SALT LAKE CITY — I have a 6-year-old daughter. A sensitive, caring, love-you-with-all-her-being type of kid. When she recently came home from first grade and told me that another girl at school wouldn't play with her, I was a little taken aback. So far, the whole "mean girl" experience was new to her.

"Why didn't she want to play with you?" I asked, trying to play it cool.

"She said I wasn't big enough," she answered, a little confused, since we both know she's the tallest (but the youngest) in her class.

I immediately tried to recall advice I had read somewhere about this sort of adolescent problem, because the Hermione Granger in me truly believes that the answer to almost anything can be found in literature. I flipped through the motherhood Rolodex in my head for just the right response that I'm sure I'd read in "Parenting Magazine."

"Hmm. How strange," I said. "You're so fun, I'm surprised she wouldn't want to play. Maybe she was having a bad day and wanted to be left alone."

"No," replied my daughter. "She was playing with other girls but wouldn't let me join."

At this point, a scene from "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" came to mind, because when you can't find the answer in a book, a movie is the next best resource.

Rebecca De Mornay plays a crazy nanny whose only redeeming quality was that she really loved the little girl she took care of. She confronts a bully at the little girl's school and pins him to the wall, threatening his life if he isn't nice. The kid was like, 9, but she went all Mother Bear on him and took care of business.

I remember watching this when I was younger and thinking, "What a psycho!" But now that I'm a parent, I can somewhat understand how protecting your child's happiness might bring out the crazy in you. But I'm sane most of the time and ruled this sort of option out immediately.

"Well, that's too bad. I'm glad you have so many other friends to play with," I said.

Did she have other friends to play with? I was pretty sure she did. I hadn't stalked her lately while volunteering in her class, but I was certain there were a handful of kids she'd mentioned playing with before. The thought of her alone on the playground was making me physically sick to my stomach.

I've bargained and begged God for this very thing on a daily basis:

"Please, please, let her have friends — and miss out on teenage acne. I'm fully aware that there are worse things that can happen to a teenager than being unpopular and having cystic acne, but if you could do me a solid and take care of these two things, I'd really appreciate it."

My daughter said, "Yeah, I just left and played with someone else."

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Phew! Thank goodness for that, and for the children who are smart enough to see my daughter for the awesome kid she really is. But this entire conversation left me with anxiety.

I know there will be a day when my daughter feels like she doesn't have any friends. I know there will be a day when she's left out. And I know there will be a day when "friends" will say hurtful things about her. I know this because every woman I've ever met has had those same experiences. Making true friends and keeping true friends in the world of a girl is no easy business.

My advice for my daughter was to play with the friends who were nice, and ignore the ones who weren't. If someone didn't like her, just ignore them. My husband agreed with my advice and added, "Just don't be Ron Artest."

Ron Artest is an NBA basketball player who has been in more than a few fights on the court, and earned such a bad reputation that he had to change his name to Metta World Peace so he could show the world he's changed his ways. He was a hot-head who let anything and everything get to him, and he lashed out at everyone.

Of course, I didn't know this immediately and had to Google it. My husband, being the man he is, explained what he meant in a sports analogy.

"Imagine two teams on the basketball court. Ron Artest is playing and enjoying the game with his teammates when an opposing player starts playing heavy defense against him," he said. "Ron's cool at first and keeps playing. As the game goes on and the defensive player is putting the pressure on Artest even more, the referee notices and calls contact fouls and blocking. But eventually Ron can't take it and he throws an elbow. He loses his cool, comes at the other player and eventually gets thrown out of the game. All the crowd and the other teammates see is Ron Artest, looking like a jerk. After all, it's only a game. What the fans couldn't see from the stands, what Ron's teammates couldn't see from the court, and what the ref didn't notice were the verbal jabs the defensive player was taking at Ron under his breath. The trash talk that pushed him over the edge and led to him sitting in the locker room, alone, while his team finished out the game."

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How my daughter recovered from real-world bullies

I have always disliked the philosophical approach to phrases like, "wait until you get out into the real world," or "it won't be so easy in the real world." The real world, drum roll please, is the one that you are living in.

My husband has noticed the insidious ways of women, and his advice for our daughters and myself with his sports analogy is to keep your side of the street clean. Because while men duke it out when they have a problem with each other, women are more subtle and caustic when they dislike someone. Hurt feelings build up until we explode and retaliate with a nasty and much-too-personal Facebook status update.

It's easy to be Ron Artest and feel like every woman in the world is out to get you after one too many encounters with the "mean girls" and one-upper moms. It's much harder, but more beneficial, to know that you're a valuable player and let any trash talk roll off your back. There are girls who will go out of their way to make you feel excluded. The best thing you can do is value and foster those friendships with friends, or teammates, who make playing the game of life fun.

I hope my daughter meets the type of girls who don't mince words. The kind who say what they mean, mean what they say, and with whom she can disagree without any fear of them dumping her for good. The kind that will forgive her when she's wrong, and 'fess up themselves when they make mistakes. Those girls are out there. Those friendships do exist, whether you find them later on in life or if they're the friendships you formed in a junior high school choir and take with you into adulthood.

I pray my daughter will find the type of girlfriends who will be lifelong friends. The type that, even after being apart for years, will be able to pick up right where they left off without skipping a beat. I hope she finds the type of friends that will rally behind her like family if she's ever faced with those things in life that we dread, like bad breakups as a teenager or health issues as an adult.

The women that are there for you, and the women who build you up instead of tearing you down, are the type that you hang on to with all your might. Nicole Pollard currently resides in Canyon Country, Calif.

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