How to help your kid gain more friends: practical tips from an elementary teacher
Last Wednesday, I was stacking construction paper after the final bell when Leo leaned out of his cubby, chewed T-Rex eraser twisting between his fingers, and waited for his mom. When she pulled up, she knelt down to ask what he’d played at recess, and he mumbled “nothing” into his shoelace before grabbing his backpack and heading for the door. She caught my eye a minute later, coffee stain blotted on the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and pulled me aside quiet enough that Leo couldn’t hear. “He says he doesn’t have any friends here,” she said. “What can we do to help him gain more?”
I’ve been teaching third grade for 12 years, and I’ve had this conversation at least twice a semester since I started. I’ve also lived it: my own son was 9 when he spent three months telling me he had no one to play with at his new school, and I gave him all the generic useless advice back then that parents usually get—“just go say hi,” “be nice,” “put yourself out there.” It didn’t work, and it just made him stop talking about it altogether. After that, I started testing small, specific changes with my students, and they work far more often than big, intimidating asks.
For Leo, I’d already been watching him for three months. He’s quiet, draws dinosaurs on every scrap of paper he can get his hands on, and spends most free choice hunched over the art table by himself. I used to check in and ask if he wanted to join the group building with blocks, and he’d just shake his head. But a few weeks back, I watched him at recess: he sat on the edge of the blacktop the whole 20 minutes, watching the group of boys play dinosaur tag, picking at clumps of dead grass. He wasn’t avoiding playing. He just didn’t know how to step in.
I told Leo’s mom the first thing to ditch is generic openings. “Can I play?” feels like a huge, high-stakes question when you’re 8 and already nervous. Instead, give your kid a specific, low-stakes line tied to the thing they already care about—something they know so well they don’t have to think hard about it when their hands are shaking. For Leo, that meant picking one quick dinosaur fact to practice that night. We landed on, “Actually, scientists just found out T-Rex had a really good sense of smell, better than a bloodhound.” It was weird, it was specific, it was his.
The next day, I kept an eye on recess. Leo hung back for 10 minutes, wiped his palms on his jeans three times, and walked over when the group stopped to argue about what skills T-Rex actually had. He blurted out the fact, and the whole group went quiet. Javi, the boy who brings dinosaur action figures to school every Friday, said “No way, that’s made up.” Leo pulled the crumpled fact sheet he’d folded three times to fit in his pocket out and they all huddled over it. Five minutes later, Leo was running around the blacktop as the king T-Rex, chasing everyone across the playground.
That small win didn’t turn him into the most popular kid in class overnight, which is what most people expect. It just opened a door. The second thing I suggested was to aim for one small connection at a time, not a whole group of friends all at once. I pointed out to Leo that Mia, who sits two seats away from him in art, also draws dinosaurs on all her homework worksheets. Instead of pushing himself to join the big tag game every day, he could try one tiny thing with Mia: ask to borrow her green colored pencil before art starts, then show her your drawing of a brachiosaurus. That’s it, no big ask, just a 30-second interaction.
A week later, Leo and Mia were comparing dinosaur drawings during free choice, and she brought him a sticker of a triceratops she got from her dentist. Leo started keeping a few extra dinosaur fact cards in his backpack, and kids would stop him between classes to ask to see them when they heard he knew cool facts. It’s the small, repeated interactions that turn into friendships, not one big “will you be my friend” moment. I also suggested to his mom that he pack one extra small snack most days—like a pack of fruit snacks or a couple of cookies—so he can share if someone mentions they’re hungry. It’s another low-pressure way to start a conversation that doesn’t feel forced.
It’s been three weeks now. Leo still eats lunch by himself sometimes when he’s tired of talking, and he still sits out recess every once in a while to draw at his desk. Last Monday, he came to me quiet after a kid told him he thought dinosaur facts were boring, and said he didn’t want to try talking to anyone again that day. I told him that happens to everyone—even I’ve had people walk away mid-conversation when I started talking about my rose garden, that’s just how it goes. He went out to recess the next day and tried again with another kid.
He had Javi over to his house last weekend to build a dinosaur diorama for the science fair, and he sat with three other kids at our class Halloween party last week. He still twists that chewed up T-Rex eraser when he’s nervous before talking to someone new. But he doesn’t huddle in his cubby 10 minutes before the bell waiting to leave anymore. Some days he’s running late because he’s showing someone a new fact he looked up the night before.
No amount of advice will make every kid instantly have a dozen friends, and that’s fine. What works is giving them small, low-pressure ways to connect over the things they already love, instead of making them pretend to be someone they’re not to fit in. Some connections don’t work out, and that’s okay too. You just keep trying the next small thing.
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