How to Teach Kids About Friendship: Practical, No-Fuss Tips for Parents
The popsicle dripped down my seven-year-old Mia’s wrist onto the kitchen floor as she slammed her backpack down by the door. “I hate Lila,” she announced, peeling the strawberry wrapper off in one aggressive tug. “She played with Zoe at recess the whole time, so I told her she can’t come to my birthday party next month.” I was mid-fold of a load of her sparkly leggings, so I just nodded and gestured for her to sit on the counter beside me. A few years ago, I would’ve jumped straight into fixing it: “Don’t say that, Lila’s your best friend, you don’t mean that.” Or worse, I’d text Lila’s mom ten minutes later to sort it out before pickup. I’ve learned that doesn’t help anyone.
Back when Mia was in kindergarten, I bought into the idea that teaching friendship meant teaching kids to always get along, be nice, and share everything. When she stormed off the playground because her friend wouldn’t play her game, I’d march after her and tell her she had to compromise, that she couldn’t just quit when things didn’t go her way. She’d end up crying in my arms, and I’d leave the interaction feeling like I’d done something wrong, like I was raising a selfish kid. What I didn’t get back then is that the first thing kids need to learn about friendship is that it’s okay to feel messy, hard things. You don’t have to be happy all the time to be a good friend.
After Mia caught her breath that afternoon, I asked her what hurt the most, instead of telling her what to do. She picked at the popsicle drip on the counter and said she’d waited for Lila by the slide for ten whole minutes, because they’d planned to make chalk rainbows that day. Lila never came. “I just wanted to make rainbows with her,” she said, and her bottom lip started to wobble. I didn’t tell her to forgive Lila right away, or that it was no big deal. I just said, “Waiting that long and being forgotten feels awful, doesn’t it?” She nodded, and we sat there for a few minutes while she finished her popsicle.
That’s the first concrete thing I tell other parents now: start with naming the feeling, not fixing the problem. Nine times out of ten, that’s all they need before they can figure out what to do next. After a few minutes, I asked Mia what she wanted to do about what she said to Lila. She shrugged and said she didn’t want to not invite her anymore, she was just mad. I said, “What if you tell her that? Tell her you were mad you waited and she didn’t come, and that you still want her at the party.” She thought that was a good idea, so she wrote it on a pink sticky note after lunch and stuck it in her pencil case to give to Lila the next day. It worked out: Lila said Zoe had asked her to help push someone on the swings and she’d forgotten, and they made their rainbows after morning break.
Another thing I stopped doing a while ago is forcing Mia to be friends with kids she doesn’t like. There’s a boy in her class who keeps pulling her pigtails and knocking over her art projects, and for a year I kept saying, “He just doesn’t know how to be nice, you should invite him to play anyway.” That left Mia feeling like her discomfort didn’t matter, like she had to be nice even when someone was being mean to her. Now I just tell her, “You don’t have to be friends with everyone. It’s okay to say hi when you see him in the hallway, but you don’t have to play with him. Your comfort matters more than being polite all the time.” That’s a lesson a lot of us never learned as kids, and it’s one of the most important things you can teach them early.
I don’t do big lectures about friendship, anyway. I’ve found it works better to point out small moments in the stuff we already do every day. When we’re reading a Junie B. Jones book before bed and Junie fights with her best friend, I just ask, “What do you think Junie could do here?” instead of giving her the answer. When we’re watching a cartoon and one character saves a seat for another, I’ll just say, “That’s a really nice thing friends do, isn’t it?” It takes ten seconds, no extra planning, and it sticks way better than a 10-minute talk after a fight.
I also don’t solve every fight for her anymore. If no one’s getting hurt, I step back and let her work it out. That means she messes up sometimes, and she feels bad sometimes, but that’s how you learn. The only time I step in now is if she’s really stuck, or if someone is being hurt on purpose.
Last week, Mia came home from school puffy-eyed, because Lila went to a birthday sleepover that didn’t include her. She curled up on the couch with a bag of cheddar goldfish and didn’t talk for twenty minutes. I didn’t rush her to cheer up, or tell her it wasn’t a big deal, or suggest she make a bunch of new friends right away. I just sat next to her and folded more leggings, and let her eat half the bag. After a while she said, “I still want to be friends with her, I just feel sad.” I said, “That makes sense. What do you want to do about that?” She thought for a minute, then asked me to help her send a voice note to Lila saying she felt left out. Lila wrote back that her mom only let her invite two kids from class, and she’s taking Mia to get ice cream and see the new Paw Patrol movie next Saturday.
It’s not perfect. Some weeks we have three afterschool blowups about friendship, and some days I still catch myself telling her to “just be nice” before I bite my tongue. I don’t think there’s a way to teach kids to have perfect friendships, anyway. All we can do right now is help them learn to name their feelings, speak up for what they need, and know it’s okay if it’s messy sometimes.
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