly she had screwed up.

These are painful, painful lessons to learn at any age but especially when you’re a teen and the key to surviving high school is having a group of friends.

And so I’m going to share here what I told her.

I want you to be choosey with your friends.

I do.

You can be FRIENDLY with loads of people. Lots of people. Knock yourself out. Really. It’s a smart move to be friendly with lots of kids at school.

But your closest friends? Those 2-3 people who you spend all your time with? I want you to be pickier.

Because those are the people you are choosing to keep close. They are the witnesses to your trickiest years as an adolescent. These are the people who will see you heartbroken, embarrassed, angry and triumphant. Your closest friends have front row seats to your growing up and I want them to care about you and to bring out your best self.

Choose people who get you. Who like you. Who show up for you.

Choose people who care. Who follow up. Who see you. Who make you feel safe. Who make you feel like you belong.

Alice has learnt this lesson the hard way. She can see now that she traded in a really caring friendship group for something superficial. The good news is that over the holidays one of her old group reach out to her and they’ve been chatting and so it looks like they’re going to welcome her back.

That doesn’t always happen.

I sound like a broken record, I know, because I say this so often but I’ll say it again — we become who we hang out with.

FIND YOUR TRIBE.

And maybe you’re struggling to find your tribe at school — that’s totally normal. Maybe you’ll find your tribe outside of school.

But don’t spend your days with kids who don’t care about you.

Life is too short to invest in people who aren’t in your corner, cheering you on.