Tell Me About It: Coping with change in a best friend's habits

Question:

My 17-year-old daughter is a junior in high school. She has had the same best friend for years, and they've done everything together.

Suddenly, this friend has decided she wants to hang out with kids who party and drink. My daughter is not comfortable with that. She really does not have other girls she hangs out with.

What do I tell her? If she doesn't party, then her friendship with this girl is over. It is a shame that in today's world a teen needs to drink to fit in. She is devastated.

Answer: In today's world, and in yesterday's world, and no doubt in the world of the day before that, there are people who choose the low road, forcing their friends to choose between acting against conscience or eating lunch alone. This isn't a peculiar teenage drama, this is a human archetype.

Though there's almost nothing you can do to provide immediate relief to a 17-year-old who has just awakened to life without friends, you can provide the slower-acting relief of perspective. Please explain to her that this is a common, normal, entirely unavoidable rite of passage, which isn't just parent-speak. It's about finding opportunity in agony.

From the minute we leave the womb, life is about making the best of an unwelcome change in circumstances. Your daughter can try to make new friends, she can embrace her inner resourceful loner, she can try to remain close with her old friend while just saying no to whatever she'd rather not do.

Seventeen is plenty old enough to navigate the gray area of when and when not to judge others. At what point is it OK not to judge someone for being naughty, and when does that become enablement of dangerous, even evil, behavior? These are questions we're all better for asking ourselves.

She's also talking to you about her friend's partying - meaning she doesn't feel that common, misplaced duty to keep everything a secret. That means you have a chance to talk to her openly - and to listen to her carefully - about where this friend's decisions are coming from; what they do and don't say about the friend's future, character, worthiness as a friend; and what knowledge of herself your daughter can take away from this. That's more valuable than even a lifelong, do-everything friend.