Sugar Cookies, Facebook & Frenemies...

My daughter Maddi turned 10 last December, and she has a facebook account, set up by me (I set one up for her brother as well) so I can be a part of her online life.  Say what you will about how premature or unnecessary it is, but I like to think myself a realist. And reality is that my kids will grow up living a big chunk of their lives online. 

I want to participate as much as reasonably possible in that life, and I'm hoping that a low key and nonjudgmental presence on their friends lists will give me a glimpse into their perspectives on life, friendship, and, even if it's not always positive, their relationship with me.

This past weekend, Mads and I baked some colored sugar cookies together and enjoyed a really lovely afternoon relating, cooperating and eventually gobbling more than a few cookies together. As always, I took my pics with my usual fussing, angling, framing and whatnot, and when I was done, Mads asked me to log onto her facebook page to upload this pic to her profile:

Status: "Made sugar cookies with my mom.
Took over an hour!!!!! But they tasted great."

Luckily, she's still at an age when she has relatively few secrets and allows me free and easy access to her page.  There were a couple of new notifications, a few new friends from school and her father's side of the family, and a new PM (private message) from a (girl) friend from school.  And the message was one of those *She said, SHE said* exchanges having to do with a third girlfriend, my daughter apparently the rope in a tug-of-war between warring factions known as pre-teen frenemies.

As an almost 40 year old woman, I have spent most of my life forging an uneasy peace with the mere idea of female friendships for this very reason. I don't really understand what spiritual, biological or evolutionary function it serves, this desire to possess, manipulate, and ultimately control another human being in this way.  But it's fairly rampant among young girls across cultural and socio-economic lines and sadly doesn't seem to temper itself well with age. 

My initial reaction was to talk with Mads then and there - to tell her that this is not how good friendships are built, that some people are toxic in the way they relate with others and that as much as we should empathize for the unique life path that made them that way, the best we can do is to be outwardly empathic to that person and yet inwardly compassionate enough to protect ourselves from their bile...

But then I remembered there's a reason why I knew to bring the butter to room temp before mixing the cookie dough, to keep the dough refrigerated between baking batches, and to let the cookies cool momentarily before removing them from the baking sheet... Because years of experience taught me that a cold stick of butter doesn't incorporate very well into dry ingredients; but also that if the butter gets too warm while mixed into the cookie dough, the cookies will spread too much in the baking process; and finally that the cookies have a good chance of bending, warping, or just plain falling apart if you try to remove them too quickly just out of the oven. I screwed up a lot of recipes before I observed and understood for myself the nature of certain ingredients and processes.  And in some cases, that meant a lot of fucked up cookies before I finally turned out a good one.

And while it gives me indigestion to know that I can't spare my child from the angst, betrayal, loneliness and confusion she will suffer, and cause others to suffer, in her journey to define and cultivate the positive, enriching and fulfilling friendships I hope for her to have, I sit well with the knowledge that I eventually stopped fucking up the cookies. And that I now have a handful of truly good, decent, fabulous, positive and encouraging woman friends with whom to share them.

That's not to say we'll never have the talk. I'm thinking chocolate chip in a few weeks will be a good time to gauge what she makes of the situation and to remind her again that the butter needs to sit out for a while before we begin...

shinae