Skills For Adolescence: Friendship Cliques

Imagine you are having a conversation with each of the students below. After you read about their experiences with friendship and cliques, write your response.

Student 1:

I think cliques will always be there. I mean, friends get together to hang out, to socialise, to play sports, or because we have a common interest. There are a lot of cliques in our school and they aren’t all bad. It is good to have a group of friends that you can count on and get close. Sometimes people join the group and sometimes people leave. Are we exclusive? Maybe. I don’t mean to be, but not everyone fits in with us, and I am still friends with other people. Not as close, but we talk and stuff. Actually, I don’t think of my group of friends as a clique, but I know other people do. My older sister tells me that once she got to senior high school, the cliques opened up. She says they still exist, but she has friends in several different cliques. for me, the most important thing is to have good friends I can count on. If that means we are a clique, is that so bad?

Your response: I would think that maybe it would be split evenly 50, 50. One reason for yes is that cliques reject, neglect, and they hurt other people rather than themselves. One reason for no is that cliques open up to people and they make you feel important and then you end up sharing private information about yourself to them, and you feel like a star when they make out that they worship you.

Student 2: Who are my real friends? Who can I trust? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. You may be sitting with a group of friends one day laughing at the girl who sat with them yesterday. Little do you know that you will be the one who they laugh at tomorrow. Most people learn a hard lesson about friendship after they are the one being ridiculed and embarrassed. Cliques hurt people. Overall, every clique that I have been in has ended up hurting someone, and sometimes that person is me. Here’s my advice: stand up for yourself and others, so that cliques learn that making fun of people and excluding people is not okay. I figured out that it is a lot more fun being in a big group. Talking behind people’s backs or laughing at someone else’s misfortune? That’s not for me. Now I can count on my friends, and they can depend on me.

Your response: I think that you are definitely right about cliques because it’s true they really do hurt people badly and it isn’t fair on the person who gets hurt and it is totally wrong!

  

This is a reflection on Friendship Cliques, remember Cliques are bad news so stay far away from them and find some real friends you can count on. ENJOY!