We live in a society, so the ability to make friends and cooperate is very important for a person. Throughout life, we often have to join a new team and make friends. For the first time we are independently faced with such a need at school. Sometimes it can be very difficult for a child to adapt to a new environment and find friends. It is to these children that we want to give some practical advice that will help them make friends with classmates and become part of the team.

Of course, first-graders cannot do without the help of their first teacher. A good cool mother will do everything to introduce children to each other and create a new friendly team. Interesting games during recess with the participation of all the kids, excursions for first-graders and exciting lessons - methods that will help the teacher create a cohesive team called “our 1st grade.”

But the state and readiness of the child himself to join the team (especially if he changes school or class) are also very important. The baby needs to learn how to meet people and make friends - these skills will come in handy more than once.

Do you want to help a child? Then give the baby these parting words:

1. Be yourself

This is probably one of the most important tips. Let him not try to look better in the eyes of others. People value sincerity. Liars are not liked, and when the truth comes out, they lose friends, trust, and sometimes find themselves the objects of ridicule.

2. Show kindness. Smile more often

“Friendship begins with a smile,” these words appeared in a kind children’s song for a reason. In the morning before school, set your child's mood in a positive way. After all, meeting people is so interesting! Let your child prepare to meet new classmates with a smile and an open soul. Among them there are many good, interesting and like-minded people. He will definitely realize this soon and make friends with his classmates.

3. Introduce yourself and get to know everyone.

This is not only a rule of politeness, but also the first step to building good relationships with new classmates. , of course, will help the children meet and get to know each other in the first lesson. But don’t let him stand quietly in the corner, waiting for classes to start. Ask him to approach his classmates and peers, introduce himself and chat.

Mothers can help first-graders with this difficult task: plan some kind of joint leisure time for the children. Going to the cinema, theater, circus or just a walk in the park is a great way to introduce and bring children together.

4. Try to keep the conversation going.

The kid sees his new classmates discussing something. Let him not stand on the sidelines, but join the conversation and tell situations from his life! Is the topic not close to him? Then let him try to interest his peers, if possible, starting a new conversation.

5. Look for common interests.

Did your child find out that he and his classmate are somewhat similar? Hooray! It's good because they have common topic for conversation and an activity that brings people together. Advise you to often ask about the hobbies of new acquaintances and talk about your own. In this way, you can make friends with all your classmates not only at school, but also outside it.

By the way, the neighbor/deskmate and classmates who live nearby are the baby’s first potential friends. They already have a common place at their desk and a common way home. It's easier to get close to these guys.

6. Give sincere compliments and praise.

People love to be praised. If your child likes a classmate’s hairstyle or a classmate’s new sneakers, let him say so. But you don’t need to teach your child to make compliments just to please or please someone. Obvious flattery is not The best way make friends.

7. Help and don't be afraid to ask for help.

Does the child see that someone needs help? Let him offer it. This will bring the baby closer to his classmate. Is he unable to cope with something on his own? Tell your little one to ask someone for a favor. And let him be sure to thank the assistant and invite him to contact him if necessary. Mutual assistance is part of friendly relations.

8. Share.

Teach your child to share books, pens, rulers, toys and other objects (if he has such an opportunity, of course). This will help you build good relationships with the guys and get a spare pen when your little one needs it. It’s good if you have an extra sandwich or candy in your briefcase to treat your new friend (note to mom).

9. Don’t argue and avoid conflicts

Children cannot always agree. Sometimes quarrels and even fights happen. After such bad incidents, it is difficult to establish a relationship with a person. Teach your child to remain silent in time, not to start arguments, not to get into trouble, and to resolve conflicts peacefully. Sometimes it is better to give in and preserve a good relationship with a classmate.

We hope these tips will help your child become part of a new team and make many friends. Your baby needs support now: he is going through a difficult period. Don’t forget about this and do everything to make the baby’s adaptation easier.

