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What it means to be a ‘good’ friend becomes increasingly complex as a child matures. Knowing the characteristics of a ‘good’ friend is an important first step, but how things play out in real life is often another matter. Use our practical strategies, tools and scripts at home to help your child put their Friend Skill Set into practice.

Tips for Talking With Your Child

• Role-play with your child – Role-playing a variety of friendship situations gives your child a chance to rehearse potentially sticky situations and boost their confidence to independently handle them. Role-playing is one of the most effective (and fun!) strategies, and will provide you with deeper insight into how your child naturally thinks and behaves. These role-play scenarios and conversation cards are great for exploring tricky social situations. In your role-play, also teach your child to:
  • Try different roles (especially ones they do not typically choose)
  • Switch roles with you
  • Share roles with you
• Emphasize skills to:
  • Be inclusive in play – Coach your child to be inclusive and empower them with automatic social scripts.
    • Remind your child that the language they use can make a big difference in being inclusive. For example, phrases like “Boys against girls!” or “Let’s call the girl team ‘the pink group’” will leave some children feeling excluded.
    • Teach your child to be mindful of their words using the mnemonic *THINK*.
  • Handle conflict and disagreement – Explain to your child that having a disagreement or not wanting to play the same game does not mean “You’re not my friend”. This is also a timely opportunity to practice skills of repairing hurt feelings. Key skills and tools that are important for your child to know in moving through conflict:
    • Express themself using I” Messages
    • Use the Wheel of Choices
    • Understand that it is possible to respectfully disagree without being unkind
    • Have empathy
    • Know how to authentically apologize
    • Manage their anger
    • Be an upstander
• Ask your child questions – Talk to your child about friendship in general, and ask questions that can prompt meaningful conversations about relationships.
  • What do you think makes a ‘good’ friend?
  • How can you disagree with a friend in a kind way?
  • Why do you think friends sometimes argue?
  • Why is it sometimes hard to cooperate?
  • How does friendship help us? Why is it important?
  • What can you do when you’re frustrated with a friend?
  • How do your choices and actions affect a friendship?
• Use books to boost conversations – Books provide great context to better understand the characteristics of being a ‘good’ friend. Noticing friendship dynamics and conflict in your child’s life and making connections between them and in the books you read is an easy way to embed talking about friendship into everyday life. See our Learning Tools for our favorite conversation cards. Depending on the book, here are some questions to ask your child:
  • What characteristics did (insert character’s name) have that made them a ‘good’ friend?
  • How was compromise important in their relationship?
  • How were the characters able to handle their conflict?
  • How do you think they showed empathy to each other?
  • Does their relationship remind you of any friendships in your life?
• Use television and movies with purpose – Use shows and movies to spark conversations about friendship. They can also be a great way for you to connect with your child and discover an experience they’ve had but may have not previously shared with you.
  • Leverage the Pause button – Stop and talk about what is happening on the screen, make predictions about what comes next and make connections to personal situations. Grounding what is seen on the screen with conversations about real-life scenarios helps a child identify with their own experiences.
• Model with your own friendships – Talk to your child about your own friendships and their ups and downs.
  • Try using these emotion prompts as a conversation starter with your child to explain how you might handle these situations.
  • Show your child how you communicate your love and appreciation for your friends, and encourage your child to do the same. For example, sending ‘thinking of you’ cards brightens everyone’s day and is a stealthy way to encourage writing practice. (This sweet note note set does exactly that.)

Keep in Mind

• Nurturing a young child with a strong Friend Skill Set to help them navigate tricky social situations can be useful, but play is play. We all hope that our children play inclusively and with kindness, but a child’s social skills develop as they go – with more play, different play and with maturity.
• Each child will have natural preferences in their play (among personalities, genders, activities, etc.) so it is also important to let your child learn their friendship skills through play, and find their own footing through their social interactions.

When There is Challenging Behavior in Your Child’s Friendships

• Start from a place of assume the best. Assume the best of your child, other children and other parents. Everyone wants their child to thrive and learn. Avoid jumping to conclusions about the situation or making assumptions about what it might indicate about your child’s long-term personality or behavior. Trust that everyone is doing their best.
• Try to avoid jumping directly to parent-to-parent communications at the outset to solve your child’s friendship conflicts. Young children are still finding their way and trying to understand how they can be part of the community.
  • Power dynamics are often at play in early childhood, and it is sometimes best to let children play things out and use their active imaginations to problem-solve in their own way.
  • If you need, reach out to your child’s teacher to better understand what they may be seeing and hearing at school, and brainstorm with them on how the situation can be handled swiftly and gracefully.

A Note on ‘Crushes’

As early as age five, children sometimes use the term ‘crush’ when referring to a friend. You might even hear how this ‘crush’ quickly leads to ‘marriage’! Experimenting with the word ‘crush’ is developmentally normal for young school-aged children. Some considerations:

• Often, a child’s definition of ‘crush’ is vastly different from an adult’s (in many cases, a young child is not aware of the adult definition of ‘crush’). Or, they may be experimenting with mature language they heard elsewhere (from an older sibling, older children on the playground, etc.).
• A child may be using the term as a means of showing friendship or expressing that they want to have a friendship (i.e., a way of relating to a peer).
• Use this opportunity to talk with your child about:
  • Your family’s values and definitions of a ‘crush’;
  • Ways your child can enjoy and share in their friend’s company;
  • The characteristics of a ‘good’ friend; and
  • The difference between ‘being a friend’ and ‘being in love’.
• If your child shares with you that “I have a ‘crush’ on (insert another child’s name)!” or “My friend has a crush on me!” try following up with open-ended questions that provide insight into how your child relates to that friendship. At this young age, children are often still ego-centric so it is helpful to start from a place of discovering what they know and what they are thinking about:
  • “Tell me more.”
  • “What does that mean to you?”
  • “How do you know?”