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.