One thing I was completely unprepared for when I became a mother was how worried I would be about my children’s friendships. Even if they’re little potatoes rolling around on the blanket during playtime, you’ll be worried. You invest time and effort in building connections for them, enrolling them in preschool so they can “socialize,” encouraging them to say hello to other kids at the park and share their toys.
I wish I could say that this worry goes away as kids get older—just like putting them to bed with a blanket—but that’s not the case. Now that my oldest is 10, I’m spending more time thinking about her friendships and how they’re going, which has led to some deep conversations with my husband. How do we engage in our children’s friendships?
“The first step is to prioritize the things that you’re worried about or that you think you need to invest time in in your child’s friendships,” Marianne Davis, a family counselor in Georgia, told me. “Do you want to be involved so you know what kind of friends your child is making? Do you want to be involved to make sure bullying doesn’t happen? Do you want to be involved just so you can feel like you fit in? What’s going on in your child’s life? Part of it?
Davis says there’s no right or wrong answer here, but whatever your child’s friendship is that makes you wonder whether you should interfere or get involved, it’s important. “This will help you decide how involved you should be. If you want to protect your child and hearing about their friendship with someone makes you hesitant, I think it’s okay to have your child explain the situation to you if you just Think their friend is a bad influence and you want to intervene, really ask yourself why that’s the case and what it is about this particular friendship that raises red flags for you,” she says. added.
For most families, getting involved in their children’s friendships is as simple as being involved in their children’s lives. Ask them questions and find out specifically who they played with at school today and how their friends were doing. Listen when they share with you a story about what a friend did that day, and encourage open communication so they feel comfortable telling you about their day. For my own 10-year-old, this exchange looks a lot like me asking her who she sits with at lunch, if she works on any group projects with her friends, and what her besties say about their siblings. What was it like to be in college – Question This opened up space for me to hear detailed descriptions from her friends.
I never worry about it too much, but this kind of communication is also a way to capture the subtle bullying or manipulative behavior that often occurs in groups of friends. Davis agrees, saying the more you know about your child’s friends, the better you can give your child specific advice about future friendship issues or moments. “For example, if you hear from your child that two friends in her friend group are arguing and they provide you with the details, you can talk to them about how the argument made them feel and what they want their friends to do How to deal with this matter.
What’s the bottom line? You should be involved in your child’s friendships. You should know who their friends are and how they feel about those friends. You should be able to talk to them about issues that arise in their friendship group so you can give them advice, but also trust your child’s instincts when it comes to choosing friends.
“Generally speaking, you can believe that it’s a good, innocent thing for your child to have friends. You don’t have to project your own social anxiety onto them,” Davis says. “Most children’s friendships are pure. As they get older, more may develop, and at that point, you should establish an open line of communication for your children to tell you about their relationships with you. Friends’ concerns and questions”.
Building your children’s confidence and empowering them to make good choices will help them build friendships. “By teaching your children how they should be treated and how to stand up for themselves and call out bad behavior in others, they can confidently handle friendships without you,” Davis says. “You’ll still find that they may There are difficult conflicts or conflicts with friends who try to force them to do something they don’t want to do, but again, it’s all about communication.
So, talk to your kids about it. Ask their friends. arrive Know their friends. Invite them over and talk to them about their school days and what they like about their classes and teachers. Once your child’s friends also see you as a trustworthy person, you can feel fully invested in their friendship without interfering.
