Having friends provides support and promotes your children’s well-being.
Friendships help your kids learn how to share, cooperate, compromise and work through conflict.
Through friendship experiences, children learn social rules and how to relate to others.
So, it’s natural that, when your children have difficulty making or keeping friends, they might feel lonely or unhappy.
As a parent, one of your goals should be to give your child opportunities for rewarding social experiences based on their interests.
This will help them to meet like-minded friends.
Even if your kids are not social butterflies, there are things that you can do to help your child make friends with whom they ‘fit’.
This may mean looking outside of the school playground.
While some children may appreciate the team environment that sporting clubs can offer, others thrive when they participate in non-contact sports or activities that avoid competition.
There are many different ways for your child to make friends who share their interests… it just might take a bit of hunting around on your part to find them!
© 2017 Kids First Children’s Services
Psychologists from Kids First Children’s Services in Sydney’s northern beaches would be happy to share commonsense tips to help your children find like-minded friends.
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