Friends and connection

Arranging some play dates so you can stick close and do some coaching when needed. 

Coaching just means commenting on what they’re doing well together: sharing, turn-taking, waiting, being kind.

Meet the parents of the children that your kid loves being around - share some kai and have them hang out as part of their families to keep things feeling cool beans.

If needed, have a chat with your child’s teacher - they know how important friendships are and will help foster them too, for example, pairing up activities and checking in.

When your child comes to you about the tricky bits of their friendships, try role-playing it out.

They can play the friend, you play them and "model" some appropriate ideas and responses, then swap roles so they can try out new approaches. For younger kids - use puppets.

We’re big fans of teaching kids to problem solve - it’s a life long skill. It can be a bit of a step-by-step approach, so when your child comes to you with a ‘problem’ it goes like this:

• Empathise with your child about how they’re feeling, for example, “That sounds tricky, I can see you’re really upset by that.”
• Define what the problem actually is, for example, “Tell me what the problem is?”. Get them to say it (note this approach rather than "What’s the matter?").
• Come up with some ideas that might help resolve the problem together. Think of ideas that they might try - it doesn’t matter how weird they sound!
• Get them to choose one of these and ‘try’ it out.
• Check-in, praise (no matter what the outcome) and if need be, choose another solution to try.

Have a good think about how you relate to each of your kids and how this might be contributing to any conflict e.g needing to give over toys to the youngest or how we might describe our kids -  “Mary’s great at maths and Anne is more creative.” While both of these things are great, which may be perceived as the more likeable skills? It’s okay to say our kids are all different if they are, but perhaps leave it there. Let them determine their strengths.

Oh, and kids are BIG on fairness, so make sure things are fair in your household.

Talking about how we feel and how others might feel builds empathy e.g. “I can see Mary is sad, why do you think she’s sad” or “how do you think Mary is feeling right now?” - even in the happy moments supports kids to see things from others perspectives.

Be sure to make emotions kei te pai in your family - all of them. Talk about them, allow them to be expressed, support the big ones as they come up and teach emotional regulation strategies too. 

We’ve got that covered here.

Encourage your kids to work together on projects or tasks. This can help them learn to cooperate and support each other. 

Oh, and lose the competitive games if it’s too hard in your family or always have the rule be adults against kids so that no individual wins or loses. This is just while they’re learning (for those of you who eye-rolled and mumbled “they have to learn to lose too”). The point is ‘learn’ - and we learn to lose well, when we also learn to win well and are supported with both.

Support your kids to resolve conflicts in a healthy and respectful manner. This can help them learn to work through disagreements and build stronger relationships.

This means building empathy and perspective taking (see above), supporting kids with their emotions (see above too), and problem solving together “Hmmm this seems like a big problem, how might we work through this.” Then support them with their ideas to move forward and compromise.

• Foster your kids’ individual interests and support them to appreciate each other's unique qualities and strengths.
• Provide opportunities for quality time together as a whole family to build bonds and memories. And spend one-on-one time with each of them too. 
• Model kindness and respect and avoid speaking negatively about others in front of them.