Perhaps after a long day at school or a busy weekend, they just want to relax alone, read a book or play computer games.
This behavior may be considered normal by a child, but if the child has no friends at all, there may be cause for concern, especially if the child feels lonely or does not measure up to the standards of his peers. The child may not receive invitations to holidays, often sit alone during school lunches, will not be accepted on the team during games, and will rarely, if ever, receive calls from friends.
Most children have a desire to be liked by their peers, but some do not fully understand how to make friends. Other children may crave companionship but be excluded from one group or another, perhaps because of their clothing, poor personal hygiene, obesity, or speech delay. Teenagers often find themselves rejected by their peers if they exhibit aggressive behavior. However, other children may hover on the edge of one group or the other without ever being noticed. Such children, who do not receive proper attention, spend most of their time alone.
In some cases, children are not able to make friends because it requires time and extra energy. They have a busy schedule of extracurricular activities, they live far from school, in places where there are no child care facilities or extracurricular activities for children, or they are too attached to their family.
For parents, a child who has no friends is a difficult and painful problem. This phenomenon is not uncommon: about 10% of school-age children say they do not have a best friend. These children may experience feelings of loneliness and social isolation, resulting in emotional problems and adjustment difficulties, or failure to learn the social skills needed for successful relationships with peers or adults.
Helping your child solve this social problem requires skill and sensitivity. If your child senses that you are passionately combating problems in his social life, or that you are being too didactic, he may become overly secretive or defensive, perhaps even feeling that he has upset you greatly by not being able to make friends. In response to your attempts to intervene, the child may refuse or deny the existence of any problem. Even if he says, "It's okay, Mom," he may still need companionship.

How to understand your child's problems

As a parent, you should try to find out why your child is unhappy or why he is rejected by his peers. From the point of view of an adult, the world of a child may seem very simple to you, but in fact this world is complex and makes high demands. For example, on the playground, your child has to cope with many different tasks: joining a group, conducting a dialogue, playing the game correctly; he will have to deal with teasing and other forms of provocation, and he must also be able to resolve conflict situations with other children. This is quite a lot of problems that he has to solve, and if the child does not know how to behave in a given situation, he may have difficulty establishing or maintaining friendships.
There are many reasons in the child himself because of which he may not have friends, including rejection or inattention from others, or the child’s natural shyness. Rejected teens are openly disliked by their peers and often feel unwanted. They often act aggressively or exhibit restless behavior and react very strongly when teased. They may behave like bullies and troublemakers, or they may be so insecure that they begin to be rejected by others. They may also be rejected due to their impulsive or restless behavior. Some of them may experience lack of attention or hyperactivity.
In other cases, children deprived of attention are not clearly rejected, they are not teased, but are often simply ignored, forgotten, not invited to holidays and are among the last to be accepted into the team for the game. Such teenagers can be defined as loners, but they can also be passive and hate their isolation. Other children, on the other hand, enjoy spending time alone. These children may experience respect and admiration from others, but simply feel more comfortable alone or around parents, siblings, other adults, or even pets. They may lack the social skills and self-confidence needed to participate in social life, often due to limited social experience. Or they may simply be more shy, quiet, and introverted than their peers.

Shyness

Although childhood shyness is quite common, it causes concern on the part of many parents, especially those for whom sociability is a significant value. Some children become shy because of unpleasant life experiences, but most children are just born that way. For some children in their mid-teens, social situations and interactions can be a nightmare. When they come into contact with new guys, they rarely feel at ease. Usually they are unwilling or unable to take the first step, preferring to abandon a possible friendship rather than approach someone unfamiliar. Some timid children may experience emotional distress, but these children are in the minority. In fact, some children are introverted by nature and show slow reactions in new situations.
In some cases, shyness can deprive a child of certain opportunities. Overly shy children often do not adapt as easily to the classroom or playground environment as their peers. The longer this characteristic of a child’s character persists, the more difficult it is for him to change. Shyness can lead to deliberate avoidance of social environments and refusal to participate in social activities, ultimately resulting in an inability to function effectively as a social adult. If your child's shyness is causing a health problem, it could be due to an anxiety disorder or temperament type, and it may be helpful to get evaluated by a mental health professional.
But despite this, most shy children acquire the ability to make friends and feel good in social settings as soon as the initial period of adaptation to the situation ends. Children who have difficulty establishing and maintaining friendships, even after a turning point, require more participation and attention from adults. Eventually, many (and perhaps most) shy children learn to overcome their shyness. They act in such a way that they do not appear timid or secretive, although they may feel very shy inside. Parents should carefully guide their children into social activities where they can learn to interact successfully with others.

The influence of the characteristics of a child’s upbringing on his character

Parents' temperament, social skills, and parenting style can affect a child's social opportunities and peer acceptance. If you are overly critical or disapproving of your child, do not accept him for who he is, or are aggressive towards him, your child will try to imitate your style and behave in a hostile and aggressive manner towards his peers. Conversely, if you treat him calmly and patiently, accepting him for who he is, your child will likely emulate the same qualities and make friends more easily.
Some experts divide parenting styles into three types.

Authoritarian parents tend to overly control their children, putting forward a number of rules and standards for them. Because they place great emphasis on strict control, they may forget about warmth and trust. Such parents tend to exert their power by restricting the child's freedom and even by stopping the expression of their love or approval. This parenting style can make the child feel rejected and isolated. He can develop only those social skills that his parents require of him, and he will remain dependent on his mother and father for a long time.

All-permissive parents go to the other extreme. They show a lot of warmth and love and usually accept the child for who he is; exercise a low level of control over children and demand little from them. Their children become moderately independent and achieve moderate social success.

Authoritative parents fall into the category between the above two extremes. By exercising the necessary control, they also give their children their warmth and love and have realistic expectations for their children. As a child moves through middle adolescence, parents become aware of their child's increasing maturity, promote appropriate levels of responsibility, and engage in reasoning and discussion about personality differences. Their children tend to be independent and tend to be socially successful.
Your attitude towards your child may also be determined by the characteristics of the child himself. For example, if your child has a difficult personality, you may be more anxious, aggressive, negative, more controlling towards the child, and begin to pay less attention to parenting and less often respond positively to the child's actions. As a result, the child may grow up feeling insecure and lacking the necessary social skills, and may experience difficulties in relationships with peers.

Social influence

Although in some cases children feel that the only reason they don't have friends is because of themselves, this is not actually true. Friendship is a mutual dynamic process that depends on how children perceive each other. During middle adolescence, children tend to perceive each other in general terms, often without appreciating more subtle individual differences or unique characteristics, which is the reason for rejection or inattention towards someone.
Often, an unloved child develops a negative self-image and develops a reputation among peers that is very difficult to change. Even if a child can improve his social skills, the labels placed on him and the perceptions of his peers are very difficult to change. The child may decide to stick to his beliefs - so even if the unloved teenager eventually becomes a member of some group, he may not be fully accepted or not very friendly. And although formally the child will no longer be an outside observer, he may still experience feelings of loneliness, isolation and low self-esteem.
Although some unloved children can change their behavior, others cannot and continue to behave in ways that interfere with their ability to make friends. Some teens have difficulty learning the new social skills they need, while others don't even realize they have relationship problems. However, for a certain portion of teenagers, the expectation of rejection becomes part of their lives, and this programmed expectation does not allow them to behave in ways that make friends. In some cases, several such influences operate simultaneously, and one enhances the other.
If families live in isolated rural areas far from school, children may have limited opportunities to have a social life after school or on weekends. Some societies do not have additional programs in which adolescents can participate together. Lack of financial resources in the family or frequent changes of work and housing by parents also add difficulties in making friends.

What parents can do

If you feel like your child doesn't have enough friends and it's bothering him, you need to intervene as early as possible. The first thing you need to do to help your child overcome loneliness and isolation is to admit with your child that there really is a problem. Talk to him in a confidential manner. Although denial, despondency, embarrassment, or rationalization are normal reactions from a child, you both need to rise above them.

Try to establish open, trusting communication at home. Encourage your child to talk openly about their concerns and difficulties regarding friendship issues. He knows a lot more about his social skills than you do, so you just need to be a good listener. At the same time, this is a very sensitive topic, and the problems may be difficult for a teenager to fully understand. His own ideas and understanding of the motives for the behavior of team members may be incomplete.
Avoid downplaying your child's social problems with peers. If your teen is suffering and you can only give him modest comfort, let him know that you either don't understand or don't care. For example, if your child is called boring or stupid by his peers, don't tell him to simply ignore them. This is similar to telling an adult not to worry when he loses his job. Treat everything with understanding, do not judge him and be responsive.

Strike a balance between feelings of empathy and responsibility. In many cases, your child will be able to cope with social problems without your direct intervention. For example, if he is excluded from playing basketball games on the playground on Saturday nights, nothing could be worse for the child's peer authority than for you to intervene and insist that your child be allowed to participate in the game. (“This mummy's boy is nowhere without his mommy!”) In addition, if you constantly come to his aid, the child may develop excessive dependence on you or he may express dissatisfaction with your intervention, which you do with the best of intentions: in this case, he will not will independently seek solutions to the problem.

Ask some basic questions. Parents can ask a few direct questions of the child, but remember that the line between interest, intrusiveness and interrogation is very thin. Try to carefully find out how the child sees the situation in which he finds himself. These could be the following questions.

• Are you popular?
• Who is popular? Why are they popular? Is it because other guys like them, or because...they want to be like them?
• Are there guys you can always talk to and trust?
• Do guys you know call each other names? What do they call each other? Do they call you names?
• Is there a group you would like to be a member of? Or maybe there is someone you would like to be friends with?
• Do you care what other guys think of you?

Watch your child. If the situation allows and you do not embarrass your child, observe him when he spends time with peers: this can happen at a pizzeria, during a sports match, or at the cinema. Pay attention to what impression he makes, what mood he is in, and what actions may cause a conflict situation or lead to his isolation.
Later, discuss what happened with your child and try to find other ways to interact with friends. Focus on specific behaviors and use real-life examples. For example: “At the pizzeria, I noticed that you took a sip of soda from Emily’s glass. How do you think she felt about it? What could you have done differently? Did you feel free with your friends or did you try to act differently because they were there?”

To help your child when he is having difficulties with his friends, you need to understand the nature of the problems he is facing. In addition to observing his interactions with peers in various situations, you can tactfully try to gather information from his siblings or peers. Take an interest in the groups and groups your child is a member of. In addition, learn as much as you can about what happens in certain areas where children are unsupervised, such as bus stops, cafeterias, and restrooms. You can even take a video of your child's behavior - at a birthday party, for example, so that you can study it carefully later.

Get the information you need from the school. Ask your child's teacher or school employee who supervises children on the playground how your child behaves with other children. Learn about his social relationships not only in the classroom, but also in places where children are unsupervised. The bus driver can provide you with useful information about relationships on the bus.
The teacher can talk about his impressions of whether the child feels confident or withdrawn. You may notice that the child exhibits some eccentric habits, which serve as a reason for jokes on him or psychological pressure from his peers. The teacher can give you some advice on what your child should do to make friends or identify other children with similar interests. In addition, a group of teenagers with similar needs may need to attend multiple sessions with a qualified professional.

Create a plan. With this information, you will be able to focus on common problems and guide your child in the right area by developing a strategy for becoming a part of group activities, practicing how to start and continue conversations, and effectively dealing with minor and more significant conflict situations.
Talk to your child about other children's opinions of him - what they think about the child and what qualities they consider important. If you can talk to him about his difficulties with friendships, you can guide your child and teach him what to do. If you also maintain and support other ways of rewarding success, you will help your child become resilient and persistent in the pursuit of success in the social sphere.

Guide your child. A child in this position needs help with directions on how to find social activities or get involved. Try to guide him into situations where he is likely to encounter other teens and build relationships. Invite your child to invite his classmate to stay overnight with you or go to the beach with you.
To increase your child's likelihood of success, encourage him to spend time with peers whose temperament types and interests match his own. For example, more active girls often have good friendships with active children. Try to encourage your child to become a member of the group on the basis that it will help him make one or more friends. Choose a friend who you think is closest to your child and whose temperament is similar to your child's, and give them the opportunity to spend time together. At first these may be short, carefully prepared events, and later gradually create less and less structured conditions. Usually the easiest way to start is with short visits and organized events.
Start by inviting your child's friend to go bowling or go to a sports game, movie, or playground - somewhere where they won't have to do much one-on-one interaction but can do things together side by side. Allow them to gradually prepare themselves by doing something that has a purpose, rather than just a day at the beach or a night out together. As a rule, if the activity itself is enjoyable for children, and the time allocated for it has restrictions, the likelihood of success increases greatly. After this, if the initial meetings have gone well, children can be encouraged to begin activities, which can take place either in a specific location - a park or playground, or at home without a specific task to complete. In this case, your careful monitoring of the process may be required to avoid any problems arising.

As your child develops new friendships, get to know his friends. Invite him to invite them to your home where they can play together. It would be nice to meet their parents. Try to connect with their family members.

Identify strengths or your child's interests. Try to encourage your child to use their strengths when establishing friendships. For example, if he has a good sense of humor, he can use it during a game in class or another situation in which he is likely to be appreciated by his peers. If a child loves animals, he can meet other children who share his interests, go to the zoo with them, watch programs about nature/wildlife and animals together, or organize a project.

Develop your child's skills. If your child has some skills but these are not sufficient to meet his needs or to be accepted into a group of children with more advanced skills, he may need one-on-one tutoring. Depending on the nature of the skills, a relative, tutor, teacher, or older student may be able to help the child develop his skills to a level that satisfies his self-esteem, thereby increasing his popularity among his peers. These could be skills in sports activities, music or writing skills. Again, a specialized children's camp or weekend classes can help in this situation.

Seek help from specialists. If your child has serious problems establishing friendships, and your efforts to help him are unsuccessful, seek help from a pediatrician, child psychologist, or other specialist who deals with parenting problems. Experts can recommend programs to help your child develop social skills. Consultation with a child specialist or family therapy can help you guide your teen in developing friendships. Part of this therapy may include parent training to help you notice, reinforce, and reward positive changes in your child's behavior.
Other problems (such as inattention, learning disabilities, or emotional difficulties) may also lead to social difficulties. These children may require specialist help.
Remember that your child's ability to make and maintain friendships is closely tied to his success and self-esteem. If your child suffers from loneliness and isolation, you need to help him gain the confidence and social skills needed to interact with peers and enjoy positive friendships.

Peer relationship skills
Successful peer relationships require a range of skills and specific ways of interacting. Parents should try to discover these skills in their child and help them develop and model them. These are the skills:

• cope with failures and disappointments;
• coping with success;
• adapt to changes in life;
• cope with rejection and situations where you are teased;
• curb anger;
• show a sense of humor;
• forgive;
• Apologize;
• refuse to accept a challenge;
• come up with fun activities;
• express your affection and love;
• avoid dangerous situations;
• protect myself;
• to console someone;
• share;
• ask;
• reveal yourself;
• give compliments;
• express a positive assessment;
• cope with loss;
• support a friend;
• to provide services;
• ask for help;
• provide assistance to others;
• keep secrets.

Why do some children have no friends?

children may experience social problems for a variety of reasons that are beyond their or your control. Below are some that may contribute to your child's difficulty making or maintaining friends.

Difficulties related to the child himself

• Temperament (difficult, shy)
• Attention/hyperactivity problems
• Learning disability
• Problems with social skills
• Problems with communication skills
• Delayed physical, emotional or intellectual development
• Physical disabilities
• Chronic illness, frequent hospitalizations, absences from school
• Poor motor skills that limit the child's participation in group activities
• Emotional difficulties (depressed state, anxiety, low self-esteem)
• Insufficient adherence to personal hygiene rules
• Unattractive appearance
• The child prefers to spend time alone
• The child receives social satisfaction and friendship mainly from family members
• Cultural values ​​do not match those of peers

Difficulties with parents

• Parents' parenting style (too authoritarian or permissive) adversely affects the child's social development. Parents overload the child with extracurricular activities, housework, or other work that takes away time, energy, or opportunities for friendships.
• Parents are overly critical or negative about their child's choice of friends
• Parents themselves have weak social skills, and the child does not have a worthy role model in role-playing games
• Parent has depression or mental illness
• A parent has problems with alcohol or drug abuse
• Parenting style reflects family discord or uses violence
• Parents are experiencing a crisis in marital relations, using pressure and insults
• Parents overprotect the child or limit their freedom excessively
• Parents find it difficult to adapt to their child's personality or special needs

Difficulties related to the social environment

• The family lives in a remote rural area
• The family's place of residence is far from the school
• There are only a few children living in the neighborhood
• The family goes away for the whole summer
• The family is experiencing financial difficulties and has to move frequently from place to place
• There are cultural or linguistic differences in the family
• The community offers a limited number of opportunities or programs for children to spend time together and prepare for life in the community
• The risk of violence in common play areas prevents children from spending time together
• The child's peer group establishes differences in dress, values, and behavior.

