Friend or Foe: Guiding your child through the friendship labyrinth

Some stay in our lives for moments and some for years. They teach us, comfort us and influence our decisions. These people are our friends. In the formative years, children learn how to navigate friendships, how to make friends, how to cope with losing them and how to understand what a healthy friendship looks like. As children grow and develop, parents can play a role in guiding them.

Amanda Paul, school psychologist and mother of two, recommends parents be good listeners and promote open communication in order to have a guiding role with their child. “It’s very important for parents to maintain an open line of communication, so their children will feel comfortable sharing the details of their friendships.”

Jennifer, mother of two, finds that communication with her children differs by their personalities. “My daughter needs to talk more about what is going on, and she prefers her dad’s opinion to mine, although she tells me more of the details,” she says. “My son is silent regarding friendships, and we get very little information from him.”

Despite her children’s differences, she makes a conscious effort to spend time with each one individually and to leave space to listen to them both. “I don’t want to be a hovering worrier. I want them to know I’m here to listen,” she says.

Open communication with your child can be a good starting point for helping him to resolve conflicts when they do occur.

“When I’m helping my own children or the students I work with through a conflict, I find they respond best when I review the situation with them and ask them strategic questions to help guide them to their own solution,” Paul says. “This helps them to own the solution and develop coping strategies.”

Paul also reminds her children to think about how others might feel to encourage their empathetic thought processes. “I try to remind my children that everyone has disagreements, but that when conflicts occur, we have to practice understanding different perspectives and considering the thoughts and feelings of others.”

Jennifer notices that her son, 12, is more flexible with seeing things from multiple perspectives and developing his own sense of self, while her daughter, 9, tends to hold on to her own perspective and emotions surrounding the conflict. She finds this can lead to her daughter’s, at times, being deceived about whether a friendship is healthy or unhealthy. “My daughter does not tend to differentiate between trusted friends and untrusted friends. We are working on her developing an understanding that trusted friends make good choices, keep your secrets and don’t use them against you.”

Jennifer’s son developed a boundary between trusted and untrusted friends on his own.  “My son has a good friend who makes very poor choices. When they got in trouble for something that my son knew was wrong, they stopped hanging out,” she says. “He will still say hi and talk to the other boy, but they no longer do things together. My son told me that he and the other boy have different ideas about what is fun and okay to do.”

Helping your children navigate friendships also includes modeling positive conflict resolution and using praise to empower your children to make good choices.

“If your children are exposed to your conflicts, allow them to see the resolutions so they can observe that the conflict does not have to be the end to a relationship,” Paul says. “Rather, it can help a relationship grow. I also recommend letting your children know when you are proud of them for making positive choices in their socializations.”

When you utilize open communication, model healthy conflict resolution and praise your children for positive socialization habits, you are guiding them to a more successful future.

“At the end of the day,” Jennifer says, “I want my kids to be happy, successful and well liked in their environments and have the coping skills to deal with it when they are not.”

Karah Chapman is a school psychologist. She encourages kids to learn from the good and bad of socializing and use that in developing healthy, productive relationships.