One part of the summer holidays is the freedom it gives older children. Yet with that freedom comes the inevitable fall outs between friends.
The question is how to deal with them.
Dealing with children’s friendship fall outs can be tricky. Children will and do fall out, but at what point do you step in? In my experience as a teacher, the moment parents start getting involved it escalates. No child is normally totally innocent no matter what the parent thinks. Often in the heat of the moment the whole truth cannot be established and diving in often does no good. Of course if the situation is serious then occassionally things need to be dealt with quickly and head on. But most of the time after a bit of reflection things are not always as they first seemed. Children are very resilent and will clear the air and sort things out a lot quicker if they are left to negiotate paths themselves. Often if you rush into a confrontation you may not have always had the full story. As a parent you want to protect your child but you will end up feeling silly when you find out that there were events missed out. You could rush in questioning why your child is upset but not be aware how they instigated the first pushes.
If you really feel that the children can’t deal or sort things for themselves then a word is maybe needed with the parents, but again maybe five minutes to think things through would help, a definate no in my opinion is finding the children and ‘having a word with them’ this is intimidating and aggressive. I would never tell anybody else children off and wouldn’t expect anyone other than her dad or me to tell my child they don’t believe her or that she is lying – especially when the full facts are not known.
My three top tips:
1. Take five minutes preferably ten to think it all through rationally. Initial reactions may well change after a bit of colling down time.
2. Ask yourself what your child needs you to do – often its just to listen and give them a cuddle before sending them on their way again – don’t judge because often when they make friends again you don’t want the ‘my mum said you …..’
3. Encourage your children to have a wide social circle so that they are not reliant on one or two friends. This way when holidays come they will have a bigger pool of people to play with.
How do you deal with the friendship fallouts?
