How to Help Your Kids Make Friends
One thing that we really have been helping our sweet King with this year is helping him to learn to make friends. Making friends is something that we think should be easy right? Something that should come natural to us, but it isn’t. I have realized that I want him to feel confident wherever he is that he will know that he will be able to make friends on his own. I think that a lot of confidence comes from feeling like you have friends and so that is a skill that we really have been focusing on.
Here are some simple tips that we are working on with helping King make new friends.
1 – Introduce yourself and tell people your name.
This may seem super simple to us to list our names to someone but for little kids it isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. We have been teaching King that the first thing that he does when he goes up to someone is say “Hi, my name is King”. This helps to start the conversation with whomever they are trying to be friends with.
2 – Ask what their name is.
This is something that King always struggles with is remembering the other person’s name. Let’s be honest it is something that I really struggle with as well. I am trying to teach King that if he asks the person their name it makes them feel like someone cares about them and that they are special to him. It might seem like a super simple thing but it can have a huge impact.
3 – Find Common Ground.
I always have King tell them either his favorite dinosaur, color, food, etc. and then have him ask them what their favorite is. Finding common ground with someone helps both people know that they have something that interests the other person and that they can talk about together.
4 – Ask Them if They Want to Play.
After he asks/tells them the 3 things above then he asks them if they want to play. Super easy right? The whole “script” that he has only takes a second for him to say and helps him to always fall back on it if he doesn’t know what to say to them.
What King Says:
“Hi, my name is King. What is your name? My favorite toy is my Bow & Arrow, what is yours? Do you want to play?” Super easy, simple, and he can remember it. This helps so he can never feel like he doesn’t have friends where he goes. We have started to practice it when we are out and about and I am close to him to help him, then he can feel more confident with putting it all together and saying it to a new friend.
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