Episode 98: Kid Friends
Friendship is a huge component of helping our children live a joyful life! This is an area of parenting that we spend a lot of time on to help our kids. In this episode we will talk about, how to find friends for your kids, developing friendships, continuing friendships, navigating conflict, and letting go of friends. We also share a few resources for teaching your child about friendship.
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Show Notes
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Scoop on the Coop
Mandi shares her husband and son learning the skill of installing a new faucet in the bathroom. Jessica shares the fun she’s had taking her kids to the free concert hour each week at the local college.
Kid Friends
This is an area of parenting that we spend a lot of time on to help our kids. We’ve talked about friendships in a few episodes:
Research
Reviewed quite a few articles on the benefits of childhood friendships, stages, and supporting them. What I learned is sprinkled throughout and I will provide all references in show notes but won’t note throughout the episode beyond these
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 - not sure how this translates for homeschoolers, but kids who are accepted by their peers to better at school where they spend significant time with them
Health and well-being
Friend Baskets
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 instigating meaningful one on one time together
Finding Friends
Create Opportunities - need a pool of friends; 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 to truly develop a relationship.
Pursuers v Non pursuers or initiators v non-initiators
Don’t be turned off by non- pursuers! It doesn’t always mean they are uninterested in friendship just because they don’t initiate
Find playdates that work for you
Trampoline park
Beach
Playground
Hot cocoa
Libraries
Homes
Continuing Friendships as Kids Grow
Developmental Sequence in Friendships according to psychologist Robert Selman:
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
Navigating Conflicts
The hardest part of our kids making and having friends is navigating conflicts
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, etc etc
One of the 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
We’ve experienced lots of conflict between our own experience as adult humans, our own children, our time as educators, and as leaders of a co-op.
Mean girls - that’s a big label for a kid! While I definitely don’t want to raise a mean girl, I also don’t want my kid to be responsible for the happiness of everyone else especially for things other kids need to learn:
How to participate
How to ask to join in
How to compromise
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 friends - as hard as that may be.
Friendships may shift and change due to:
Change in beliefs
Shift in priorities
Leaving an activity or extracurricular and not having time together
Negative changes:
Destructive habits/interests
manipulative/malicious/abusive behavior
Sometimes there’s a basket shift and sometimes there is the need to end a friendship completely. A basket shift may happen naturally and doesn’t require a conversation and is often a mutual growing apart.
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.
“When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short term discomfort for long term dysfunction.”
How We Parents Can Support Our Children’s Friendships
Provide opportunities to find friends
Help them develop friendships by investing
Help find similar interests
Listen
Model
Create a friendly atmosphere at home between sibling, spouses and child/parent
Point Out Feelings of Others
Empathy scale
Ask about acts of kindness given and received
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
Coop Q & A
Question: The kids next door ask to come play constantly. The kids are disrespectful and rude. The parents are never around. I don’t want my kids to hang out with them but I don’t know what to do.
Answer: Model the behavior of having a difficult conversation and go talk to the parents. Maybe offer to have the family over for dinner to get to know them better to help you assess further steps. Set some boundaries with the parents that seems reasonable and then enforce it with the kids.
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