Making fun 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 to build important skills for later adult life. Read this article to find out 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. Primary school is the time when the first deeper and lasting friendships can develop. Building relationships provides the natural training ground for developing social skills in later adult life.

While the play groups from nursery are usually still very short-lived and more or less random, close bonds are already formed at primary school age. Now it's all about finding a place in the class community, or even in the sports team. Even if parents remain the most important caregivers, the circle of friends becomes increasingly important for children as they get older. Depending on their personality, children try themselves out in the class group. They arrange to meet up to skate, bolt, swim, play or simply be together. They confide "secrets" to each other, creating closeness and familiarity. Sometimes they all think they're great, sometimes they all think they're stupid, until they have found "their" own personal circle of friends. In this way, children learn to become part of a community outside the family and to feel at home there.

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

Making friends is not always easy for children. Tears are sometimes shed when dates don't work out or their 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 a parent, you can support and guide your child in building friendships. In general, it is beneficial

• to give your child time for appointments,
• to play cab sometimes to make it possible to meet up with other children,
• to welcome visitors,
• to create opportunities for play and exchange, where your child can socialize "on the side" through a shared hobby, for example in the sports club, music school, scouts or youth fire department, on joint excursions or participation in extracurricular activities....
• to visit places that enable free encounters, for example at the adventure playground, the skating rink or the swimming pool...
• to talk about both positive and difficult situations in friendship relationships,
• to talk to the child again and again about the importance of friendships and how different they can be.
• accepting different friendships. Even if they don't match your own ideas. As parents, you should value the diversity of friendships and emphasize the positive importance of friendships - regardless of origin, appearance and interests.

It's completely normal that friendships don't last a lifetime. Especially not at primary school age. After all, children are only just beginning to gain experience. Arguments and break-ups are part and parcel of this.

Both can be very painful for the child concerned at the time - and often not easy for parents to bear. But instead of actively interfering in what is happening, parents should be the helpful net in the background. This allows children to gain important experiences of their own.

• Show understanding for your child's grief.
• Always offer to talk about the points of conflict and discuss what makes a good friendship.
• Consider together with your child what possible solutions could look like - both for getting along and for letting the friendship rest or ending it.
• Offer support, but also give your child space to make their own experiences and decisions.

It is painful and hard to bear to see your own child alone - a depressing feeling that some parents are certainly familiar with. It is even harder for the affected child, who may feel isolated and lonely. They now need particularly sensitive support to get out of this situation. It is important to be patient and give the child time to develop friendships. It is also important to find out what the causes are. The reasons can be very different:

• From time to time, the children in a class simply don't get on with each other. It is then helpful to encourage contact with peers through hobbies and activities outside of school.
• Perhaps your child is particularly shy and needs more encouragement and support. As a parent, you can organize joint activities or specifically encourage your child to invite other children home. Relationships may develop more easily in a familiar environment, boosting your child's self-confidence.
• Sometimes the causes lie deeper and your child needs professional support. This may be the case, for example, if they have conditions such as ADHD or forms of autism. Affected children find it much more difficult to make friends. A medical diagnosis is needed to clarify the situation. A specialist pediatric practice is your first port of call in this case. Based on a diagnosis, therapists can help your child to develop suitable strategies.