Boys boys boys

Back in Boston for a couple of days...the girls have a doctor's appointment this afternoon, and The Boy has a couple of meetings today and tomorrow so we are staying in town until Wednesday. And...the girls are having their very first overnight at Grandma and Grandpa's house tonight, too! I am a little nervous, but also looking forward to the quiet and happy that Grandma is so excited! She obviously doesn't get to see them as much as she used to:-)

So...I have kind of an issue. Not really, but sort of. It is a Munchkin, boy-related problem.

Here is the issue: I am worried that her relationships with boys are regressing. A couple of years ago, I felt like she had a lot of really good, really healthy relationships that were with boys as friends. Like all kids her age, she "dated" some of them for like two weeks at a time and then they all moved on. But mostly, I just really liked that she got along very well with boys and interacted with them in a healthy manner.

But lately, I feel like she is losing that. It is sort of hard to explain, but I feel like she is more reserved around boys now than she used to be. As far as I know, there are a couple of incidents that have contributed to this...and likely some more I don't know about.

She used to have one boy that was one of her very best friends. He is a super sweet kid and I know that she adores him, but he wanted to be more than that, and she didn't. He hasn't reacted well to the existence of Frenchie, and really just to the idea that she doesn't like him the way he likes her. To complicate things, he has had a couple of girlfriends who figured out pretty quickly that he likes Munchkin more than them, which led to some additional difficulties.

So, the net result is that they have really sort of fallen out. I don't think there was ever any sort of a blowup, but she doesn't talk to him much anymore, and he never came to the beach this summer (he usually comes a couple of times at least). I know she misses him, but I feel like maybe they have just grown apart permanently.

Another incident from more recently, but related...one her very best (girl) friends has not-so-conveniently had something of a crush on that boy for a while. She keeps it mostly to herself, but Munchkin has known about it from the beginning, and I think maybe some of that contributed to her falling out with the boy. She has a hard time opening up to her best friend about him, knowing the way she feels about him (do you follow?).

Sometime last spring, Munchkin and her friend met some boys from a school that is sort of an athletic rival of theirs. They hung out in a group a bunch, and all seemed well. Munchkin has been at the beach all summer, but her friend continued to hang out with these boys at home and developed quite the crush on one of them. So, several weeks ago she got up the nerve to tell him, and his response was "Is you friend Munchkin single yet?" (OK, he was not nearly that mean...but that was the gist of his message).

So now Munchkin feels like she has done something to make her friend upset (her friend is not mad at her, I don't think) and wonders why this boy that she met a couple of times four months ago would still be thinking about her. (Oh, I can answer that...) Add in a couple of other confessions of unrequited love, and I feel like she is just becoming very leery of the interactions that she has with boys.

Anyway...I'm kinda stumped. If she asked for help, I could probably talk her though it, but I can't bring it up unless she does, and she hasn't yet. She is away at soccer camp for the week with mostly older girls, and maybe some of them will have some advice for her, but I would rather she not shut out the whole gender...

Actually, maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing!