12 Friendship Skills Every Child Needs

Kids can be picky about who they play and mix with.

Popularity should not be confused with sociability. A number of studies in recent decades have shown that appearance, personality type and ability impact on a child’s popularity at school.

Good-looking, easy-going, talented kids usually win peer popularity polls but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee they will have friends.

Those children and young people who develop strong friendships have a definite set of skills that help make them easy to like, easy to relate to and easy to play with.

Here are twelve essential skills that children have identified as being important for making and keeping friends:

1.  Ability to share possessions and space
2.  Keeping confidences and secrets
3.  Offering to help
4.  Accepting other’s mistakes
5.  Being positive and enthusiastic
6.  Starting a conversation
7.  Winning and losing well
8.  Listening to others
9.  Starting and maintaining a conversation
10. Ignoring someone who is annoying you
11. Cooperating with others
12.  Giving and receiving compliments

Friendships skills are generally developmental. That is, kids grow into these skills given exposure to different situations and with adult help.

In past generations ‘exposure to different situations’ meant opportunities to play with each other, with siblings and with older and younger friends.

They were reminded by parents about how they should act around others. They were also ‘taught’ from a very young age.

Arrested development

The NEW CHILD grows up with fewer siblings, fewer opportunities for unstructured play and less freedom to explore friendships than children of even ten years ago.

A parenting style that promotes a high sense of individual entitlement rather than the notion of fitting in appears to be popular at the moment.

These factors can lead to delayed or arrested development in these essential friendship skills, resulting in very unhappy, self-centred children.

Here are some ideas if you think your child experiences developmental delay in any of these essential skills or just needs some help to acquire them:

(1)  Encourage or insist that kids play and work with each other: Allowing kids the freedom to be kids is part of the message here but parents have to be cunning with the NEW CHILD and construct situations where kids have to get on with each other. For some kids “Go outside and play” is a good place to start!!

(2)  Play with your kids: Interact with your kids through games and other means so you can help kids learn directly from you how to get on with others.

(3)  Talk about these skills: If you notice your kids need to develop some of these skills then talk about them, point out when they show them and give them some implementation ideas.

Kids are quite ego-centric and need to develop a sense of ‘other’ so they can successfully negotiate the many social situations that they find themselves in.

As parents we often focus on the development of children’s academic skills and can quite easily neglect the development of these vitally important social skills, which contribute so much to children’s happiness and well-being.

In this month of Thanksgiving, it seems only fitting that we remind ourselves of the power of gratitude. If you haven’t been in the habit of mentally and verbally giving thanks for the wonderful things you already have, now’s a good time to begin.

Why would anyone want to spend time thanking the universe for what he or she has? First, the act of being grateful brings more good things your way, in a very practical sense. Giving thanks for what you already have (even though you may not have everything you want) will put in motion additional energy to attract more positive things and events to you.

When you are thankful for the people and abundance in your life, it adds to your feelings of optimism and joy. When you are at peace with your life, events tend to flow more easily and you draw beneficial circumstances to you because of your good cheer.

Imagine a person who goes through his day grumbling and criticizing everything he sees (I think we all know at least one person like that!) He’s oblivious to the great things he already has, and sees no real reason to give thanks for anything at all. With his attitude, do you think he would be a person who would attract wonderful new opportunities or special gifts from the universe? Probably not - because he has neglected to open his heart and let gratitude in.

We tend to see exactly what we believe, for better or worse. If you can give thanks for your bowl of soup and crust of bread while others are dining on a meal of turkey with all the trimmings, you have the right idea about gratitude.

Circumstances can change overnight for the better. The practice of being grateful actually can help you to improve your situation in a dramatic fashion. The key is to be grateful for the small things, and to believe in your own abundant destiny.

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.

If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.

If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy.

If children live with shame, they learn to be guilty.

If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.

If children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient.

If children live with praise, they learn to appreciate.

If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.

If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.

If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.

If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and others.

If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

By Dorothy Law Nolte - Author of Children Learn What They Live

“Adults need to take a more active role in many ways, than in the past, in helping children to learn how to be friends and what you do to be friends, because they’re having less spontaneous opportunities to interact with peers in positive give-and-take ways.”

