As the mother of a 10 year old girl who has had a miserable year due to 'social issues' and has cried on the way home most days and refused to go to school most mornings, I'd like to offer a view from the other side of the fence. Reading this thread, I get the picture that there are many small incidents between the girls and that the result is that your friends DD is now at the point of school refusal? If one of my friends was the parent of the child whom my daughter was having issues with - and we had reached the point of repeated school refusal - I would be pretty damn peeved that my friend held the attitude of 'girls will be girls'. Yes, girls will be girls - but they don't need to be *****es and the situation has clearly reached the point where adult intervention is required if one of those girls is refusing to attend school because of those issues.

It is really important that we teach our children to be resilient and give them the tools to deal with hurt or disappointment. It is equally important that we teach our kids to be kind and considerate people who behave in a manner which is not hurtful. Usually, in situations such as these there is fault on all sides. When the children are unable to resolve the issues themselves, they require direction from the appropriate adults. Clearly, your friend doesn't feel that you have taken the situation seriously and helped to resolve it. If you were my friend, that would make me both hurt and angry.