When one of my children was in elementary school, she was part of a friendship threesome, or triad. They gleefully called themselves “The Three Girl-a-teers.” They were in the same classroom, had lunch and recess together, shared some out-of-school activities and got together regularly for three-way playdates.
They especially enjoyed playing imaginary games, where one girl was a cheetah, one was a jaguar and one was a tiger. Their individual personalities came together to form a unit that felt exciting and powerful.
You know where this is going, right?
The triad didn’t last.
The following year, only two of the girls were in the same class, and all three of them started pursuing new, separate interests. The personality differences that had added spice to their triad the year before started to divide them. Although they still saw each other often, as their schedules got busier, it became harder to get all three together at the same time. There wasn’t a major blow-up, but bit by bit, the girls no longer felt like a unit.
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
As a rule, three-way friendships are not very stable. It’s extremely difficult to achieve that perfect balance, where each member feels equally close, at all times, to every other member of the triad. Inevitably, someone is going to feel a little — or a lot — left out.
This doesn’t mean that you should encourage your child to avoid triads. When they’re good, they’re very, very good. The play is more exciting and complex, and the sense of belonging to a unit can be delicious.
Here are some ideas about how to help your child navigate tricky but potentially wonderful friendship threesomes:
Support healthy triads. If your child has found a happy friendship triad, support the unit by arranging opportunities for all three kids to get together.
You may also want to talk with your child about the challenge of trying to balance closeness with two friends. It may help to have your child imagine how someone might feel if two of the three friends become closer and think ahead about ways to ensure that all three friends feel included.
[Read: How to Help Your Teen Cope With the Death of a Friend.]
Embrace the third wheel. Sometimes friendship threesomes occur because one of two friends starts hanging out with another friend. This can be heart-breaking for the friend who feels replaced. Jealousy and resentment are likely to flare. While it might be tempting for the original friend to sulk, be nasty to the new friend or angrily demand that the friend prove loyalty by rejecting the new friend and going back to how things were, these tactics will only make matters worse.
It’s not a good idea to try to force a friend to take sides. The friend in the middle is likely to choose the person who doesn’t make this difficult and selfish demand!
Instead, encourage your child to befriend the rival. It might be a good idea for the rivals to get together without the friend in the middle, so they can get to know each other without worrying about competing. Embracing the third wheel is not easy, but it’s the only hope for the original friendship to survive.
Don’t try to split a friend. When two kids are rivals for a third kid’s friendship, sometimes they come up with the idea of splitting contact with the friend evenly. These “You get to sit next to her on Monday and Wednesday; I’ll sit next to her on Tuesday and Thursday” solutions never work. The division never comes out exactly even. One or both rivals will cry foul when circumstances get in the way of the carefully crafted plan. Also, this bean-counting approach tends to intensify the rivalry, and it does nothing to address the underlying hurt feelings.
The friend in the middle might feel flattered by the rivalry initially, but pretty soon the quibbling about who did what with whom, when and for how long can feel very stressful. If your child is the one in the middle, it may be worth having your child speak to each friend individually to explain how distressing the rivalry is.
Speak up or walk away from meanness. Not all friendships are worth preserving. Sometimes kids get caught up in what they want and don’t realize that their actions are hurtful. If your child regularly feels shoved aside in a friendship triad, it’s important for your child to speak up, perhaps by saying something like, “This isn’t fun for me. Let’s do something else.” If the friends aren’t willing to consider your child’s feelings, then your child needs to walk away and find someone else to play with that day. The friends will either come around the next day or they won’t, but your child will have made a clear choice not to tolerate ongoing meanness or accept being treated like a second-class citizen.
[See: 10 Ways to Raise a Giving Child.]
Add a fourth to the group. The simplest way to handle the challenges of a friendship triad is often to add another friend to the group. Turning a threesome into a foursome increases the fun and decreases the likelihood of one kid feeling left out.
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The Promise and Perils of Friendship Threesomes originally appeared on usnews.com