This is the observation of Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Diane Levin in their chapter, “Children’s Friendships in Contemporary Society,” from the Exchange book, Connecting: Friendship in the Lives of Young Children and Their Teachers.  They continue…

“They’re having more time in front of the screen, families often interact less, say, during dinner.  There’s less neighborhood play where children would spontaneously play with other children outside.  So we’re often left with a situation where children don’t have as many places in which to learn the positive things they should be learning that help them feel powerful and effective and counteract all those negative messages they’re learning about social interactions on television.”

Imagine an infant crying in her crib — a shrill, piercing, unrelenting cry. You pick her up, she cries. You snuggle, you rock, you coo, she cries. You lay her down again, she cries. You search madly for the pacifier; surely, that will do the trick! But a tiny tongue, dripping with mucus and saliva, propels it in your face! The wailing sirens on and on. Is she hungry? No, she whips her head side to side fighting your attempt to feed. You check the diaper, she’s dry. You check her temp, it’s normal. Perhaps it’s fright — or pain! Did a spider bite her, the cat, the older sibling? Why, oh, why can’t babies talk?!

Feeling anxious? I am. Just writing about it knots my stomach, tightens my neck, clenches my jaw. My palms are even sweaty. In these situations parents can go down one of two paths. Neither is easy, but one is a horror.

When soothing words flop, parents continue talking — to themselves! “I can do this. Things WILL get better. This, too, shall pass. Dr. Know-It-All says it’s a stage all babies go through. He did say that, didn’t he?!”

Two parents makes coping with the stress easier. When one runs thin on patience, the other can step in. But tag-teaming only works when both parents are willing, and both are at home. Single parents must be resourceful. Some call a relative or friend for support. Or they muffle the crying by waiting in another room until the little one tires herself to sleep. Most parents, and children, survive the tough times. Of course, the chances are greater if kids are of easy temperament; they don’t test parents as often!One path is to hang tough, to ride out the crying jag without shaking, tossing, or hitting the child — come hell or high water. And most parents can do it. They cling tenaciously to patience. Some do it by talking — first to the baby: “There, there, Sweetie. What’s wrong? Don’t worry, mama’s here. What do you need, angel?”

But there’s another path that can lure parents. When children are perplexing, exasperating, and infuriating, parents can succumb to anger and violence. Feeling abused themselves, parents retaliate, matching a child’s wrath, decibel for decibel, flail for flail. Sometimes it works. Abuse scares kids into compliance. But that doesn’t make it justifiable or right. In time, abuse backfires, setting the stage for a frightening ballet. Parents withdraw, then explode, withdraw, then explode. Sometimes leading, sometimes following, children join the dance, taking their cues from the parent’s mood. Ultimately kids carry the dance into our child cares, schools and businesses.

The macabre choreography provides jobs for social workers, psychologists, police, lawyers, and judges. It robs kids of the sabbatical known as childhood — a fragile time of growth that’s a necessary prelude, not a luxury, for a stable adulthood. It’s hard to fathom why, once indulged, the dance continues. Obviously hurting a child vents intense emotion, but surely one twirl would shock (scare!) a parent into restraint. Yet often it doesn’t. So (I shiver to wonder), does inflicting pain provide a momentary euphoria? Is abuse satisfying, to the point of becoming habitual?

We don’t like to say adults “chose” to abuse. We call it impulse, as if abuse is a residual, primitive behavior that over-rides thinking, takes control, and makes us lose our minds. But abuse isn’t dirty laundry handed down from our evolutionary past.To say instinct drives abuse, rather than free-will decisionmaking, infers humans are innately evil, that we’re at the mercy of genetics. I don’t believe a chromosomal stew destines one to hurt children.

Abusing children, especially repetitive abuse, is a behavioral choice, not an accident. Through mind-searing experiences, abuse is taught, often looping from one generation to the next. The cycle is highly resistant to change. Conditions setting the stage for abuse can be cited and examined, but they don’t absolve the abuser of his or her actions.

