International Friendship Day is on Friday 30th July this year. Read on to find out how you can help your children make, develop and keep friendships going this summer!
Learning how to be a good friend is a really important part of growing up. Good friendships can have such a positive effect on a child’s life, providing them with a sense of stability, inclusivity, and self-esteem. Children can learn so much about the world, and discover who they are, through their interactions with other people.
However, learning the skills to become a good friend can be a bit tricky for many children. Here at PlanBee we have put together some ideas on how you can help your child.
Empathy is when you understand the feelings of others, even though you might not share them. This is a crucial part of a successful friendship. Children who feel that their friends understand them, and are there to comfort and help them, will not only feel a greater sense of well-being, but their friendship will be solidified too, as they know that they can trust and rely on each other.
You can help your child to develop their empathy skills by discussing different emotions - how they make them feel, and why. Encourage them to think about how characters in a book or a film are feeling, and what, if necessary, they could do to help them. Explain to older children that people might experience and react to emotions differently, e.g. if some people are upset, they might cry, or become quiet and withdrawn, or even become angry.
Sometimes, knowing what to talk about, especially to someone they have just met, can be difficult. Encourage children to ask questions to find out more about their new friend, (e.g. who is in their family, what their hobbies are, what sports they like to do) and remember these answers, so that they can form the basis of future topics of conversation, as well as ideas for activities they might do together. This helps children to quickly find things in common, which is a good basis for a successful friendship.
If a child doesn’t feel listened to or heard in a friendship, it is unlikely to be a successful one. However, especially for younger children, it can be difficult to understand that a conversation is a ‘two-way street’, and that the more you listen, the more you learn and understand about your friend. Make sure you model good listening skills for your child - giving them eye contact when they are speaking to you, being attentive to what they say without interruption, and responding appropriately.
In the most successful friendships, the ‘give and take’ is balanced. Children learn that if they give to others, they can get some of what they want too. For younger children, sharing can be a tricky skill to learn. Help your child to see that sharing is good by explaining that this means everyone can have fun, point out sharing in others, and reward sharing with praise. For older children, the skill of compromising is essential. When your child and their friend want different things, first let them talk about what they both want, and then encourage them to find a way to ‘meet in the middle’, so that both of their needs are being met. Children will also begin to learn that letting a friend ‘have their own way’ now means that in the future, they will also get this opportunity, and vice versa.
Children do not always know how to fix a ‘fall out’ within a friendship. Usually, one or both children can end up feeling hurt or angry. It is important that (after a cooling off period if necessary) children are encouraged to explain to each other about how they are feeling, and why. It may just be a simple misunderstanding which is solved there and then, or you may need to facilitate further discussions and offer possible solutions to the problem. Once you have helped children through this process a few times, hopefully they will be able to use this framework to manage future disagreements themselves.
If you are looking for some more structured but fun activities to help your KS1 child learn about friendships, take a look at our Being Kind to You and Me three-lesson pack.
Now that you have some ideas on how to help your child develop and maintain friendships, here are some fun activities that they can do outside together this summer:
If you want to celebrate Friendship Day on Friday 30th July, here are some ideas:
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