Growing your child's social network

Making friends does not come easy for many children. Parents can play a role by supporting their child’s efforts by making friendship a priority; setting up play dates; keying into their child’s interests; setting clear rules at home; and walking tin their shoes. If your child is experiencing problems making social connection here are some tips that may help you support their friendship making efforts:

Make Friendship a Priority

Offer to take children places with your child. It is not fun to be your child’s personal Uber driver, but it is sometimes necessary task to connect your child with others. If you child likes going to a particular place to play invite another child to come along and offer to pick them up and return them home.

Eliminate things where your child has been unsuccessful in making friends. If you continue to register your child for classes at the community recreation center and they have not made one friend there it may be time time to look at other locations.

Set up and monitor play dates

Listen to your child and conversations about other children they like to play with. Contact the parent of the child your child enjoys playing with and ask to set up a play date. Set up a supervised visit at your home to include the parent. You can have a snack for the children and then set up a short play period. As soon as you see children loosing interest end the play date.

= If they are invited to someone else’s house, accompany your child and make arrangements to pick them up at a specific time. Arrange to be informed it the visit needs to be terminated.

= Group play should come after your child plays well one on one with another child.

Key into your child’s interests:

= Identify your child’s interests and experiences and identify experiences that connect the two.

= Play games with your child that they choose. Encourage and model fair play and good sportsmanship.

Set clear rules at home

- Set clear rules for appropriate behavior (e.g. saying “please,” “sorry,” “congratulations,” and “thank you”).

- Model social behavior because how you treat your child is how he/she will respond to others

- Teach basic problem solving from toddler age on up

- Model listening and eye contact

- Role play what to say in different situations with your child,

Walk in their shoes

- Remember back to when you were your child’s age and how hard it was to fit in.

- Empathize with their situation and let them know you are there for them

Remember that while this takes effort, friendships can help your child improve interest in school and add to their happiness and is worth the effort..