How to Teach Your Kid About Friendship: Simple Lessons I Learned From My 7-Year-Old
The goldfish crackers spilled across my kitchen table last month when Lila threw her backpack down by the door, rain boots still caked in playground mud, face crumpled before she even said hello. “Mia says she can only have one best friend today, and it’s not me,” she mumbled into my shoulder, snot soaking through the shoulder of my sweatshirt. I handed her a paper towel and a juice box, and for a second I almost said the thing I always say: It’s okay, she’ll play with you tomorrow. But this time I stopped. I’d been saying that kind of thing for a year, and it never actually helped her figure out what friendship is supposed to be. I realized I’d been assuming friendship is something kids just pick up, like riding a bike or tying shoes, but no one ever taught me how to do it either, so why would she know?
A few weeks before that, we’d had a playdate with Lila’s neighbor, where Lila spent 45 minutes pouting on the couch because her friend wanted to play dinosaurs instead of unicorns. I’d pulled her aside and told her to “just be nice and compromise,” but I never told her what that actually sounded like. She just stood there staring at her shoes, more confused than before. After the playdate, I thought about it: when do kids get to practice saying what they want, without it being called mean? I’d spent so much time telling her to be nice, I forgot to tell her that it’s okay to want what she wants, too.
After that playdate, I started practicing specific phrases with her when we were driving to school or drying dishes after dinner, nothing forced, just casual practice. If she said she didn’t want broccoli for dinner, I’d say “what’s a nice way you can say that to a friend, if you don’t want to do what they want?” We landed on a short line she could remember: “That sounds fun, but I really want to do this today. Can we do both?” The next playdate, when they disagreed about games again, she actually said it. They did 10 minutes of unicorns, 10 minutes of dinosaurs, and no one hid in the bathroom pouting. That was the first time it clicked for me that small, specific lines work way better than vague advice I can’t expect a 7-year-old to unpack.
When she came home crying about Mia, I didn’t jump in to fix it or call Mia’s mom to sort it out. I just asked two questions, that’s it. First, “What’s one thing you like about being friends with Mia?” She wiped her face and thought for a minute, then said “She lets me borrow her glitter markers when I forget mine, and she laughs at my fart jokes.” Then I asked, “What’s one thing that feels bad about what happened today?” She said “She didn’t save me a spot on the slide, and that made me feel like I don’t matter.” I didn’t tell her Mia was a bad friend, I didn’t tell her she was overreacting. I just said “That makes sense. It’s okay to feel sad about that.” Then I added, “Friendship doesn’t have to be all good all the time. Sometimes people want to play with other people, and that doesn’t mean they don’t like you anymore. And it doesn’t mean you have to not be sad about it.”
I also had to unlearn a bad habit I picked up from my own childhood: forcing Lila to be friends with people she didn’t like just to be nice. My friend has a daughter the same age as Lila, and I kept arranging playdates even after Lila told me the girl always breaks her crayons and calls her unicorn costumes stupid. I told her “You have to include everyone, it’s the nice thing to do.” That ended with Lila hiding in my closet mid-playdate, crying so hard she could barely breathe. Now I tell her: “You don’t have to be best friends with everyone. You just have to be polite. You can wave and say hi when you see her, but you don’t have to invite her to play. It’s okay to pick who you spend your time with.” That was a big shift— I think a lot of us forget that teaching kindness doesn’t mean teaching kids to ignore their own gut feelings when someone makes them unhappy.
I also stopped telling her that good friends are forever. I used to gush “You and Mia will be best friends forever!” but that’s not true. Most of the friends I had when I was 7 aren’t in my life now, and that’s not a failure. When Lila was upset about Mia, I told her that: “I had a best friend named Sarah in second grade. We matched our scrunchies every day and ate popsicles at her house after school. I don’t even know where she lives now. Some friends are for a little while, some are for a long time. Neither one is a waste.” That made her quiet for a minute, then she asked for more goldfish and that was that.
Last week, Lila came home from school with a drawing she made with two girls, Mia and Zoe, the new girl she started playing with at recess. “Mia played with Zoe at recess today, so I played on the swings with Zoe too,” she told me. “We can all be friends together.” It wasn’t perfect. Two nights ago, she came home upset again because no one wanted to play her favorite four square game at recess. We sat at the table, I gave her a chocolate chip cookie, and we asked those same two questions: what feels good, what feels bad. She worked out that tomorrow she’ll ask the quiet girl from her reading group to play. I still don’t get it right every time. Sometimes I still catch myself saying “just be nice” before I can stop. But so far, this works a lot better than what I was doing before. I don’t need her to be the most popular kid in class. I just need her to know what a good friendship feels like for her, and that’s enough for now.
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