I don’t think abuse is merely impulse, but I also don’t think it’s usually premeditated. It’s a wits end, knee-jerk decision, a misfire triggered by anger. In an imperceptible split-second, parents decide to fly off the handle, to use belittling language, to toss, throw, kick, bang, or pound. When parents are pushed against the wall of their limits, abuse must seem a rational choice. It’s not of course. But at the moment, it must seem so.

Whether due to panic, fear, selfishness, or even shame, abusers typically choose to protect themselves first, and their children second — if at all. They keep evidence of their offenses, their children’s scarlet marks, covered from public view until bruises and wounds heal. Though hard to imagine, kids are rehearsed, taught to fib about injuries.

Parents who abuse can choose to seek help, but they often don’t until forced to by child protection laws. Family members can fail to demand an abuser seek help, hoping to keep the abuse a secret — even though they know child abuse is illegal, and more damning, inhumane. Denying reality becomes an unsavory family conspiracy of silence. And so kids lie to neighbors, caregivers, teachers, social workers, and even ministers. Stymied in silence, they fear revealing parents’ flaws, fear sending parents to prison, fear landing in foster care. But mostly, kids remain silent or lie because they’re afraid of losing their parents’ undying love. Surprise you? It shouldn’t. Our society gives greater permission to keep secrets than to seek help. We perpetuate self-defeat. And we condemn kids to years of torment. We’re fools to pretend that even the strongest of kids can endure such stress and still end up contented, stable adults, unscathed and undamaged.

From what I’ve seen, adults can get by with abuse for years. No one wants to point a finger. We believe parents are well intentioned,we give them benefit of the doubt,we preserve a false sense of normalcy instead of facing reality. But we wear our optimistic blinders too long, as we allow children to suffer. Their suffering is guilt we must bear. To stop abuse we all, especially family members, must be realistic as well as optimistic. There’s much we can do to reduce the violence. We must identify abuse early, when it’s most treatable. We can reinforce kids’ rights to hold offenders, even parents, accountable for their actions. It will earn children’s trust.

We must openly discuss abuse and then reach out to help kids be resilient. We can counteract abuse by teaching kids to manage anger constructively and to problem solve cooperatively. We can model self-respect and civil treatment. We must support young parents by lending a sympathetic ear, an empathetic wink, a bit of advice. In doing all that,we’ll earn the right to be optimistic about making life safer for kids.

I’m convinced we can keep abuse from eating away at family trees like a crippling fungus. But it will take you, and me, and all who love your children to exert the will to do it.

Children’s anger presents challenges to teachers committed to constructive, ethical, and effective child guidance. This Digest explores what we know about the components of children’s anger, factors contributing to understanding and managing anger, and the ways teachers can guide children’s expressions of anger.

Three Components of Anger

Anger is believed to have three components (Lewis & Michalson, 1983):

The Emotional State of Anger. The first component is the emotion itself, defined as an affective or arousal state, or a feeling experienced when a goal is blocked or needs are frustrated. Fabes and Eisenberg (1992) describe several types of stress-producing anger provocations that young children face daily in classroom interactions:

• Conflict over possessions, which involves someone taking children’s property or invading their space.
• Physical assault, which involves one child doing something to another child, such as pushing or hitting.
• Verbal conflict, for example, a tease or a taunt.
• Rejection, which involves a child being ignored or not allowed to play with peers.
• Issues of compliance, which often involve asking or insisting that children do something that they do not want to do–for instance, wash their hands.

Expression of Anger. The second component of anger is its expression. Some children vent or express anger through facial expressions, crying, sulking, or talking, but do little to try to solve a problem or confront the provocateur. Others actively resist by physically or verbally defending their positions, self-esteem, or possessions in nonaggressive ways. Still other children express anger with aggressive revenge by physically or verbally retaliating against the provocateur. Some children express dislike by telling the offender that he or she cannot play or is not liked. Other children express anger through avoidance or attempts to escape from or evade the provocateur. And some children use adult seeking, looking for comfort or solutions from a teacher, or telling the teacher about an incident.

