Helping children learn positive friendship skills
Research tells us that any at age, having friends provides support and promotes mental health and wellbeing. Children’s friendships are also very important for their social and emotional development as it is through friendships children learn how to relate with others. They develop social skills as they teach each other how to be good friends. All children want to have friends and we know that children who have friends are more likely to be self-confident and perform better academically at school than those without friends. When children have difficulty in making friends or in keeping them, it often leads to feeling lonely and unhappy, and feeling rejected by others may lead to significant distress. Learning positive friendship skills can help children socially so they feel happier and more confident.
All children go through friendship conflicts. Even usually popular children can experience rejection sometimes. When this happens children’s confidence may be affected and they may blame themselves or others. Beliefs about the reasons for the friendship conflicts they experience affect the ways that children react. Some kinds of thinking are more helpful than others for managing the conflicts children have with friends. The following are some of the ways we can help our children with friendship development:
Provide children with opportunities to play with peers
Children gain experience and learn important social skills from playing with friends. For children who are still learning how to get along, it can be helpful to plan what to do before having a friend over for a play date.
Teach positive social skills
Observe your child to work out the negative social behaviours your child uses too often and the positive social behaviours they could use more. Little things like smiles, looking at the person, knowing names and using a confident, friendly voice can make a big difference when making friends. Being able to better control negative emotions and paying attention to the needs and wants of others are also very important.
Be a coach
Coaching is critical for helping children use new skills in real-life situations. Coaching involves prompting, reminding and encouraging (but not nagging!) children to use the skills they have learned. Coach your child to practise positive social skills in everyday situations.
Help children solve friendship conflicts
Talking problems through with a supportive adult helps children to think about what happens, how they feel about it and what to do next. Thinking things through like this helps to build more mature social skills.
If you need help and support please come in and speak with your child's teacher or with a member of the leadership team. Trying to solve your child's friendship issues for them or telling them not to play with certain children is not a sound plan for friendship issues and rarely works.
Sportsman's Night
Last Friday around 55 dad's and friends of Star of the Sea School gathered at the Henley Bowling Club for the annual father's gathering. The night was a great success with quality guest speakers to listen to, food and a few drinks. Above all it was great to see our dads connecting with each other. Thank you to Ryan Scott for all of his work putting the night together, organising the speakers, food and venue. We all had a great time.
Enjoy the weekend ahead.
Joe De Tullio
