Helping Children Manage Friendships: Podcast Companion

Start with curiosity, not a quick solution

When a child says, “Nobody likes me”, it is tempting to reassure, investigate or contact another family immediately. Begin by slowing the conversation down. Try: “That sounds lonely. Tell me what happened from the beginning.” Then check what the child wants: “Would you like me to listen, help you think of ideas, or help you speak with the school?” This protects the child’s sense of agency while keeping adult support available.

Look for the pattern rather than relying on one painful moment. Ask who was present, what happened before and after, whether this has happened more than once, and what the child tried. It can help to draw a simple friendship map with three groups: people the child feels comfortable with, people they might get to know, and trusted adults who can help. The map often reveals more options than the child can see when upset.

Coach one small, observable skill

Broad advice such as “be confident” is hard to use. Choose a behaviour the child can rehearse. For joining play, practise watching first, naming the activity and offering a relevant contribution: “You’re building a zoo. Can I make the penguin area?” For conversation, use a three-part rhythm: ask a question, listen to the answer, then add something connected. For maintaining a friendship, plan a short invitation around a shared interest rather than an unstructured, high-pressure social event.

Role-play should be brief and collaborative. Swap roles so the child can hear how an invitation, boundary or apology sounds from both sides. Practise an easy version first, then add a manageable complication. Finish while the child still feels capable. Repeated, low-pressure rehearsal is more useful than a long lecture after a difficult day.

Teach repair, boundaries and flexibility

Healthy friendships are not conflict-free. Children need language for acknowledging impact and making a workable repair. A useful apology is specific: “I interrupted your game and you felt left out. I’m sorry. Next time I’ll ask before changing the rules.” The other child is allowed to need time. Repair means taking responsibility and changing behaviour, not demanding immediate forgiveness.

Boundaries matter too. Help the child distinguish compromise from repeatedly accepting unkind treatment. They can practise: “I want to play, but I’m not okay with being called that”, or “I’m going to join another activity now.” Adults should avoid labelling a child as “the bully” or “the victim”. Describe the behaviour, consider the power balance and repetition, and respond to safety needs. A one-off disagreement between children with similar power needs coaching. Ongoing, deliberate harm involving a power imbalance needs adult intervention and a coordinated school response.

Work with the school using concrete information

If difficulties continue, ask the teacher what they observe across class, breaks and transitions. Share dates, situations and changes in the child’s behaviour rather than conclusions about another child’s motives. Together, identify one or two supports, such as a structured lunchtime activity, a peer buddy, an adult check-in, seating changes or explicit teaching of group-entry skills. Agree on who will monitor progress and when you will review it.

Keep the child informed without making them responsible for managing the adults. Say what you will share, who you will contact and what you hope will happen. If online behaviour is involved, preserve screenshots and URLs, use the platform’s reporting tools and involve the school when classmates are connected. Do not ask a child to repeatedly view upsetting material in order to prove what happened.

A practical friendship plan for this week

1. Listen: set aside ten calm minutes and reflect the child’s feeling before offering advice.
2. Choose: identify one friendship goal, such as greeting a peer, joining one activity or repairing one misunderstanding.
3. Rehearse: practise one sentence and one backup option.
4. Support: create a realistic opportunity through a shared-interest club, a short playdate or a school-based activity.
5. Review: notice effort, ask what the child learned and adjust the plan without treating the outcome as a verdict on their likeability.

Respect developmental and individual differences

Friendship changes with age. Younger children often organise connection around shared play, while older children place more weight on loyalty, disclosure and group belonging. Do not compare a child’s social life with a sibling’s or an adult idea of popularity. One dependable friend can be deeply protective. Some children need recovery time after social contact, and some communicate more comfortably side by side than face to face.

Ask the child what a good friendship feels like to them. Their answer may include being able to be quiet together, sharing a specialised interest, knowing the rules of an activity or having a friend who accepts direct communication. This strengths-based conversation makes the plan more relevant and avoids treating difference as a deficit.

