How to help your kid be a good friend
A few months ago, I had a mom reach out to me about her kids. They were struggling to be a good friend and she didn’t know how to help them. Friendships are a key part of life, so it’s important for our kids to learn how to have positive interactions with kids of any age. Being a good friend doesn’t always come easy for some kids, so it’s up to us to teach them how and give them the tools to create positive friendships. Here are some ideas to help your kid be a good friend.
And if you’re looking for ways to make friends as a couple, make sure to read this post on how to make friends as a married couple.
Make sure to listen to our podcast interview with Stephanie Valdez, a girl mentor and speaker from Empowerful Girls, as we discuss how our kids can be good friends to others.
Identifying Ingredients for Positive friendships
Positive friendships are important in kids’ lives. Kids need to learn what a positive relationship looks like so they can continue to make friendships it into adulthood. A fun activity you can do to to help your kid be a good friend and start to see what positive friendships look like is to make a friendship recipe. Here’s a free worksheet to help you get started.
- A fun activity to do is to make a real friendship cake or cookie, or you can make a pretend one with different craft supplies around your house. The worksheet will help you with ideas.
- Add elements into the ‘mix’ as your kids figure out what’s important to them. (ex. a dash of humor, a bucket of kindness)
- This will help you child start to see what’s important to them and what they want in a friendship.
- Your child will also realize that it’s not just about what they want, but also what their friend would want too.
- This activity will help build a stronger character and self-awareness so that they can start forming more solid friendships, especially as they get older.
Find the Things That You Have in Common
There are a lot of different ways that kids can make friends. Some come from school, some come because their parents are friends, they can be extended family members, or neighbors. At times it can be a struggle for kids to connect either due to being shy or not knowing what they have in common with the other kids. Even though they have different interests, it doesn’t mean they can’t find something that they have in common. Here are some ways you can help your kids find common ground:
- Food! Making food, eating snacks, etc. Most people can bond over food.
- TV Shows can also be a good icebreaker. Maybe they both like a certain show and maybe you can recommend a similar show that they can watch together.
- Music is another great topic to talk about, especially with older kids.
- A board game that’s easy to join in on and that everyone likes can create opportunities to get everyone together.
They can also combine their interests. If one kid wants to play Legos and the other one wants to do Minecraft, connect those two different interests in one thing that they could do together. Maybe they can build Minecraft Legos. This helps kids learn how to ‘compromise’ and take turns doing activities.
Practice problem-solving, instead of problem-finding
We all know that kids don’t always get to do what they want to do, but if we swoop in and try to fix things for our children, then they won’t learn how to problem solve. Problem solving is a great skill to learn for your kid be a good friend. Here are some ways to help your kids learn the skill of problem-solving:
- Help them have more conversations and discussions, this helps them practice being a good listener while their friend speaks.
- Try letting your kid lead before you jump in, this can help them build more trust in themselves.
- Eventually, they’ll learn to steer the conversations themselves, learn that people have different interests, and maybe try something new that they might end up liking to do.
Do you agree with these tips? What are other things we can do to help our kids become good friends with others?