Friendship Skills: Helping Kids to Master the Art of Being a Friend

Parents, teachers, and other caring adults have an important role to play in helping children to acquire friendship skills. In her most recent column for CBC Radio, weekend parenting columnist Ann Douglas spoke to parent Amanda DeGrace about ways to help kids to master the art of being a friend.

Photo by Steven Libralon on Unsplash.

Friendship skills don’t necessarily come easily or happen naturally for every child. Odds are you know at least one child who is much more of a “social caterpillar” than a “social butterfly.” The good news is that parents, teachers, and other caring adults have an important role to play when it comes to helping kids to make sense of the unwritten rules of friendship. Here’s what you can do to encourage that all-important learning.

Ensure that kids have plenty of opportunities to work on their friendship skills.

The best way to help kids to understand what it means to be a friend is by giving them plenty of opportunities to practice those skills. That means ensuring that they have plenty of opportunity to play with other kids, starting when they’re still really little. Of course, play dates don’t just happen. Someone has to make them happen. And more often than not, that “someone” is mom or dad!

The good news is that eventually, parents are able to take a bit of a step back when it comes to orchestrating these kinds of play opportunities. This is something I was speaking with Amanda DeGrace about during a recent interview for CBC Radio. She’s the mother of three children, ages 4, 7, and 9, and she told me that she likes to encourage her children to take the lead when it comes to making weekend plans with their friends. She then supports those efforts by providing logistical support in the form of transportation — a necessity, given that her family lives out in the country. Yes, it can be a lot of work, but, it’s definitely worth the effort. She wants her children to have the chance to play with their friends and to work on their friendship skills.

Help kids to understand that it’s normal for friendships to hit road bumps from time to time.

Kids need to know that these friendship road bumps are inevitable. It’s not a case of if they’re going to happen but when they’re going to happen. Human beings make mistakes! We’re going to say and do things we regret from time to time. We don’t have to be perfect and neither do our friends, but we do have to be willing to do the hard work of repairing the relationship when something goes wrong.

One of the ways you can support kids through the process of dealing with one of these friendship road bumps is by helping them to figure out what went wrong and what it’s going to take to get the relationship back on track. Your child might find it helpful to role play some friendship repair scenarios with you. They could practice talking with a friend about what happened, expressing regret for their own actions, and coming up with a game plan for handling things a little differently next time.

The benefits of supporting a child’s social-emotional learning in this way can be huge. Instead of feeling like they should give up on a friendship the first time they encounter one of these friendship road bumps, they will be more inclined to think about what went wrong and to look for an opportunity to repair the relationship. And they won’t be looking to you to rush in and fix things: they’ll feel confident in their own ability to get the relationship back on track. That’s huge!

Resist the temptation to try to handpick your child’s friends.

Sometimes your child decides to strike up a friendship with a child you really dislike. In this situation, it can be helpful to take a step back to try to get a handle on what’s actually going on. Is this simply a matter of your child’s friend rubbing you the wrong way or is there actually cause for concern when it comes to this friendship? This is something else I was speaking with Amanda DeGrace about during our recent conversation for CBC Radio. She told me that, in situations like this, she likes to ask herself a few key questions: “Is the friendship mutually beneficial?” “Are the children showing empathy toward each other?” “Are they demonstrating kindness?”

In this case, acceptance is key: acceptance of this other child and acceptance of your own child’s right to make her own friendship choices. Sure, if your child’s friend is consistently domineering or deliberately unkind, obviously you’ll want to raise your concerns with your child. But be aware that you’re walking a bit of a fine line. If you criticize this friend in a way that seems harsh and unfair to your child, you risk having your child rush to the friend’s defence — and that might only serve to cement the bonds of friendship! Likewise, trying to forbid your child from being friends with this child may only serve to drive the friendship underground. All that said, sometimes you have to intervene because this friendship is causing real harm to your child. But more often than not, you simply find yourself taking a step back, and keeping your fingers crossed that maybe, just maybe, the friendship will eventually run its course.

Ensure that kids get the message that it’s okay to walk away from a really bad friendship.

Not all friendships can be saved nor is every friendship even worth saving. When this kind of situation arises, it’s really important to validate your child’s decision to end an unhealthy relationship. Maybe this wasn’t the first time this friend lashed out in a really hurtful way. Maybe trust has been destroyed and there simply isn’t a way to come back from that kind of betrayal. Your child needs to know that it’s okay to walk away from a really bad friendship. In fact, it’s more than okay. It’s essential.

Accept the fact that friendship skills can be tougher for some kids to master than others, but hold on to hope that this will happen eventually for most kids.

It does take some children a little longer than others to master friendship skills — and that’s okay. Childhood doesn’t have to be a race! I’m thinking of kids who are anxious or impulsive or maybe a bit more aggressive than their peers; or who are simply not quite as socially savvy as other kids. Not every child understands intuitively what it means to have or be a friend. They may need a little extra help from a parents, teachers, and other experts in order to understand how to fit the various pieces in the friendship puzzle together.

