How to Help Children with Friendships
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Friendship is a huge component of helping our children live a joyful life! Navigating friendships can be both beautiful and challenging. It is important that we, as parents, equip ourselves to guide our children and help foster healthy friendships.
Benefits of Friendship
Adults and children alike benefit from friendships. Knowing these benefits and their importance in childhood will help us to guide our children toward healthy friendships.
10 Reasons Childhood Friendships are Important from National Scientific Council on the Developing Child at Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child
Self-knowledge
Confidence
Coping, resilience, and stress management
Social skills mastery
Growth and competence
Motivation
Ethics and values
Conflict resolution
School adjustment and achievement
Health and well-being
The Concept of Friend Baskets
I was introduced to Friend Baskets by a a speaker in my former MOPS (Moms of Preschoolers) group. I loved this concept and it really helped me reconcile adult friendships and how they shift and change throughout our lives.
Basket 1 - small, 3-4 very close, intimate friendships: the people you think of first when things happen in your life or when you want to do something; your “ride or dies”
Basket 2 - medium, 10ish good friends: meaningful relationships, some priority in spending time together, but lacks the top priority and intimacy of Basket 1s
Basket 3 - large 15+ casual friends: have fun when together, may only see each other at are planned activities and events, not prioritizing meaningful one on one time together
Where to Find Friends For Your Kids
When children are young or when we homeschool, it can be a challenge to find potential friends. Luckily, we have the ability to curate the groups our children have to pick from. Here’s how:
Create Opportunities - it’s always easiest to create a pool of potential friends with people you would like your kids to be friends with, that you have common interests with whether it’s social, political,
Enroll kids in an activity - dance, sports, clubs
Join a co-op
Get involved in church - Sunday School, Youth Groups, etc
Homeschool Community Meetups - especially interest based
Developing Friendships
Just as with adult friendships, our children need to invest in a friend to truly develop a relationship. This will require initiating playdates and accepting invitations from others. Not everyone is an initiator. If someone you are interested in becoming friends isn’t pursuing you, it doesn’t always mean they are not interested. Try initiating! When you initiate, you get a little more influence over what the activity might be, like:
Trampoline park
Beach
Playground
Hot cocoa
Libraries
Homes
Continuing Friendships as Kids Grow
In doing research on childhood friendships, I was fascinated to learn that psychologist Robert Selman outlined a 5 stage Developmental Sequence in Friendships.
Level 0 - Momentary Playmates: “I Want it My Way” ages 3-6
Limited ability to see other perspectives
Friendships of convenience and fun
Level 1 - One-Way Assistance: “What’s In It For Me?” ages 5-9
Still think in pragmatic terms
Define friends as someone who is nice
Don’t think about what they contribute
Care a lot about friendship and may put up with unkind behavior just to have a friend
Bargain: “I will/won’t be your friend if…”
Level 2 - Two-Way, Fair Weather Cooperation: “By the Rules” ages 7-12
Can consider a friends’ perspective as well as their own, but not as the same time
Concerned with fairness and reciprocity
Tend to be judgemental of themselves and others
Tend to be jealous
Invent secret clubs with lots of rules for inclusion/exclusion
Level 3 - Intimate, Mutually Shared Relationships: “Caring and Sharing” age 8-15
Help each other solve problems
Confide thoughts and feelings
Know how to compromise
“Joined at the hip stage” for girls more so than boys
Can feel deeply betrayed when a friend spend time with another child
Level 4 - Mature Friendship: “Friends Through Thick and Thin” ages 12+
Place high value on emotional closeness with friends
Not as possessive and therefore less likely to feel threatened if their friends have other relationships
Emphasize trust and support and remaining close over time, despite separations
What I found most interesting about these stages was the crossover in ages. For example, an 8 year old child could be in Level 1, 2, or 3. This has big implications when we wonder why one 8 year old prefers to play with older children and another 8 year old prefers to play with younger children. There’s potential for a wide range of developmental difference in their friendship skills.
Navigating Conflict in Friendships
The hardest part of our kids making and having friends is navigating conflict. Most conflicts arise when kids are young because they are learning how to be a friend, how to be kind and inclusive, how to recognize unkind behavior, and how to communicate. One of the many reasons we homeschool is to be aware of what our kids are experiencing (rather than hoping they tell us) and being available to navigate them through it.
I’ve experienced lots of conflict between my own experience with relationships, through my own children, my time as an educator, and as a leader of a co-op. The most important things I can share about helping children navigate conflict with friends is: communication and grace. Children learn how to be a good friend through practice. Sometimes they make a choice that hurts a friend and it should be viewed as a learning opportunity - not a negative judgement toward a child who may not have understood the impact of their actions. As parents, we need to teach and help, not label and judge.
When a conflict between children arises, swift and open communication for all parties is critical. Sometimes a parent is not aware an incident has occurred and that they have an opportunity to teach their child a valuable skill. Bring it to her attention gently. Most healthy adults will handle it well and it need not be difficult situation. Think about a parent with an only child - that child doesn’t have siblings at home to practice sharing and compromising. She only gets to practice with friends, but mom can’t help her when she makes a mistake if she doesn’t know the mistake has happened. Friendship is a relationship and relationships require communication. When the parents can model this, our children can see the importance of communicating and can stand up for themselves when they feel the need.
““When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short term discomfort for long term dysfunction.””
Letting Go of Friends
As kids change, many friendships change as well. Not all friendships will last throughout a childhood and it’s important to know how and when to let go of a friend - as hard as that may be.
Friendships may shift and change due to a change in beliefs/values, a shift in priorities, or leaving an activity or extracurricular and not having time together. These changes may result in a “basket” shift. This often happens naturally and over time a Basket 1 friend becomes a Basket 2 or 3 friend. It doesn’t always require a conversation and is often a mutual growing apart.
Sometimes a shift in friendship is negative like a friend develops destructive habits, or displays manipulative, malicious, or abusive behavior. When a friendship has become toxic or perhaps only one party recognizes a shift, an actual “end” of friendship may be necessary. I think the mature way to walk our children through an end of friendship is to encourage them to have a conversation with the friend:
Help them find language to express their feelings
Help them use direct but kind words to explain
Help them be clear and not vague - don’t ghost or avoid old friends, it causes more pain and trouble in the long run
Remind them that the “friends” negative reaction is not in their control and is not their fault
If there is a negative reaction that seems dangerous, help them to understand what is unacceptable behavior that needs to be reported to adults for further assistance.
How Parents Can Support Their Child’s Friendships
It’s pretty easy to sum up what we can do to support our child’s friendships. You know what is best for your child and now you can help them cultivate a few baskets of lovely friends with these tools:
Provide opportunities to find friends
Help them develop friendships by investing:
time for playdates
help find similar interests
Listen to your child talk about their friends and experiences
Model the behavior you want to see in your child
Create a friendly atmosphere at home between sibling, spouses and child/parent
Point out the feelings of others - help your child recognize when someone is hurt or upset and consider why or how to help
Ask about acts of kindness given and received during a playdate or social interaction
Get help if child really struggles with social skills and interactions with peers; assistance from a counselor or other trusted professional might be helpful
Teaching Friendship Resources
These amazing picture books are excellent resources for teaching our children about friendship
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