Adolescence is a rather difficult time; the child’s psyche becomes fragile during the transition period. The child grows up, subconsciously adjusts to the new adult life that lies ahead. In this regard, a teenager may have problems, the main one of which is the lack of friends.

Friends play in the life of a teenager growing up important role. But some guys cannot make friends with their peers, despite their sincere desire to communicate and be liked.

Among teenagers there are usually children who may seem clumsy and unsure of themselves. Such guys become a mockery for the majority in the team. As a rule, these are children who do not carefully monitor appearance, perhaps they do not observe the rules of personal hygiene well enough or simply dress differently than everyone else. These can also be fat girls or boys.

It should be remembered that children are not indifferent to beauty. First of all, they evaluate the interlocutor with their eyes, carefully examine him, looking closely at the smallest details. A certain impression about a peer arises, the child draws a conclusion about how to behave with him. As a rule, teenagers want to be fashionable and are reluctant to accept children who are dressed simply. The child may be from a poor family, the parents try not to spoil him with expensive clothes, since they are not able to afford it. And then a poorly dressed child can become an object of ridicule in the team. Children in adolescence cannot realize that they are doing wrong. Teachers and parents should carefully monitor their behavior, prevent conflicts between children, and try to help those who need advice and support.

The humiliated child feels very bad. If he is naturally shy, ridicule and insults make him even more vulnerable. The teenager is afraid to talk with peers, with teachers, and cannot answer in class, which also affects his academic performance. Unfortunately, such a child’s self-esteem decreases greatly, he begins to dislike both himself and those around him.

Some children also suffer from lack of attention in a group. Their peers do not tease them, but simply do not notice them. Such guys are quiet, calm, taciturn, outwardly they are not conspicuous, they look ordinary and neat. The children's group is not interested in shy, inconspicuous children. People like them give no reason either for ridicule or for interest and friendship. They also have a very difficult time being in a team. The child really wants to prove himself, to earn attention and respect, but he cannot do this; due to severe shyness, the teenager does not know how to behave. Parents should spend more time with their teenager and have conversations. Sometimes you can consult a psychologist. The specialist will identify the main causes of shyness and give the necessary recommendations to overcome this feeling.

Sometimes even an unfavorable group of teenagers consider themselves the best social circle. Children in it can smoke, swear, and bully their peers. A child who has serious communication problems should stay away from such children, otherwise things may lead to serious conflicts, and, in extreme cases, to fights.

Among teenagers there are also children who are respected by their peers. These guys are friendly, cheerful, and easily make contact with others. However, they may also not have friends. One of the reasons is lack of time for communication. For example, being busy with lessons, homework, attending a huge number of clubs and courses, playing sports. Such children feel good in the family circle, they are surrounded by love and care. But parents may not even notice that the teenager lacks communication with peers.

The problem of a teenager having no friends should make parents want to help the child. First of all, it is necessary to understand that the teenager’s worldview depends on how parents behave towards each other, towards others and towards their child, and his own model of behavior is formed. Therefore, we need to find a middle ground between excessive care and complete indifference. It is necessary to teach a child to be independent from a very early age. Independent children are able to do without parental support in situations where spoiled teenagers get lost. Excessive care, as is known, destroys the child's psyche. The child becomes dependent on the help of mom and dad, which negatively affects adaptation to new conditions and communication with other children.

Sometimes parents wonder how a teenager can find friends. In order for a child to be able to make friends with peers, it is necessary to explain that he can safely take the initiative in communication, but not be imposed. At the same time, you need to be tuned in to joyful emotions and further friendship.

Shyness is one of the main reasons for a child's lack of friends. To overcome this, you need to try to convince the child that children are all different. One failure in communication cannot give rise to the next. A teenager should not be afraid to make contact with peers. Having shown the initiative once, the child will gain self-confidence and communication with a new friend will certainly bring joyful emotions.

Friendship between children

Communication with peers plays a very important role in social and intellectual development child. With friends, the child learns mutual trust and respect, communication as equals - everything that parents cannot teach him.

Children's inability to make friends or be friends with anyone for a long time begins to appear as early as kindergarten.