The good news is that many kids who start out with a significant social skills deficit do end up mastering the art of being a friend. It may not happen easily. It may not happen overnight. But it can and does happen. That social caterpillar may yet become a social butterfly.

This blog post was based was based on my most recent weekend parenting column for CBC Radio.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about pregnancy and parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio.

The Science of Giving: What Actually Inspires Kids to Be Generous

We're heading into the so-called season of giving, which means that most of us parents are doing everything we can to encourage our kids to embrace the act of giving (as opposed to, say, merely getting). Here's a quick crash course on the science of giving -- what actually encourages kids to want to be generous.

Resist the temptation to come up with some hugely complicated "family generosity project." Instead, just follow your child's lead.

Sometimes we're so enthusiastic about the idea of teaching kids to be generous that we try to orchestrate some hugely elaborate family generosity project. We forget to give our children the opportunity to take the lead. Because here’s the thing: a project that is dreamed up by a child is going to be so much more meaningful to that child than a project that is the brain child of his or her parent — and it is much less likely to encounter resistance! (“But I don’t want to volunteer at the food bank…. Do we have to?”) 

It’s also tempting to be heavy-handed in other ways—like by trying to dictate the terms of your children’s generosity. For example a well-meaning parent might say to their child, “I expect you to donate $20 of your money to charity!” or “You have to spend $20 on your brother’s gift!” Sure, we want to encourage kids to be generous, but it’s so important to give them the opportunity to come up with their own ideas—because that’s when the magic happens!

This is something I was talking with Hugh Macmillan about recently. He’s a Peterborough, Ontario, social worker, parent, and grandparent. He reminisced about donating some of the hard-earned proceeds from his paper route to a nearby charity, back when he was a kid. He said that his father would take him down to the offices of this particular charity and then look on with pride while Hugh plunked a handful of change on the front counter. Decades later, he still remembers how great if felt to be that kid making that donation — an experience that would ultimately snowball into a lifelong habit of charitable giving for Hugh. His advice to parents who want to spark this kind of generosity in their own kids? Seize the moments like this one. This is when to have a conversation with giving about your child — when your child is being flooded with the great feeling that comes from giving.

Don't feel like you have to reward kids for being generous and/or heap on lavish praise.

Children who are offered a reward for doing something kind for another person are actually less likely to want to repeat that kind of behaviour again in future. Besides, children don’t need rewards (or over-the-top praise) to want to do kind things for others. Studies have revealed that children as young as 21 months of age are naturally inclined to help others without being asked. As parents, all we really need to do is to nurture that hard-wired instinct along.

Have age-appropriate expectations when it comes to generosity.

This is another easy trap to fall into as a parent: asking kids to measure up to adult-sized standards of behaviour when, in fact, they’re still just little kids. 

This is something else I talked to Hugh Macmillan about: about the pressure many parents feel to push (and, dare I say, maybe even oversell?) the whole idea of giving. Sure, generosity is one of those values we really want to pass along to our children, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Or, as Hugh put it, “We don’t have to cram all this learning in by the age of two!” 

If you’re the parent of a toddler who is deeply embedded in the “Mine!” stage, you can take this as a message of hope. Sure, your child may not be about to relinquish his death grip on his favourite toy truck anytime soon, but eventually he’ll stop being allergic to the whole idea of sharing. Or at least that’s the plan. (Yes, there are some adults who still struggle with the concept!)

Be prepared to be a role model yourself when it comes to all things giving.

Kids are much less inclined to pay attention to what you say than what you do, so you’ll want to make a point of allowing them to catch you being generous on a regular basis (and in a matter-of-fact rather than self-congratulatory way). 

And don’t forget to give them a peek behind the curtain—to help your kids to understand why you choose to be generous -- how great each act of generosity feels. You want your kids to understand why you are inspired to be generous, in the hope that they will be similarly inspired, too.

This definitely needs to be a year-round conversation as opposed to a once-a-year seasonal occurrence, by the way. Research conducted by the Science of Generosity Initiative at Notre Dame University tells us that acts of generosity need to be practiced consistently in order to have a lasting impact on the giver. So you definitely don’t want this to be a one-shot deal — not if you’re serious about sparking generosity in your kids.

Expand your circle of generosity to include a wide range of others (including people who may be very different from you).

Research has shown that people who reap the greatest benefits from being generous are those who are willing to be generous with people they don’t know intimately and who may be quite unlike themselves. The takeaway message of this research is clear: the benefits of being generous are much more limited if you stick to being generous with members of your own “tribe” (your own narrow circle of family and friends). 

It’s a timely message for our troubled world—about the importance of reaching outward rather than retreating inward; and of expanding the circle of people we care about and care for.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Related blog post from CBC website