Making friends
Making friends comes naturally to many children. Generally all parents need to do is to provide children with opportunities to play and mix with each other and leave the rest up to them.
Where does this ability to make friends come from? Some children are born with outgoing or sociable personalities that make them adept at making friends. The majority of children learn their friendship skills from the adults who inhabit their immediate environments - parents, relatives, teachers, childcare professionals and other significant adults in their lives.
Adults help children develop friendships by the quality of the relationships that they form with them. As the majority of children's behaviours are learned from observation or through interaction, adults can have a significant affect on children when they display appropriate relationship behaviours.
There are five positive social attributes that adults can model when they interact with children that will increase their ability to make friends. These attributes are:
- Acceptance: When adults show tolerance for children's behaviours and personal idiosyncrasies they teach children to be accepting rather than critical of other children's actions, dress and habits.
- Attention: The quality of the attention children receive when they are in our company influences the way children interact with others. By calling children by name, listening attentively, making eye contact and giving non-verbal signs that display interest, you are modelling basic but essential relationship skills.
- Appreciation: Give kids positive feedback letting them know that you appreciate their behaviour and their attitudes. If a child is to show appreciation to someone else he first must experience appreciation from those whom he respects.
- Affirmation: Respond positively to your child's more desirable social behaviour, while ignoring or responding with less enthusiasm to unsociable behaviour. When children share their toys or even a joke, make sure you respond in an appropriate way, thanking them for sharing and laughing at their attempts to lighten the mood.
- Affection: When we show children kindness or compassion or tell them that we love them not only do we model appropriate behaviour but we let them know that they are themselves likeable.
As children grow and develop we can encourage in them a variety of friendship skills and talk with them about friendship difficulties that they may encounter. But it is the basic friendship skills that adults model for young children that will have the most far-reaching affect.
By Michael Grose. Michael Grose is one of Australia's most popular speakers and writers on parenting and family matters. He is the author of five books for parents and the father of three children.