You’ve Got a Friend in Me: Helping Your Child Develop the Foundation for Friendship
By Molly Pope Ed.S., I/ECMH-C
You’re sitting on the playground bench chatting with a parent you just met as your 5- year-olds race through the wood chips, chasing each other up the ladder and down the slide. You are half paying attention, feeling confident that the shrieks and sounds are happy in nature. When the little voices change to yelling quickly followed by crying, your stomach sinks. Is your kid the aggressor or the victim? Will your child make good friends? Will they be a good friend?
Situations like this set off our parent worries: How do I teach my kid to make friends? To be kind? To avoid being the victim? Welcome to the fertile learning ground of young children’s friendships.
Starting around age 3, children grow less dependent on parents and are curious to explore their world and the people in it. They start to play with other children, rather than alongside them. They may drift toward certain playmates and friendships can start to form. Friendships at this age are fluid, and play changes based upon the play partner. Most peers they see regularly get called “a friend.” Generally at this age, children are becoming more aware of others’ feelings, slightly less impulsive, and more capable of taking turns.
Friendships developed in preschool and the early school years give children valuable opportunities to learn and practice complex social skills, such as cooperation, empathy, compromise, frustration tolerance, self-advocacy and awareness of others. You can support your child by observing, listening, modeling, and role playing. It’s also a chance for you to be aware of your own sensitivities around friendships.
And yet, social skills are not an app of skills you can download into your kid. Our children show up as a combo of:
personality
social strengths and challenges
energy levels and sensory profiles
family and cultural values
and their unique experiences
What comes easy to one child, might be a struggle for another. Knowing your child and how to support them in being a good friend is important.
Friendships create a sense of belonging and security and reduce stress. While some children seem to make friends easily, others may need time to observe and get comfortable before jumping in. Either is ok! Whether your child is cautious or comes on like a Mack truck, there are many things you can do to support them on this journey.
Here are some ideas for how to help them make friendships:
Provide Intentional Play Opportunities
In the beginning, it’s important for you or a trusted adult to be consistently present when your child interacts with other children. Your role isn’t to hover like an eagle-eyed hawk, but to help your child feel comfortable enough, knowing you're close by, so that they are willing to take small social risks in playing with a peer. Rather than structured playdates, meet up with a friend for creative, open-ended play at a park or playground.
Giving children opportunities for both group interactions and one-on-one situations is important. Social skills such as negotiating and cooperating can be much easier one-on-one. Give your child a chance to experience both.
Shy children tend to feel more comfortable in their own home. Try hosting a playdate on their home turf and offer a familiar activity or favorite materials. This way your child won't be overwhelmed with a new environment while working on their socializing.
Identify What Makes Someone a Good Friend
Thinking with your child about what qualities make a good friend is also a way of teaching them how to be a good friend themselves. It’s through their friendships that children discover that they also have unique qualities that make them likable, gain a sense of identity, and support their self-esteem. A friend is someone who is fun, silly, has good ideas, makes them laugh, is honest, brave, shares, is kind, and is helpful.
Once your child understands what kind of qualities makes a good friend, you can highlight those qualities when you see them in your child, observe them in other children, and even role play them at home.
Let Your Child Be Themselves
While some kids are social butterflies and enjoy having a lot of friends, others are happy having a few close friendships. It’s important to celebrate your child’s unique personality, interests, social strengths, and challenges. If your child establishes an important relationship that brings them joy, support it. If your child gets overwhelmed by the drop-off birthday party with dozens of kids, skip it and connect with the birthday friend at the local park on a different day. Let go of “shoulds” and expectations. Respect your child and their capabilities at this time. Comparing them to others, even their siblings, isn’t helpful.
Encourage and Model Friendship Skills
Parents can help their children develop social-emotional skills through encouragement and modeling. After seeing your child demonstrate friendly behaviors such as helping or sharing, let them know what you noticed. “You gave Jace one of your cars because he didn’t have one. That was so kind!” This feedback teaches and encourages children to repeat those prosocial behaviors. Additionally, you can model positive friendship behaviors as well as highlight what you like in your friends. “I love talking to Beth, she’s my friend and makes me feel good.” By modeling and highlighting these interactions, you can guide your child in the positive behaviors that support friendship.
LIstening and Navigating
When we hear reports of school playmates who are “mean” or “bad” our anxiety-meter tends to creep up. Is our child getting picked on? Not standing up for themselves? Getting exposed to bad behavior? Remember that your child is dealing with other children their own age, who are learning the same skills of negotiating, sharing, and empathy. Be available to listen. Get curious as they debrief these situations. Rather than jump to conclusions or jump to the rescue, aim to empower your child. It is a balance of sharing your wise, generous adult perspective (that everybody can have an off day) and coaching them to be the problem solver.
Generous interpretations of other kids behavior could be:
“It sounds like she was having a hard time that day.”
“Sounds like he’s still learning how to ask for a turn.”
The other help you can give your child is to remind them what they can do to self advocate. Try role-playing with them to help them practice saying “no thank you” or “stop, I don’t like that.” You can also make a plan with them to ask a trusted adult, like a teacher, for help.
Recognize Your Own Friendship Insecurities and Hopes
Having our child out in the world can leave us feeling vulnerable. Supporting them as they navigate these early friendships can bring up our own childhood experiences with friends. Whether we were a joiner, a loner, got bullied, had the same best friend for years, or moved around shapes how we interpret our child’s experience with friends. The truth is there are a lot of different ways that children can experience fulfilling friendships, and their experience may differ from our own. When you start to feel that itch to jump in and rescue, defend, or push your child in a matter with peers, it’s a good idea to tune into yourself first and find out where that motivation is coming from. Our child may have a very different friend journey than ours or our partners, and that’s ok.
As we sit in the carpool line at pick-up, awaiting the post-school download, we may have those belly butterflies knowing that friends can make or break our kid's mood. It can be hard to accept that there will be other influences in our child’s life, starting in preschool and up through high school. Establishing a supportive role begins in these early years, when children need their parents more, and will serve your relationship when the pendulum swings and your child looks to their peers before you. It is through friendships that your child will learn to share and listen. It is through you that your child will learn what it feels like to be listened to, and be able to practice listening in their own friendships. So take a deep breath, remind yourself that you’ve got this, and listen with generous ears.
Molly Pope Ed.S., I/ECMH-C, has worked with children, families and classrooms for over 20 years, as a school psychologist and now as an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant. She consults and trains with area preschools and child care settings. Ms. Pope also provides coaching to parents, partnering to find solutions for their unique family and helping them connect more intentionally with their children. Ms. Pope facilitated The Alliance’s talk “Bringing Rituals and Routines to your Family” and was a speaker at the recent 8th Annual Preschool Kindergarten Summit.