Social Emotional Learning- Mrs Piccini

Helping Your Child Navigate Tricky Friendships

If you’ve ever had a look at Michael Grose’s Parenting Ideas website, you’ll know it is full of wonderful information. I was reading an article from the blog titled ‘Helping Your Child Navigate Tricky Friendships’ which was written by Sharon Witt. I’ve included an excerpt from it that I thought was interesting. If you’d like to read the whole article, I’ve included the link.

Hurt Feelings

Feelings will often be hurt during our friendships- that is the nature of living in relationship and part of a community. However, it is how we deal with hurt feelings – that is most important. When your child experiences hurt feelings, try and use this as a teachable moment!

Recently my daughter came home from school feeling down. A girl in her class had distributed her birthday party invitations in front of a gathered group of friends – however, she did not invite my daughter.

My daughter was clearly stunned as she relayed the story to me.

‘Why would someone DO THAT?!’ she questioned. ‘It is just SO mean!’

It became a great teachable moment for her. We talked about how this girl must be feeling about herself and her position amongst the girls if she has to be noticeable, in front of everyone, NOT invite a well-liked, popular girl in the group. It was all about this girl’s feelings of power or lack of. I talked to my daughter about how she was feeling at that moment and explained to her that there will always be people who deliberately (in this case) or accidentally hurt our feelings. What my daughter could learn from this is how NOT to treat others – whether they are your closest friend or just a part of your social group at school. Be mindful of others feelings.

When it came time for my daughter to plan her own birthday party, and she had a limited number of guests allowed, she made it a point to hand out her invitations in private and at a time that would not cause upset to others.

We cannot possibly protect our children from having their feelings hurt or having to deal with difficult people – but we can teach them how to respond and learn valuable life skills about navigating tricky friendships.