Facilitating friendships: Parents' role

Implications

Friendship is an important part of childhood. Having and being a friend helps children develop social skills and enhances their self-esteem. Having friends at school makes the school day more enjoyable and has been linked to improved school performance. However, in this Mott Poll, 1 in 5 parents reported that their child has no friends or has not enough friends; these children may feel isolated and lonely which impacts their quality of life and mental health.

Nearly all parents said their child would like to make new friends, and most parents indicated that they have tried to boost their child’s friend-making efforts. Children are still developing their social skills, and they practice these skills while making and maintaining friendships. Parents should expect children to make mistakes and be ready to listen and offer advice when misunderstandings occur. It is important for parents to remember that developing social skills will take years and that making mistakes can be valuable learning experiences.

For some children, making new friends can be stressful. Some parents noted that their child being shy or socially awkward impeded their efforts to make new friends, while others pointed to their child’s disability or medical condition as a barrier. Parents might help their child to ease into friend-making by finding a small-group activity their child enjoys, thus creating an opportunity to connect with peers but without pressure to make friends.

For children in elementary school (K-4), friendships often begin as a matter of proximity; kids play with whoever is around. Parents in this Mott Poll described facilitating these early interactions by befriending other parents and arranging playdates and outings, often with one or more parents present. However, parents should be deliberate in giving children space to interact and work through decisions and conflicts, intervening only for matters of safety. Children learn important social skills when they negotiate what and how they play.

As they enter middle school, children often want to have more independence with their friends. Although they may need parents to coordinate schedules and transportation, middle schoolers often want to hang out with friends without parents physically present. A challenge to this can be a lack of places for kids to get together; in some communities, public spaces such as malls and libraries have banned children who are not accompanied by a parent. Thus, to support their middle-schoolers’ burgeoning independence, parents may help brainstorm potential meeting places, and emphasize the need for appropriate behavior to ensure that kids will continue to be welcomed.

One in four parents of middle school-aged children said they allow greater use of social media to help their children make friends. This should be considered carefully, as social media has been shown to increase the risk of developing mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression due to the opportunities for negative peer influences. Parents who choose to allow social media should help their child learn to use it responsibly.

An unexpected finding in this Mott Poll is the large proportion of parents who think it is important that their child’s friends come from families similar to their own. Most commonly, this involved similar parenting styles, which could reflect things like how permissive the parents are around following family rules, and other aspects of parenting. Other parents indicated a preference for their child’s friends to come from families with a certain political or religious affiliation. Parents should be cautious about this approach. School is often viewed as a place where children will encounter and form connections with others who may differ from them in many ways. Limiting a child’s friends to only those from similar backgrounds may hamper the child’s ability and comfort in navigating diverse networks and working with a broad group of peers in the future.