I have discussed previously how to manage and start conversions with your daughters when they have fallouts in current friendship groups, but what about if your child tells you they have no friends, or you feel their friendships are not true friendships? It is a difficult situation as you do not want to interfere too early but you also struggle to witness your child feeling lonely or without friends. Surely there is something you can do to fix it for them? After all we know the importance of friendships in creating a sense of belonging and community, but also provides important learning to start, maintain and end/change friendships, which is a lifelong skill they will need to learn.
Let’s firstly identify who is more likely to struggle making friends.
There is an article that I will draw upon; Friendship difficulties by Murray Evely and Zoe Ganim 2018, where an observation is made that despite a schools best endeavours to forster acceptance, kindness and compassion in their students, that there are some types of children that tend to be more likely to struggle with friendships; including those with learning difficulties or intellectually challenged, those who experience anxiety and depression, those who are more openly hurtful, dishonest, aggressive, defensive or perceived as “different” from the majority, including those with a high leaning toward perfectionism. Whilst some young people are confident and engage effortlessly from an early age, others are more reserved, shy, or withdrawn which can make finding friends all the more difficult. These children can also be kind, loving, quirky, intelligent, compassionate, and caring...but still they tend to find it more difficult than others.
