Friendship

We all need trusted, loyal and reliable friends, who will stand up for us and be there when we need them. It’s important that we teach our children what a good friend looks like. A friend isn’t someone who breaks our trust, teases us, or is only there on our good days.

Troubles in friendships seems to be a constant problem that arises in schools and St Benedict’s is no exception. Programs like FROGS, Big Feelings and Friendship Dramas are all programs that are used to teach the students who need extra support with social skills, the strategies and language that they need. A constant in these programs is having an expectation with friends and teaching the children “I statements” to resolve a problem. For example, “I feel sad when you treat me like that because it makes me feel scared.” This is instead of yelling “Don’t talk to me like that” and escalating the problem. Letting the students know that they don’t need permission to leave a friendship if the expectation of a good friend is continually not met, is also important. Some children think that it would be rude or mean to tell someone that they don’t want to be friends anymore, but if this is where the friendship is at then if a student uses kind language, then the other person will know why the friendship has reached this point. Most likely, this will have already been talked about. Saying something like, “I don’t think that we can be friends any more, because you keep telling everyone my private thoughts. I can’t trust you.’ Is different to saying, “I hate you. I’m not your friend anymore”.

As parents, we need to resist the temptation to get involved in our children’s dramas. Picking up your phone and calling another child’s parents or talking to your child’s teacher every time there’s a dispute isn’t going to help. In fact, it can often make things worse. If you reinforce the strategies that I’ve just mentioned, helping your child to learn these social skills and build resilience, it will serve them better in the long term. Of course, repeated mean behaviour needs to be reported to school, especially if it is starting to impact your child’s wellbeing.