Friendship is the most important type of emotional attachment. Psychologists believe: a child who knows how to make friends will grow up to be a harmonious person and will be able to join the team faster and better and start a family. Is there anything parents can do to help? The first warning sign is usually that the child does not tell his parents anything about the children in his group or does so reluctantly. Talk to the group teacher, perhaps she will confirm your concerns.

Where to begin?

If your child is under six years old and has few or no friends, he or she is likely to learn social skills more slowly than other children. Therefore, in order to learn to be friends, he cannot do without your help. And here you need to start with the ability to approach other children and start a conversation. To do this, it is better to choose the most sociable and friendly child in the kindergarten group or in the yard. And approach with a smile. As recommended in the famous song, the easiest way to start a conversation is with a smile. Then you can say: “Hello, my name is Petya. Can I play with you?

From time to time, a child, even with normal social skills, may withdraw into himself. This usually happens after severe stress: when parents divorce, change schools, or kindergarten, when moving to another city, and so on.

As much as possible, you should prepare your child for the upcoming changes by discussing what is happening with him, and also finding out what will change in his life after this, and how he needs to behave about it.

Different temperaments

By the way, it doesn’t matter at all how many friends a child has. The number of friends each child needs depends on how timid or, conversely, sociable he is. To develop communication skills, shy children only need two to three good friends, while extroverts feel great in a big company.

Every parent wants their child to be popular among their peers. The main thing is to be objective and leave aside your own preferences. Difficulties begin if parents and children have different temperaments. A sociable mother and father who have a shy son or daughter sometimes begin to put too much pressure on the kids. But an introverted parent, on the contrary, is concerned about too many friends of his beloved child - it seems to him that it is better to have one, but faithful friend.

It is important!

If a child has a conflict with a friend, advise him on possible ways out of the situation. Praise your child for good, kind deeds and blame him when he shows selfishness.

The older a child gets, the more his self-esteem begins to be influenced by his success among his peers and the opinions of other children about him. And if a child has no friends, doesn’t receive phone calls or is invited to birthday parties, he begins to feel like an outcast. It's hard not only for yourself little man- his parents also feel resentment towards other children, their parents, and even towards their child for being “not like everyone else.”

In addition, parents often feel guilty about what is happening. But their intervention in the situation must be very careful.

You can support your child morally and help him with advice, but in the end, he must solve the problem himself.

More is not always better

It's good when a child is surrounded by a large number of friends. But when it comes to truly close friendships, the principle of “more is better” no longer applies.

Even a very sociable child may lack that strong mutual friendship that he really needs, in which he is understood and accepted for who he is.

The number of friends varies as a child gets older, as does the concept of friendship itself.

For preschoolers and primary schoolchildren, as a rule, the children who are most accessible to them to play with, usually their neighbors in the yard, become their friends.

And since many satisfy this criterion, then the question “Who are your friends?” A young child usually produces a whole list of names. Later, the circle of friends narrows - children begin to choose based on their own taste and mutual interests.

But, regardless of whether the child is 5 or 15 years old, the inability to make friends or the loss of a friend is a difficult test for him.

And parents, to the best of their ability, should help him cope with a difficult situation.

How can parents help?

Create opportunities for friendship. Periodically ask your child if he would like to invite a friend over or throw a party for his friends or neighborhood kids. Invite one of the children to your home; children find contact more easily when communicating one-on-one.

Find something he likes - a sports section or a handicrafts group, where the child can meet and communicate with his peers. Teach your child proper communication. When you discuss with your child how to take other people's feelings into account, teach him empathy and fairness, you are instilling in him very important social skills that will later help him not only find true friends, but also be friends for a long time. Children can learn compassion as early as 2-3 years old.

Talk to your child about his friends and social life, even if he is already a teenager. Often children, especially older ones, are reluctant to talk about their problems with friends. But they nevertheless need your sympathy and help. If your child declares “Nobody loves me!”, you should not console him with such passing phrases as “Dad and I love you” or “Nothing, you’ll find new friends” - your child may decide that you do not take him seriously Problems. Instead, try to get him to talk openly about what happened to him, whether he had a fight with his best friend, or whether he feels like the “black sheep” in the group.

Analyze with him the possible causes of the conflict (maybe your friend was just in a bad mood) and try to find ways to reconciliation.