Who is My Friend? Empower Your Child To Choose the Right Friends

Friends play an important role in a child’s development. Peer pressure is real and early social experiences are the catalyst for positive or negative childhood memories.

However, children, being young, probably lack the needed social skills to navigate and manage the complex, multi-layered and multi-faceted web of their ever-growing circle of friends. Teach your child that, while they should endeavour to be nice to all, not everyone is a friend.

Here are two questions that can help your child choose the right friends to build a positive school experience:

1. Does this friend make you feel good about yourself?

2. Does this friend challenge you to be a better person?

I think of it as encouragement and empowerment.

Encouragement

Teach your child to avoid people who do or say things to make them feel bad. We’ve all had that manipulative classmate who flip-flopped between “Share my toys” and “I don’t friend you”.

It’s exhausting and tears down the self-esteem.

True acceptance is a priceless gift. Having someone who values who you are and with whom you are completely comfortable to be yourself, is a blessing that lasts a lifetime.

Teach your child to find friends who encourage them to be themselves, who speak well of them and are their personal cheerleaders. These are the friends who will not just laugh and enjoy the good times, but will sit and cry with them when the chips are down.

Bullies are in every school. Some bully physically, and others emotionally; but all bullies try to dominate those they perceive as weaker.

Teach your child that they don’t have to be bullied; and if they find that a schoolmate is constantly pushing them around, insulting them and calling them names, or taking their things without permission, they should seek help from a responsible adult and not suffer in silence.

Empowerment

Instead of feeling the need to be with people that exploit their weaknesses, they should spend time with friends who help them become stronger.

These are friends who are not threatened by their successes and help them overcome their failures. These are friends who provide the positive peer pressure and who challenge your child to be the best version of themselves.

To take it up a notch, teach your child to be a thermostat and not just a thermometer. Teach them not just to reflect their environment, but be the ones who positively impact their environment; not to be easily subjected to peer influence, but be the ones who influence their peers.

As a Chinese proverb goes 近朱者赤近墨者黑. Translated: Closeness to cinnabar stains red, closeness to ink stains black.

We become like that with which we spend most of our time. A single lump of burning coal burns out quickly, but when placed with another burning coal, it adds fuel to the flame.

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