Excitement for the Family Life Forums is mounting, in fact we were so psyched over the reaction we got from the Forums last time we posted on Mamamia that we are diving in to talk about it again. But this time we are talking about friends. Not your friends though – the friends of your children… or the friends you may have had when you were a kid.
It’s every parent’s nightmare. Your child’s new BFF is actually someone you can’t stand. Of all the friends they could choose, they’ve chosen a classmate who regularly humiliates and teases them. (You know this, of course, because like any good parent you’ve been eavesdropping on their playdates while you pretend to put away the towels).
Or maybe the situation is worse. Perhaps your child has fallen in with a friend who is leading them astray. Swear words and a smart-alec attitude have become de rigour. Or maybe your child is being hauled into the principal’s office as their new friend’s accomplice.
So. What to do?
As a parent can you control whom your child becomes friends with?
The simple answer is no. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help steer your child to better choices.
Every parent of a primary school aged child knows the quickest way to strengthen a new friendship is to try and ban it. Tell your child you don’t like their new friend Sally or Tom and they’ll be on the defence faster than you can say “Please God don’t let them be in the same class next year.”
So if trying to break up the BFFs is unlikely to work, what can you do?
For starters, start having conversations with your children – from a really early age – about what good friendships look like. What they feel like. We teach our children many things but often a life skill as important as how to recognise a good friend isn’t one of them. Talk about loyalty, laughter, shared interests and respect. Talk about what good friends, true friends, don’t do: bully, humiliate, taunt or try to get you to be someone or something you’re not.
Next, try to refrain from taking your child by the shoulders and crying, ‘Billy is a mean-spirited little bully. For the love of Vegemite stop hanging around him!” Instead, during one of the periods when your child is upset about being teased by their friend, talk (non-dramatically) about how that friendship feels. And if it meets the criteria of what a good friend should be.
And always encourage your child to have friends outside of school. That way should bullying and dramatic rifts occur, they have a second group of friends (or even just one great friend) to still spend time with. This also helps reaffirm that the issue is not with them and that they are still likeable.
If all else fails – and the issue isn’t overly serious – just sit it out. Primary school friendships last about as long as “little lunch” … in the blink of an eye your little angel will most likely have moved on. And so can you.
Do your children have friends that you do not like? Did you have friends that your parents did not like when you were a child?
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ents to be held in 13 regional and metropolitan Lend Lease shopping centres across NSW, QLD, VIC and WA. The Forums are proudly brought to you by Lend Lease Shopping Centres and Mia is curating a cracking team to get out there and share some of the content that you most love from Mamamia.Please visit Family Life Forum for your chance to win tickets and learn more about venues and timing. You can also follow Family Life Forum on Twitter here and join them on Facebook here
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Top Comments
My Son went through a terrible time when his little Brother ( his Fathers Son)and Step Mother were killed. It was excruciating trying to help him through the grief and watch him withdraw and become angry. He was also on the edge of becoming a teenager and starting High School. he had seen a side to the world that his peers were a million miles from and couldn't relate to.
It was during this shift ( and grief counceling ) that he made friends with a neighborhood boy who was a year older than him. On paper the family seemed ok. Friendly, secure and spent time doing things together. Fishing, Camping and the like.
Not long went by before my son started to become unpredictable and get into trouble. The boys would disappear without telling anyone where they were going. They got caught doing graffitti, drinking alcohol and smoking.
The other boys family were very upset at all this and blamed our boy for the influence. Perhaps it was true, he was looking for someone to act out with and found it in the neighbour. The neighbouring boy was at fault in it too though as he was also looking for the excitement that went with it all.
My frustration was made exponentially worse by the fact that I didn't have a united front with the other family. It turned out they were heavy drinkers themselves and so could (and Would) never be out driving around looking for the boys. The grog the boys took was from their house. When the boys said they had been at their house, they had no idea whether they had or not as they were in a blind haze most weekends after 9pm.
Innitially I tried to work with them to solve the situation. It didn't work. I tried banning my son from having contact. That did not work. Councelling for him and our family helped in some ways and not others. Even getting the help from the School he attended was futile.Eventually,before he got himself expelled, I took my son to Victoria leaving my other two sons and their Father in Qld for two months.
This was what helped us stay connected with each other and get him to open up to me. He is still an angry boy, but has a soft center... and hope. The other boy is still in his life, but not inbetween us.
At a recent presentation by Michael Carr-Gregg, he gave me permission to 'engineer' my son's friendships. Yay! I was so pleased that I was able to do this, when I had already considered it. My son is very social and as a result is happy to be friends with anyone and everyone. This doesn't always work and as a result he is sometimes the target of bullying, and also used for pot shots etc. I organise playdates with kids out of school (so he's always busy) and he has many friends in team sports etc. I've done this in a deliberate attempt to steer him away from 'trouble kids' that my husband and I deem inappropriate - for many reasons. And I no longer feel guilty about it!