Guiding Your Children With Their Friendships and Interactions With Their Peers
Friendships play such a significant role in our lives. There are people who experience good friendships and others who have bad ones. I strongly believe that as parents we need to guide our children into finding good friends. Your child is not obligated to be friends with everyone who comes along. Yes, they should be respectful to everyone, but they should be selective in who they choose as friends.
I’ve seen and experienced negative consequences of foolish friendship choices. The people you choose for friends will influence you in either a good or bad way. We need to teach our children how to be a good friend and how to choose good friends. They need to understand the definition of a good friend.
Children also need to learn not to become too attached to another person. I’ve seen children accuse another child of “stealing their best friend”. This occurred because they were mad that their “best friend” wanted to play with someone else. These children hadn’t been taught that it’s okay for friends to play with other people. Parents should tell their children that it’s important to “share friends” without getting upset at the other person who is playing with their friend. Our children are learning and they need parental guidance.
Do your children have healthy friendships? Are they being manipulated or controlled by a “friend”? These are situations that we can miss if we aren’t intentionally talking with our children. Our children should not feel they need to be friends with someone who wants to control their every move. That is not healthy or appropriate.
Children should also not be forced into friendships. Just because someone wants to be friends with them doesn’t mean they should be friends with them if they don’t have a good feeling about it. For example, a child should not be friends with a child who calls him or her degrading names and treats him or her disrespectfully. An adult can unintentionally harm a child emotionally when they tell him or her to be friends with a person who disrespects him or her. A child should be taught to forgive and show respect, but being friends with a person who degrades them should not be acceptable. Doing so can cause future problems. And someone who constantly disrespects another person will not change overnight. It takes time for bad habits to break.
I was looking up friendship verses in the Bible and here are 2 that I want to share. Proverbs 12:26 (NIV) says, “The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” 1 Corinthians 15:33 (NIV) says, “Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” These Bible verses show us the importance of choosing wise friends. The friends you spend time with will influence you. For example, a child who spends time with a friend who uses inappropriate language and fights the majority of the time will eventually start picking up those same habits.
I encourage you to guide your children into choosing good and healthy friendships. This needs to be done when kids are young. My personal and teaching experiences have taught me that this can become an issue starting in elementary school. As a parent, I want my children to have friends that are good decision makers and that treat them with respect. I pray that they will have Christian friends who don’t compromise their Biblical beliefs. I want them to develop friendships with people they can get wise advice from and who will encourage them to do right.
Check out Parenting Toolkit #2 on the Free Resources page if you need help with teaching your kids about wise friendships. Lesson 6 is “Being a Good Friend” and Lesson 7 is “Choosing Good Friends”. They are written in kid friendly language with pictures to help your kids understand. Please keep in mind that children are being exposed to a lot of evil and inappropriate content these days, so it’s so important they are choosing wise friendships. Always remember that God is with you and can help you with guiding your kids.