May 06 2024 46 mins 1
I'm going through a 'life phase' right now where I'm learning and doing and trying a bunch of new things.
Some days I feel a bit frustrated that I didn't know some of these things sooner, or that I have never done something like this before, or that I'm as old as I am and this is all new to me.
And then I cut myself some slack because it's not like there's a manual for all the things we need to know in life.
It's very much the same when it comes to the social world. There is no manual for how things work socially. This is why I don't believe in there being a 'right' or 'wrong' way to do things.
I have learned, however, that there are strategies and techniques that are more likely to lead to the outcomes we want, and those that are less likely to do so. Here at Starfish, I teach students the strategies that are more likely to lead to better relationships with others.
In this week's podcast/YouTube episode, I'm sharing the things we as adults misunderstand about our kids making friends including some things I have done myself in my 'former life'! My goal with this episode is to help all of us be a little more aware of how we may actually be making it harder for our kids, and what we can do instead.
Here's a clip from the episode:
I think it's really important that, if we as the adults have a goal, a desire, a wish, a dream for our kiddo to have more friends, that they also have that goal or desire or wish or dream, even if they're not consciously aware of it. It may be things that you've heard your child say. Maybe you've heard them mention that they don't have friends. Or maybe you've heard them make comments about how other people have friends, maybe they've noticed that. Maybe they don't talk about the word 'friend' specifically, but they talk about feeling lonely or feeling left out or feeling different.
These are all things our kids may say that help us recognize that they're feeling a lack of connection to their peers. So it doesn't have to be that they've specifically talked about friends, but just that we've noticed they have noticed that they're feeling a bit disconnected from their peers. That's what we're looking for. If you don't notice that in your kiddo right now, it's okay. It may just be the phase of social development that they're in right now that they don't really notice or recognize that they don't have friends.
