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When a Friend Moves Away
Help Your Child Cope
By Margaret Risk
One snowy night, 10-year-old Chloe Martin of Grand Rapids, Mich., watched in horror as her friend Alisha's house burned to the ground. Alisha and her family weren't home at the time, and no one was hurt – at least physically. But Alisha had to move away, to another school district, and Chloe lost something very precious: a close friend.
Although the girls exchanged phone calls a few times, Alisha never came to visit, and Chloe never visited Alisha. Despite the trauma, Chloe showed no outward signs of distress, and her mother, Karen, couldn't get her to talk about her feelings. But now, four years later, Karen still wonders whether she could have done or said something different to help her daughter cope with the experience. "I thought it odd that she didn't talk about Alisha or beg to visit her," she says. "She rebuffed my concerned inquiries, which she may have interpreted as nosy interrogation. She had other friends and got on with her life with no outward signs of distress. But her lack of concern still bothers me."
In the preteen years, making and keeping friends is crucial to a child's social development. Whether a child is shy or gregarious, at this age, children feel more secure when they have close friendships with others who share the same interests. But losing a friend at this age presents a situation with which the child may not have learned how to cope.
It's natural for them to back away from expressing painful emotions. Preteens want to know if they are going to feel safe, according to Dr. David Marcus, a clinical psychologist in Cincinnati, Ohio. "Privacy is big," he says. "If we violate this, they're going to say, 'I don't know.'"