Seek extra support when friendship distress is persistent, causes school refusal or sleep changes, or occurs alongside marked anxiety, low mood, withdrawal or repeated bullying. A teacher, school counsellor, GP or child psychologist can help clarify whether the main need is safety planning, anxiety support, communication coaching or a broader developmental assessment.

What the evidence can and cannot tell us

The evidence base includes systematic reviews of varied programs and observational studies of friendship quality. These sources support teaching targeted skills and creating repeated opportunities for positive peer contact. They do not show that one script or program will work for every child. Outcomes depend on the child’s needs, the setting, implementation quality and whether adults address exclusion or bullying around them. Use the ideas here as a flexible plan, then observe and adapt.

Key takeaway: children do not need adults to engineer every friendship. They need adults who listen carefully, teach specific skills, protect safety and create realistic chances to practise connection.

Episode transcript

[00:00:00-00:00:17] Doctor Kimberley O’Brien introduces friendship challenges as children transition from the holidays back to school to start the year 2017.Hi. It is Doctor Kimberley O’Brien here talking about best friendships as we move into 2017. The new school year often brings some challenges when it comes to friendships, especially when kids are just returning to school and maybe they’ve spent a lot of time with family over the holidays.

‍[00:00:21-00:01:28] On average, age 7 is when solid friendships begin to form between children, although there are many factors at play, such as when the child started spending time with other kids, as well as the gender of the child.

‍When do children start to form solid friendships? We know that this differs depending on the child. Some children are exposed to playgroups from the age of 2 or 3, and then preschool, so often kids are starting to form closer friendships if they’ve been in social situations for a longer period of time, whereas other kids who start school at the age of 5 and haven’t been to preschool or day-care sometimes feel quite shy in the company of other kids, so they may take a little bit longer to form some solid friendships. Generally speaking, around the age of 7 is usually when kids start to pair off in having one close friendship. Of course, this doesn’t always stay the same, especially for girls. Around eight years old girls will often have some challenges with their friendships, so that could be that jealousies start to occur, even competition between girls to try to win over certain friends, and when more popular girls could also start to take place.

‍[00:01:30-00:02:47] Quality and quantity are important when it comes to friendships. Parents should model having friendships with more than one person to encourage their child(ren) to do the same.

‍What can we teach our children about friendship? I believe it’s important to teach children that it’s about quality friendships, friendships that make you feel good all the time, not hot and cold friends where sometimes they’ll be nice and sometimes they won’t, because when friendships are unpredictable kids can often feel anxious about approaching that person, not sure whether they’ll be friendly or not.

Having someone who’s consistently nice and kind is really important in a friendship. You can also teach your children to have more than one friend, which I believe is important, rather than just a best friend because in my work with young people, sometimes having a best friend can inhibit the formation of other new friendships; they’ll become quite clingy with one person or they won’t want to go to school if their best friend is not there. Particularly in kindergarten if they’ve been paired up with one buddy or person, if they’re not there sometimes they don’t want to go to class, and they can become quite emotional.I think it’s important for moms and dads also in the playground to model having a broader group of friends, rather than just one consistent friend that they talk to every morning or every afternoon because that gives them options when that person is not around.

‍[00:02:49-00:03:26] Encourage your child to acknowledge people around them, whether it be through verbal or non-verbal greetings.

‍What strategies can parents use to help their child develop strong relationships? As I said, modelling good relationships is a good place to start, always using eye contact and saying: “Hello.” So, greetings. If children don’t feel confident with verbal greetings, try non-verbal greetings, teaching them that just a nod or eye contact, a smile is just as good as a verbal greeting and they shouldn’t force themselves to say: “Hello,” if they don’t feel ready. Eye contact is a good place to start.

