Harvard Health Publishing

How Can Parents Influence Their Children’s Friendships?

How Can Parents Influence Their Children’s Friendships

When it comes to our children’s friends, I believe that parents should play an active role in monitoring who they are and the influence they have on our children.  As Proverbs 27:17 (NLT) states, “as iron sharpens iron so a friend influences a friend.”  My blog today actually looks at what parents can do at home to help their children learn about friendships and build good relationship skills.   

There is an informative article on Harvard Medical School’s Harvard Health Publishing website titled Helping Children Make Friends: What Parents Can Do.  It recommends the following for parents to do at home: 

• Promote kindness, generosity, and fairness among family members.  Sometimes, children can only think of themselves, but by parents encouraging them to consider the other person’s feelings, children can develop the ability to empathize with others. 

• Promote communication.  Have them put away all their electronic devices at certain times and just talk with each other.  Excellent times to do this are at dinner and while driving together in the car. 

• Teach about forgiveness so that children learn to quickly see their mistakes and then apologize.  Also, when doing this, they can learn to forgive others as well.  

• Intervene and stop sibling rivalry.  Don’t allow it to continue unresolved. 

• Be a good mentor and role model for them.  Parents can talk until they are blue in the face but children learn the most from their own parent’s behaviors and actions.   

The article has much more helpful information, so I encourage you to take some time to read it.  Once your children learn about building relationship skills and what good friendships require, be sure to encourage them to look for others who have those same skills.  

What Parents Can Do To Improve Their Children's Mental Health

mental health crisis warning

       May has been designated as Mental Health Awareness Month.  The theme this year is “Getting Back to Basics” which seeks to promote learning more about mental health conditions and what can be done to improve our mental health.  This coincides with several recent articles that center on the growing mental health crisis among children.

       One excellent article is The Mental Health Crisis Among Children and Teens: How Parents can Help from Harvard Health Publishing/Harvard Medical School which was published in March.  The article begins with this call to action: “We are in the midst of a pediatric mental health crisis — and parents need to take action.”  One of the main results of the pandemic is the “alarming amount of anxiety and depression in our children and teens.”

       What can parents do? The article suggests the following:

  1. Understand that your children’s mental health is just as important as their physical health.

  2. Have regular times to communicate with your children in a nonjudgmental way.

  3. Make sure that your children have time to relax and do things that they enjoy.

  4. Encourage more sleep and physical exercise.

  5. Monitor their social media so they develop safe and healthy habits.

  6. Keep in touch regularly with other adults in their lives, such as their teachers, coaches, and parents of their friends, to ensure that your children are getting the support they need. 

  7. Try not to judge them so much by having “expectations without judgment”.

  8. Ensure that your own mental health is taken care of as well.

 

The article provides many resources that you will find very helpful.  Please invest the time and effort in doing what you can to improve your children’s mental health.

  

To read the entire article, please visit:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-mental-health-crisis-among-children-and-teens-how-parents-can-help-202203082700