Teachers can use child guidance strategies to help children express angry feelings in socially constructive ways. Children develop ideas about how to express emotions (Michalson & Lewis, 1985; Russel, 1989) primarily through social interaction in their families and later by watching television or movies, playing video games, and reading books (Honig & Wittmer, 1992). Some children have learned a negative, aggressive approach to expressing anger (Cummings, 1987; Hennessy et al., 1994) and, when confronted with everyday anger conflicts, resort to using aggression in the classroom (Huesmann, 1988). A major challenge for early childhood teachers is to encourage children to acknowledge angry feelings and to help them learn to express anger in positive and effective ways.

An Understanding of Anger. The third component of the anger experience is understanding–interpreting and evaluating–the emotion. Because the ability to regulate the expression of anger is linked to an understanding of the emotion (Zeman & Shipman, 1996), and because children’s ability to reflect on their anger is somewhat limited, children need guidance from teachers and parents in understanding and managing their feelings of anger.

Understanding and Managing Anger

The development of basic cognitive processes undergirds children’s gradual development of the understanding of anger (Lewis & Saarni, 1985).

Memory. Memory improves substantially during early childhood (Perlmutter, 1986), enabling young children to better remember aspects of anger-arousing interactions. Children who have developed unhelpful ideas of how to express anger (Miller & Sperry, 1987) may retrieve the early unhelpful strategy even after teachers help them gain a more helpful perspective. This finding implies that teachers may have to remind some children, sometimes more than once or twice, about the less aggressive ways of expressing anger.

Language. Talking about emotions helps young children understand their feelings (Brown & Dunn, 1996). The understanding of emotion in preschool children is predicted by overall language ability (Denham, Zoller, & Couchoud, 1994). Teachers can expect individual differences in the ability to identify and label angry feelings because children’s families model a variety of approaches in talking about emotions.

Self-Referential and Self-Regulatory Behaviors.Self-referential behaviors include viewing the self as separate from others and as an active, independent, causal agent. Self-regulation refers to controlling impulses, tolerating frustration, and postponing immediate gratification. Initial self-regulation in young children provides a base for early childhood teachers who can develop strategies to nurture children’s emerging ability to regulate the expression of anger.

Guiding Children’s Expressions of Anger

Teachers can help children deal with anger by guiding their understanding and management of this emotion. The practices described here can help children understand and manage angry feelings in a direct and nonaggressive way.

Create a Safe Emotional Climate. A healthy early childhood setting permits children to acknowledge all feelings, pleasant and unpleasant, and does not shame anger. Healthy classroom systems have clear, firm, and flexible boundaries.

Model Responsible Anger Management. Children have an impaired ability to understand emotion when adults show a lot of anger (Denham, Zoller, & Couchoud, 1994). Adults who are most effective in helping children manage anger model responsible management by acknowledging, accepting, and taking responsibility for their own angry feelings and by expressing anger in direct and nonaggressive ways.

Help Children Develop Self-Regulatory Skills. Teachers of infants and toddlers do a lot of self-regulation “work,” realizing that the children in their care have a very limited ability to regulate their own emotions. As children get older, adults can gradually transfer control of the self to children, so that they can develop self-regulatory skills.

Encourage Children to Label Feelings of Anger. Teachers and parents can help young children produce a label for their anger by teaching them that they are having a feeling and that they can use a word to describe their angry feeling. A permanent record (a book or chart) can be made of lists of labels for anger (e.g., mad, irritated, annoyed), and the class can refer to it when discussing angry feelings.

Encourage Children to Talk About Anger-Arousing Interactions. Preschool children better understand anger and other emotions when adults explain emotions (Denham, Zoller, &Couchoud, 1994). When children are embroiled in an anger-arousing interaction, teachers can help by listening without judging,evaluating, or ordering them to feel differently.

Use Books and Stories about Anger to Help Children Understand and Manage Anger. Well-presented stories about anger and other emotions validate children’s feelings and give information about anger (Jalongo, 1986; Marion, 1995). It is important to preview all books about anger because some stories teach irresponsible anger management.

Communicate with Parents. Some of the same strategies employed to talk with parents about other areas of the curriculum can be used to enlist their assistance in helping children learn to express emotions. For example, articles about learning to use words to label anger can be included in a newsletter to parents.

