It’s only natural for kids to become friendly towards other kids in their age bracket. However, there are times that your child may find it very difficult to make friends, especially if you’re only new in the neighborhood. Kids don’t like being alone so helping your child out is definitely a must.
Listed below are the ways where you can help your child make some friends:
- Help your child improve his or her social skills. As a parent, your child tends to look up to you as an example, especially in this kind of situation. Needless to say, your child will act according to how you, as a parent, behave socially. Depending on your own personality and activity, your child’s social skills will be affected in either positive or negative way. You can also give some advice to your child by asking him or her to observe what other children are doing for a few minutes. Once your child understands the situation, you can then ask him or her to go over and join in their play or activity.
- Always support your child when he or she is at home. This support usually comes in form of encouragements where your child can share what he or she feels to you freely. This can be very useful especially if your child finds it hard to blend in with the other children. If in case that your child succeeds to make some friends, you must also acknowledge it in a very encouraging and good way. Keep also in mind that your way of parenting your child definitely affects your child’s overall behavior.
- Find more ways to increase your child’s social opportunities. If your child tends to find it difficult blending in, you can also help him increase his or her social opportunities. Social opportunities could be one or more of the following: School Plays, Games and various kinds of play dates. In addition to that, you can also ask some support from your child’s teacher if you suspect that bullying is taking place in your child’s school.
We all know that your child may fail a lot of times before he or she accomplishes it. But despite that fact, you as a parent must never stop encouraging your child to make friends. It doesn’t matter how many friends your child has as long as he or she is happy about it. However, always make sure that they’re a good company, though.