‍[00:03:33-00:07:06] School/playground observation by yourself or a professional is a good place to start to determine if there are other factors (such as bullying) affecting your child’s formation of friendships, and whether your child needs help developing their social skills or if there is an issue with other children at school which may require a schoolwide intervention. Also, weekly playdates are beneficial for the expansion of critical social skills, as well as “The Best of Friends” program at Quirky Kid Clinic.

‍What can you do if your children are struggling to build friendships? At the Quirky Kid Clinic, we’ll often go to the school and observe the children in the playground and the classroom to see what’s happening in their environment, because it might be that the young person is quite sensitive to bullies, exclusion, loud noises, or rough and tumble play. There are lots of things that can inhibit children from forming close friendships, so doing a good observation, or asking a school counsellor, or external psychologist to observe the playground is a good place to start to get an objective view of things.

Sometimes class teachers can be helpful, but other times they may not want to be dealing with friendship issues; they might suggest that the children solve things themselves, which can also present challenges for young people. I think it’s good to help your child by doing the observation or having someone do it, and then putting some strategies in place to help.For example, if there is exclusion or bullying going on, it’s more about addressing that issue rather than skilling the individual up with better social skills. Sometimes a schoolwide message about the importance of including others or something along the lines of being kind can really promote that inclusive practice in the school rather than pulling girls aside and talking to them directly; that can sometimes start more trouble in friendship groups.

A whole-school approach is often more successful.If you do think your child is having some struggles socially, the Quirky Kid Clinic also offers a “The Best of Friends”, a social and emotional learning program which was developed 12 years ago because of the constant referrals for individuals, usually parents saying: “I’m concerned my child is not forming close friendships.” That could just be from having a bad experience in the past and not feeling that they can trust new friends, or it could just be that they’re very shy and they prefer the company of one person rather than groups.“The Best of Friends” program helps kids to develop one-on-one social skills first, with those greetings as we talked about, developing to-and-fro conversation skills, learning how to approach a group. It starts off developing the one-on-one friendships and then looking at how to have two or more friends, which is often slightly more challenging before even considering having a group of friends, which is even more challenging.

‍We talk about having a very best friend or a best friend forever, it’s also very important to consider that’s quite a lot of pressure to put on a young person to maintain one friendship for a long period of time, so please consider having more than one person over for playdates (on a weekly basis is often good).One at a time to start with so that kids can develop those one-on-one skills before having more than one friend. Having weekly playdates is a great way to develop social skills in a safe setting. You can observe the kids playing, and maybe give some feedback if that’s something you would do with your child, around how to help them to lead play or how to help them to take turns so that they can have more successful and longer playdates down the track.

‍[00:07:12-00:08:43] Kids who are distracted by devices or doing a lot of their social interactions online miss out on the opportunity to learn and practice their social skills. Face-to-face relationships need to be encouraged, demonstrated, and practised.

‍How is friendship changing for children in today’s society? I think that friendships are obviously moving more online, so social media is becoming much more important to early adolescents, and so face-to-face friendships are on the decline, while online friendships are increasing. I think it’s just so important to have lots of face-to-face time because there are so many subtle social cues that you learn to pick up when you’re spending face-to-face time with friends.Those social cues can be missed if kids are spending more time online socialising.

For example, social cues might be that you’re leaving a space next to you when you sit down so that someone can come join you, or someone might be looking for a seat and someone who picks up on the social cue would move aside and make some room for that person. Kids start to sometimes lose their ability to pick up social cues if they have their heads down, even at lunchtime using laptops or iPhones to play games rather than observing other kids’ play and observing the social nuances in the playground.

Having more opportunities to play freely is a good way to maintain social skills, and parents are also encouraged to model those social skills by socialising more often themselves.On that note, I hope that you have a really social 2017, and lots of great playdates at your house and also in the community.Take care. I’m Dr. Kimberley O’Brien from the Quirky Kid Clinic. Please send your questions for my next podcasts.

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