Children guided toward responsible anger management are more likely to understand and manage angry feelings directly and non aggressively and to avoid the stress often accompanying poor anger management (Eisenberg et al., 1991). Teachers can take some of the bumps out of understanding and managing anger by adopting positive guidance strategies.

Condensed by permission from Marian Marion, “Guiding Young Children’s Understanding and Management of Anger,” Young Children 52(7), 62-67. Copyright 1997 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

• Hold hands during mealtime prayers.
• Walk one-on-one with each child.  Swing hands and talk.  Tell jokes.  Sing.
• Bad day?  Sigh dramatically and say, “I sure could use a great big hug from someone special.”
• Wonderful day?  Shout, “Hey, everybody!  Come hug me!  I had the best day!”
• Make Hug Sandwiches.  With your spouse, gently surprise unsuspecting children–no matter what age!
• Declare a 100 Hugs Day among your family.  Count them as you go.
• Do four-direction kisses: north (foreheads), south (chins), east/west (cheeks).
• Wrap your arms around your children during church and while waiting together or watching TV.
• APply the Pat Principle: “When in doubt, pat.” God made lots of patting places–heads, cheeks, knees, hands, shoulders, backs.

–By Lorri Cardwell-Casey, From HomeLife Magazine

In their Beginnings Workshop article, “Managing Challenging Behaviors: Adult Communication As a Prevention and Teaching Tool,” (Exchange, July 2005), Tom Udell and Gary Glasenapp observe that the manner and quality with which adults give directives and verbally interact with young children can make a big difference in the kinds of behaviors exhibited by those children. Here are some of the guidelines they offered for providing verbal guidance to minimize challenging behavior . . .

“Avoid using questions you do not mean to ask. Use question statements only when you truly intend to provide a choice. A direct request such as, ‘Jason, please wash your hands,’ is preferable to ‘Jason, will you wash your hands before snack?’

“State requests and directions in a positive manner. Asking a child to ‘Walk in the classroom’ is more positive and more clearly understood than ‘Don’t run.’

“Avoid repeating requests and directives. Repeating directives can become troublesome because children quickly learn that they are not expected to respond the first time they are given a direction. Adults do not want to inadvertently teach children that it is okay to ignore requests that are made of them.”

From ExchangeEveryDay

In her Beginnings Workshop article, “The Spirit of Place,” (Exchange, September, 1997) Anita Rui Olds discussed the importance of considering the mood of children . . .

“Being forced to maintain the same level of alertness and concentration all day undoubtedly places internal stress on children’s bodies, even if this is not perceptible to the adult eye.  A variety of moods — providing options for different levels of engagement — helps people to feel comfortable and remain alert in the same environment over long periods of time.  Many centers suffer from either blandness or overstimulation with insufficient variety of mood within each group room.

“The mood for each function should match the level of activity and physical energy children expend in performing it.  Tranquil activities occur best in warm, soft, textured spaces.  Expansive activities require spaces that are cooler, harder, and more vibrant in tone. The ultimate goal is a room with several activity areas, each of which has a unique spirit of place.  Then, as children go from place to place within the room’s four walls, they can experience spaces that are soft and hard, dark and light, cold and warm, colorful and bland, large and small, noisy and quiet.”

Over the past decade there has been a raging debate in the early childhood field between those who favor accelerated academic instruction and those who favor free play for three, four, and five year olds.  The New York Times Magazine (September 27, 2009) joined in on this debate with an article, “The Make-Believe Solution,” which described a curriculum of organized make-believe play called “Tools of the Mind.”  This curriculum is said to be based on these concepts proposed by Lev Vigotsky in the first quarter of the 20th century:

• At 4 or 5, a child’s ability to play creatively with other children is a better indicator of her future academic success than any other indicator, including her vocabulary, her counting skills, or her knowledge of the alphabet.
• Dramatic play is the training ground where children learn to regulate themselves, to conquer their own unruly minds.
• In dramatic play children are guided by the basic principles of play. Make-believe isn’t as stimulating and satisfying if players don’t stick to their roles. When children follow the rules of make-believe and push one another to follow those rules, they develop important habits of self control.