We want to take a minute to talk about a topic that keeps a lot of parents up at night - your child making and keeping healthy friendships. We know the importance of friendships for a child's mental health and as a parent who is raising a child who is struggling this could be an issue that you think about often. That is why we asked parents who are raising children who are struggling from across the state how they help their children make healthy friendships. With their valuable insight, we have created our brand new Friendship Series.
We originally had the intention of speaking with these parents and using their experiences and advice to create one tip sheet. However, it quickly became apparent that some of the tips were very different for younger children (elementary and younger) than they were for middle and high schoolers, and there were too many tips to just fit on one page. Instead of trimming it down and having our readers lose out on those priceless lived experiences, we expanded the tip sheet to be our biggest one yet! Now our 6-page series offers general friendship tips and then gives a more in-depth breakdown of tips by age.
Everything from role-playing conversations at home that your child could have with their peers, to how to give effective feedback after your child socializes is covered in the tip sheet and more. We know that it is overwhelmingly stressful if as a parent you see your child struggling to make friends. These tips offer you some ideas to try, conversation starters, and the comfort that you aren't the only parent that stresses out about this.