Friendships are an important part of growing up. The skills that children learn from friendships are invaluable – tolerance, kindness, compromise, respect, inclusion, manners, sharing etc. We hope our children are going to have some pleasant friends. They don’t need to have lots, but we want them to enjoy the company of the friends they do have and we hope that are our child’s friends are the kind of children that we want to them too.
What To Do If You Dislike Your Child’s Friends..
As parents, we may not like some of our children’s friends – this can be because of how they treat our child or because of a personality clash. We may feel that they are a bad influence. We could share our thoughts with our children and tell them that we think they are not a good friend. We could even tell them not to hang around with them anymore. However, I doubt either of those suggestions would make a difference. They are more likely to backfire and your child will start hanging out with them more.
If you don’t have a good feeling about their friends, a better way would be to get to know them. Invite them into your home, feed them and tell them that they are welcome to hang out in your house. With the friends being in your environment it will be much easier to get to know them, see how they all interact and assess if they are good company or not.
Getting to know your child’s friends is important especially when they go off to secondary school. It is so much easier to know your child’s friends when they are younger as the play-dates take place within the home. Once they are 11 they are out and about and we have less control over who they mix with and what they do. They are also in a stage of heavier influence.
Stay close to your child and try and create an open house policy when it comes to their social life. Better to be at home hanging out than wandering the streets.
Have you made an effort to get to know your child’s friends and how has it gone?
For more friendship help check out my successful friendships ebook.
