Helping Your Child Be a Real Friend
Email 1
Parents,
We all want our child to be a good friend; someone who is kind, generous, and compassionate toward others. Learning to be a good friend only happens through practice. Our children will learn to be a good friend as they experience real friendship with real people. These interactions can be messy. Our child will hurt others and others will hurt our child, but that reality shouldn’t deter us from helping our child be a great friend.
Research shows that kids with good friendships feel better about themselves, perform better in school, and are better equipped to grow into well adjusted adults. We know there are great benefits to having good friends and being a good friend, but HOW do we help our kids BE a good friend?
Check out this video, and we’ll follow up later in the month with a few more practical suggestions on HOW to help your child be a good friend.
https://vimeo.com/parentministry/review/95865873/b2a992df3a
Your partner,
Children’s Pastor
Email 2
Subject line-Part 2 of Helping Your Child be a Good Friend
Parents,
Our children have personalities, and maybe you’ve found yourself saying, “My child has a BIG personality!” Expecting all these personalities to mesh harmoniously to produce precious, genuine friendships in childhood is a tall order. But there are steps we can take to help our child be a good friend.
Hopefully since the first email on this subject you’ve done a little detective work; listening in on conversations between your child and their friends, watching them play with others in the backyard, and spying during practices or, even, in their classrooms. You’ve probably heard and seen things that made you cringe, and, more than likely, you also had moments that made you proud.
A good beginning step is to do some coaching AFTER those keen observations. Let your child know what you saw, not in a demeaning way, just what you observed, and let them know a better way they could handle the situation next time. This private coaching time truly will help them be a better friend.
The Bible gives us some incredible insight into the traits of a good friend. These are the traits we want to be developing in our children to help them be the BEST FRIEND they can be:
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- John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. A good friend is sacrificial. This doesn’t mean they let people walk all over them, but it does mean that sometimes your child plays what the other kid wants instead of what he/she always wants.
- Proverbs 17:17 “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” Unconditional love is the mark of a good friend, meaning your child is loyal, stays put even through conflict.
- Proverbs 27:9 “Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice.” Good friends give good advice, wise counsel. This is from the overflow of a heart that seeks God.
- Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 Insert Bible link here. True friends strengthen and help one another.
The best thing you can do is talk often with your child about the qualities of a true friend. Pray with them that God would help them be a good friend, and over time you’ll help your child become a friend “who sticks closer than a brother.”
Your partner,
Children’s Pastor
My youngest daughter is in second grade this year and she has just started having friends over to spend the night. We love getting to connect with our daughter’s friends and we also love the chance to watch her interact as a friend. Well, to be quite honest many times we cringe as we listen to our daughter interact with her friends. We try hard not to get involved and coach her after she has had friends over but we have come to the conclusion that kids don’t naturally know how to be a good friend to others. For most of us the art of friendship is a learned skill.
I will never forget a chaotic friendship I had in 2nd grade. Thomas was a cool kid in our class and I wanted to be his friend really badly. In my heart I’m not sure if I wanted to be his friend or I wanted to be cool also, but I did everything I could to be what I thought was a friend to Thomas. I will never forget when Thomas finally asked me to come over and spend the night. I was so excited but when I arrived at his house the next 12 hours was basically the “do what Thomas wanted to do” show. He even got mad and cried at one point. Even as a 2nd grade boy this seemed a little extreme. I learned that night as a kid that this was a guy that really was not a good friend. I also learned that Thomas had parents who basically let him have his way all the time. I never spent the night with Thomas again even though we hung out at school because I did not want to go through that again. I learned that friendship can be pretty messy.
With this month’s online parenting class we want to help you become a friendship coach in the life of your child! When it comes to real friendship we all need coaching. Being a real friend demands that we give away our time and attention to others and we are in the perfect position to help our children become that kind of friend. Being a good friend is different than having a ton of shallow connections. Our hope this month is that we will really lean into our children to help them be true friends to the people that they love the most.
The Bible talks about friendship often. In the book of Romans we even see that when we follow Jesus we are friends of God! In the book of Proverbs we see a powerful example of the kinds of friends we need to coach our kids to be…
Proverbs 18:24 (NLT)
There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.
Right now, as a parent, you can probably already see some destructive “friend habits” swirling around in your child’s life. You might even think back and remember a time when a friendship turned into a destructive force in your life. The kinds of friends that we want our children to be are friends that stick closer than a brother. That’s a close friend. We have to help our children process the difference in being popular and having genuine friendships. Every kid wants to be liked by everyone but those relationships are distant and change over time. Friends love and fight for each others best and we have to help discover what that looks like.
Friendship is a powerful force in the life of every child so let’s make a real effort this month to be a proactive coach in the friendship life of our children. If you are up to the challenge here are three steps you can start working on this week…
Step back to watch and listen…
Identify who are the friends in your child’s life and evaluate how your children are interacting with them. Have a few friends over and stay close during the time there and see how your child is treating their guest. Take them bowling or to get pizza and just watch and listen.
Start coaching by asking questions and giving practical advice from real life moments…
There are some powerful insights you can learn by just asking questions with kids. Why did you say that?
What did that make your feel like?
Has that ever happened before?
After you have asked questions, you have a great opportunity to connect and coach them with a real life lesson you have learned in your own life. Kids love hearing real stories from your life, so go ahead and leverage them.
Connect your child with other children intentionally…
You can help your child connect with other kids they might really connect with! Have a family over for dinner with kids that could become friends with your children. Because kids go to different school and live in different neighborhoods it’s perfectly fine to help them discover friends that will be a great influence in their life.
In the coming weeks we will email you part 2 of this online parenting class and help walk you through more practical ways to help your child be the friend God has called them to be. Friendship is a powerful force in your kid’s life so leverage this month to be the coach they need in the friendship maze!
TIP: Choose a hashtag for your tweets and use it consistently. That will tell twitter to store a list of your tweets in one place for later reference.
- TWEET #1- I went out to find a friend, But could not find one there. I went out to be a friend, And friends were everywhere #urchurchparentministry
- TWEET #2-The art of friendship is a learned skill #urchurchparentministry
- TWEET #3- One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother #urchurchparentministry - TWEET #4-A great gift-helping your child understand the difference in popularity and genuine friendships #urchurchparentministry
- TWEET #5-Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. Helen Keller #urchurchparentministry
- TWEET #6-How are you helping your child be a friend who sticks closer than a brother? #urchurchparentministry
- TWEET #7-Starting over? How to make new friends http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/going-to-school/social/make-new-friends/#urchurchparentministry
- TWEET #8-Proverbs 17:17 “A friend loves at all times.” Friendship is marked by unconditional love and loyalty. #urchurchparentministry
- TWEET #9-When do we walk away from a friend? http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2013/04/21/when-is-it-time-to-walk-away #urchurchparentminsitry
- TWEET #10- “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, By the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” – Cicero #urchurchparentministry