Your child practises friendship skills at home, at school and during leisure time. You and other people close to the child play an important role in how the child learns to meet new people, maintain friendships and resolve disputes.
Children observe, follow and mimic what they learn in their inner circle. They also model the social behaviour of other children. They practise different approaches and adapt solutions to suit themselves, but the patterns they’ve learned along the way still have an influence.
If your child has problems with friendship skills or relationships, bring the matter up with their class teacher or hobby group instructor so that they can help the children sort things out. At school, the pupil welfare services can also support the teacher in resolving situations if they turn out to be difficult.
What do friendship skills involve?
- the ability to listen and start a conversation
- the ability to approach others, to join activities or ask others to join in
- the ability to negotiate in different situations
- the ability to say ‘no’ when necessary
- the ability to resolve conflict situations
- helping others and asking for help
- loyalty, fairness and reliability
- understanding your own emotions and those of others and managing your own emotions.
How can children learn friendship skills?
The best way to learn friendship skills is to interact with other people. These skills can be strengthened by observing others and gaining experience, and by receiving information about people’s feelings, habits and intentions. The child’s brain is also developing, and many skills become naturally stronger with age.
As a parent, you can help your child build up skills by means such as
- verbalising the child’s own and their friends’ potential feelings in different situations
- explaining the possible reasons behind different situations
- offering suggestions on what to say and do in difficult situations
- teaching the child how to react when someone gets upset or when they get upset themself.
How you yourself react to emotions and situations in your family and other relationships also plays a major role in how your child learns to deal with emotions and behave in different social situations.
When the child has conflicts with friends, you should intervene and help the child resolve these situations. Consider your child’s age and skills when supporting them. If necessary, you can take part in sorting out the situation together with the other parties involved.
Where do children find friends?
Children do not always develop close friendships with their own classmates. This is unfortunate, but another way of looking at the situation is that not even adults always form leisure time relationships with their co-workers.
Your child may have opportunities to make friends in settings such as after-school activities, hobbies, the local youth centre or online. Many children today make good friends in the virtual environment of online games.
Gaming can also bring about friendships in which the child plays at home with their pals. Studies have shown that games that encourage cooperation promote the development of social skills and also increase good behaviour among children.
Where to get support for your child?
If your child is experiencing loneliness or struggling with issues such as social awkwardness, you should bring up the matter with the school’s pupil welfare services. The school nurse or welfare officer can provide conversational help and suggestions on how to proceed. The sadness and worry that loneliness brings should also be treated in good time.
Social counselling for families with children can also help you forward. A social instructor can chart the background factors of the situation and offer tips on where the child could meet peers.
