My 15 year old daughter has a friend at school that I've met a few times. Very nice girl, just turned 16. She's very emo.
After the first time I met her (I gave her a ride home after school) she sent me a friend request on Facebook. I personally don't like adding my kids friends on FB but I didn't want to be rude, so I added her.
Well she posts a lot, and all of her posts are typical emo posts, talking about her depression, talking about how she feels everyone hates her, talking about how much she hates school, talking about wanting to kill herself. No one ever replies to those posts, but as a mom I just feel like I can't ignore it. The thing is, as a mom I also know that if my daughter were posting things like that on FB I wouldn't be comfortable with someone I don't even know (I've never met her mom, and her dad is out of the picture) giving my child advice, even if they have the best of intentions. I've thought about contacting her mom (although I have no way to do it, don't know her moms cell number) and informing her that her daughter may need professional help, but that's a slippery slope too, how would you feel if some stranger called you and told you that your daughter needs help?
I talked to my daughter about it, because I'm also getting concerned with my daugther being friends with this girl. My daughter is a happy teen, loves life, likes school, and has enough self esteem that if someone doesn't like her, it doesn't bother her. I don't want this girl rubbing off on my daughter. But then I also think that this girl doesn't have many friends, my daughter is a good friend, and maybe my daughter could rub off on her. I also don't want to forbid my daughter to be friends with this girl and make the girls issues even worse. Also, she's a nice kid. If I didn't see her FB posts I'd have no concerns at all, and frankly I think a lot of her posts are just asking for attention.
Any advice? What would you do? Would you ignore the posts, or respond? She posted once about how much she hates school and I responded and a lengthy back and forth, offering advice, everything I said was turned down. So I'm not really ready to go down that road again, because I have a feeling that nothing I say will help other than giving her the attention she wants. So what would you do, if anything?