Why my daughter is the only girl in her circle of friends | THE MOM STOP

In elementary school, I think I was a typical girl. I took dance, and particularly loved ballet. I sang in the children’s choir at church. I loved art and often spent my time drawing, and my closest friends were girls.

Not that I had a ton of friends. Kids could be cruel, especially as we got closer to junior high. But regardless, those I counted as friends were always girls.

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Junior high came easier to me than elementary school, as I made new friends. And high school was even better than the previous grades.

But I’ve never been one to have a lot of guy friends. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a household of women, only ever having a sister. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have close male cousins near my age, or no other kids to play with in my neighborhood. In terms of friendships, my closest friends have always been girls and still are, today.

And so I find it interesting that my daughters have been the opposite, particularly my youngest child.

When planning for her ninth birthday party recently, my youngest daughter started making a list of her closest friends she knew she wanted to invite. All were boys. Granted, I knew this would likely be the case, since the same boys from school have been her closest friends for quite a while.

On her first day of school, she was delighted to discover that her two best friends were assigned to the same class and they would be sitting at the same table. She was the only girl at the table, but that didn’t seem to faze her.

My baby girl isn’t into dancing or into sports. But she can climb a tree with the best of them. She loves drawing and crafts, and she especially loves dragons. And when it comes to video games, she’s better at Roblox and Minecraft than most of her peers.

I wouldn’t necessarily describe her as a tomboy, though she shirks hair ribbons, dresses, and hates the term “cute.” But she likes what she likes. And to her, her three closest friends are her world.

And to them, seemingly she’s just one of them. During a recent playdate, we had the boys over to play, and as I watched the kids jumping off the lake dock, having “cannonball” contests and wrestling on a float pad, I marveled at how well they played together. There was little to no teasing, none of the cattiness or mean looks that I remember so well around girls of that age. The kids played rough, but they looked out for our girl, too, like they did for each other.

My daughter ultimately decided on a roller skating party for her ninth birthday, a new passion of hers since she got roller skates at Christmas. The only problem was that none of the boy best friends knew how to skate. Still, those boys showed up. I can’t count the times they fell on the skating rink, looking like baby deer on ice, and I worried they might get hurt. But each time, they’d get back up, often with our daughter’s help, and try again. And they’d fall, repeatedly. But they were there, for her, and were determined to have a good time.

That’s the kind of friendships I want for my kid.

When it came time to open presents, one of the boys gave her a hand-drawn a card. Inside was a stick drawing of four kids on roller skates ― three boys and our girl. I framed the card and put it in our daughter’s room, a reminder of her closest friends.

As they get older, I’m sure their friendships will change and evolve, especially as one of the boys moves away this summer. But for right now, in this phase of life, I’m so thankful our daughter has found the friends that she has, regardless if she’s the only girl in the bunch.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Why my daughter's closest friends are boys | THE MOM STOP