Teaching Kids About True Friendship | The Day I Discovered Our Son Understood

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Parenting is not easy and it is especially difficult watching your child feel rejection or pain over a lost friendship. Let’s be honest. Some kids are mean, hell there are mean adults out there too! Teaching kids about true friendship can be hard, especially when the lessons we have learned over the years can be difficult for your little one to understand.

When you are a new parent you aren’t prepared for the challenges of navigating your child’s friendships. There seems to be endless drama around friendships when the kids are growing up and trying to figure out how to coach them through those friendship issues can be challenging.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”True friends like you for who you are.” quote=”True friends like you for who you are.” theme=”style3″]

This is one of the personal friendship lessons I learned growing up. I always tried to send that message to our kids in a way that they could understand. We wanted them to know that if they were themselves, the friendships they would develop would be stronger.

The Day I Discovered Our Son Understood

It was Grade 3 and the first year that he was separated from his best friend. They weren’t in the same class and his world had ended. We had been coaching him to get through it and encouraged him to use his time at recess to play with his friend.

This was the plan until his friend found another group of friends to play with. At first, it went well, then our son starting coming home saying that there was a boy that kept bossing the kids in this group around.

“That boy is not very nice, Mom.”

“I still want to play with my best friend though.”

Hanging out with his best friend was important so he would go and play with the group every recess.

Then one day he came home devastated. The mean boy told him that he had to start acting a certain way or he couldn’t play with them.

My breath hitched, and I paused.

I asked him what he did.

His response took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes (in a good way).

He looked at his best friend and told him that if he wanted to play with him that he could find him at the playground. Then he walked away to find other kids to play with.

You never really know if your message resonates with your child until they come home one day with a story of their own. It’s in those moments you can be assured that even though they never seem to “get it”, in some small way they are hearing you. The pieces don’t always come into place right away but they will, eventually….hopefully.

Our son’s best friend eventually realized the boy was bad news and started playing with our son at recess. That day the sun couldn’t have shined any brighter. It was a great day for our son knowing he had his best friend back.

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