Helping your child make good choices in friendships...

[guest2]

Do you find that you have to help your child make wise choices in choosing friends? Have you had to help them end a friendship because it has not been a healthy one for them?

[Katybird]

I think that it is our job and our responsibilty as parents to guide our children in the their choice of friends. Peers have such an incredible amount of influence on teenagers that I think it is important that we try to make sure that they are around other friends with the same values as their own and their families. When they have made a friendship that we decide is unhealthy in any way, we must help them to dissolve that relationship. I think that we have to be very discreet sometimes in our guidance and let them think that the choices are theirs and that we are not forcing them to give up their friends, KWIM .

[canadian gardener]

Oh yes! I think it's a learned skill, one that they gain thru some tough experience, but it's helped if the parent works it thru with their child, so they aren't left feeling guilty for "abandoning" someone whose behaviour needs consequences.

Don't know if I'm being clear here, lets try this with examples.

Say you see your child going thru it with a friendship gone bad. This is a learning opp for the meaning of friendship and also how to gracefully ease out of one that has changed for the worse as they often do in life.

It is a difficult skill and needs teaching. It's healthy in terms of boundaries and learning to spot when someone else is becoming destructive. Setting limits, then if they won't "convert" to better behaviour, doing a safe distancing act.

Very few friends remain close forever and those that do are jewels, rare and lovely. In order to make room, destructive people and others who are leeches of energy or boundary busters, need to either be converted or released.

Kids must learn that discernment in friends is a skill, and ending relationships is part of life too.

We had a savage little boy who tried to choke our dd, and brought a knife on our property. He was trying to be friends with our son.

He had bullied my sons other friends, closing him off and making him his only best friend which is another bully tactic.

That little guy had to go.

Easing out and being Busy busy busy is the safest route with violent children or their sometimes equally crazy parents. If they are reasonable then of course by all means try and teach the offending child, coaching your own thru it, and salvage the relationship but not at all costs.

If they are violent, or abusive, then you don't owe explanations, just help your child see the situation for what it has become and teach them the valuable skill of quietly easing out without coming to harm.

A little gal who stole from dd taught her to be a bit more cautious in her trust. Dd used to say "oh no mum she wouldn't ever steal from me" till she caught her. Dd remained warm to her but never let her in her room or near her things without watching.

So that friendship remained but it was distanced a bit, --more putting limits on the girls opportunity to steal dd blind.

[canadian gardener]

I should add that spotting a relationship gone or going bad is also a learned skill. Very difficult to teach, except in the middle of those tough situations.

Teaching that skill is so helpful later in life when you have to say no to pressure on the job for instance when a friend and coworker wants you to 'cover' for him, and that means lying or deception.

If the child was taught that a true friend wouldn't ask that kind of thing, he or she can discern the reality of the situation and won't be vulnerable to give in and lie or worse for a so called friend.

by teaching them early that a true friend would never want to put you in harms way, it protects young girls from pregnancy, kids from using drugs to fit in, and losing jobs later in life.

Tough lessons.