Child Friendships

Joking around and having adventures together, sharing secrets, laughing together, arguing and making up again: this is what characterizes friendships at primary school age. Friends are important developmental companions for your child. Friendships provide emotional support, enable new social experiences and help build important skills for later adult life. Read this article to learn why friendships are so important for children and how parents can encourage their child to build and maintain relationships.

Some friendships from childhood last a lifetime. They play an important role in our lives. Everyone knows how good it feels to be able to count on good friendships. The elementary school years are the time when the first deeper and also lasting friendships can be formed. The development of relationships provides the natural training ground for the development of social skills in later adult life.

If the play communities from daycare are usually still very short-lived and more or less random, close bonds are already established at elementary school age. Now it's about finding a place in the class community, or even in the sports team. Even though parents remain the most important attachment figures, the circle of friends now becomes more significant for children as they get older. Depending on their personalities, children try out in the class group. They arrange to skate, bolt, swim, play games, or just hang out together. They confide "secrets" to each other, creating closeness and familiarity. Sometimes everyone thinks they're great, but other times everyone thinks they're stupid, until they find "their" own personal circle of friends. In this way, children learn to be involved in a community outside the family and to feel that they are in good hands there.

There are several reasons why building friendly relationships is important for children:

Making friends is not always easy for children. Sometimes tears are shed when it doesn't work out with the dates or the favorite classmate prefers to play with someone else. But these are also very important experiences. Because they enable your child to take new developmental steps.

As parents, you can support and accompany your child to build friendships. Basically, it is conducive to

• allow your child time for appointments,
• also times to play cab to meet other children,
• to welcome children's visitors,
• to create opportunities for play and exchange, where your child can make contacts "on the side" about a common hobby, for example, in the sports club, music school, scouts or youth firefighters, on joint trips or participation in extracurricular activities....
• Seek out places that allow free encounters, for example, on the adventure playground, the skating rink or the swimming pool...
• to talk about both beautiful and difficult situations in the friendship relationships,
• to talk with the child again and again about the importance of friendships and how different they can look.
• to accept different friendships. Even if they do not correspond to your own ideas. As parents, you should value the diversity of friendships and emphasize the positive importance of friendships - regardless of background, appearance and interests.

It's perfectly normal that friendships don't last a lifetime. Especially not at elementary school age. Children are just beginning to make their own experiences. Quarrels and separations are part and parcel of that.

Both can be very painful in the moment for an affected child - and for parents often not easy to endure. But instead of interfering actively in the happening, parents should be better the helpful net in the background. This way, children can gain important experiences of their own.

• Show understanding for the grief of your child.
• Offer the conversation again and again to talk about the conflict points and discuss what makes a good friendship.
• Together with your child, think about what possible solutions might look like - both for getting along and for letting the friendship rest or ending it.
• Offer support, but also leave your child space for their own experiences and decisions.

Experiencing one's own child alone is painful and difficult to bear - a depressing feeling that some parents certainly know. It is even harder for the affected child, who may feel isolated and lonely. He or she now needs particularly sensitive support in order to find a way out of this situation. It is important to be patient and give the child time to develop friendships. In addition, it is important to find out where the causes lie. The reasons can be very different:

• From time to time, the children in a class simply do not fit together. Then it is helpful to promote contacts with peers through hobbies and activities outside of school.
• Maybe your child is particularly shy and needs more encouragement and support. As parents, you can organize joint activities or specifically encourage your child to invite other children home. In the familiar environment, relationships may develop more easily, so that your child's self-confidence is strengthened.
• Sometimes the causes also lie deeper and your child needs professional support. This may be the case if, for example, disorders such as ADHD or forms of autism are present. Affected children have a much harder time making friends or girlfriends. To get clarity, a medical diagnosis is needed. In this case, the pediatrician's office is your first port of call. Building on a diagnosis, therapists or therapists can help your child develop appropriate strategies.