How to Make New Friends at a New School

Parenting is just so damn hard sometimes.  Half term flew by in a round of playdates, cruises and family fun.  However, returning to school is not always easy. The transition to secondary school can be really challenging for some children, especially those who are a little shy or naturally quieter. My son is one such boy and due to this, he has struggled with how to make new friends at a new school.

Making friends may come natural to many but if your child starts a new school without their friends from their primary school don’t expect too much from them. It can take some tweens a term or so to find their feet and to make friends.

As a parent there are a number of strategies that you can employ to help your child settle into their new school and make new friends.

Back to school after half term

Sunday was spent finding school shoes that had been kicked off with glee the week before, shirts that I had ignored in the ironing basket laughing at me in their crumpled heap and making packed lunches that often get discarded in favour of a donut from the canteen. Bags were packed and bus passes ready.  Dylan was told to go to bed early to catch up on sleep before the week began, yet twenty minutes after going up he called me.  That is a rare occurrence these days as his door is often firmly shut now he is of secondary school age.  Yet he called in me.

In his bed he lay crying.  Silent tears fell onto his cheeks as he worried about school in the morning.  He has spent much of the holiday with his primary school friends, the boys he has known since he was four.  The boys who he has played in football teams with, those who he has spent days in the park with, those boys that he has eaten birthday cake with for the past 7 years.

He is not bullied, he is just a quiet boy who is missing his primary school friends.  I chose a different secondary school for him, made my choice to send him across town to the same mixed comprehensive his sister goes to. It is an outstanding school, a school that selects on religion meaning that for most of his friends the school was not an option (I’m sure many would have chosen it if they could). It is a school that he always knew he would go to and he never once voiced any concerns.  

Yet because of his quiet nature and not having his old friends on hand he has found it hard.  Much harder than I ever thought he would.  His sister is cut from the same cloth but bounced into the school and made her mark immediately. I know that he too will make his mark in his own time.  I have great faith in him.  He is enjoying lessons, history especially.  He even enjoys the bus and the banter it brings as he likes watching others fight over seats and share the bus banter.  Yet he misses his primary friends.

So far he hasn’t got a circle of boys to kick a football about with and he finds lunchtimes challenging.  

I chatted to him as he lay in his bed, I coached him somewhat in his choices. I stroked his hair and wiped his tears. I walked out of his room and my own tears fell just as silently as his had.

How I helped my son to make new friends at his new school

On a practical level there are a number on interventions that parents can do to help their child make new friends.

• Firstly talk to your child’s tutor. They are in school and in a position to help your child during transition. A form tutor can rearrange seating plans and help enable friendships to develop.
• Encourage your child to think about who they want to be friends with and then how they can start striking up conversations.
• One tip I gave my son was to just tag along at the end of the lesson. The boys he wanted to be friends with were already a little group that all came from the same primary school. I explained to Dylan that they didn’t know they needed more friends, and they probably were not aware that he was on his own. I suggested he just follow them out at lunch and join in the football game by speaking to a couple of them. He did this really successfully.
• Arrange a playdate at age 11 / 12 it is still perfectly fine for parents to set up a play date. Dylan invited one of the boys over for pizza and I asked Dyl to get his mums number so I could co-ordinate it. I met mum when she bought her son over and asked her in for a coffee, which she accepted. I told her that Dylan had no primary friends at his new school and this made her aware and she encouraged her son to make sure Dylan was being openly included at breaktimes.
• Take time talking to your child and let them know this will pass. Give them little bite-size actions every few days so that it isn’t overwhelming. Teach them how to start a conversation or things to talk about, remind them to be chatty and use open questions when they are spoken to, as this develops the conversation rather than shutting it down.
• Use weekends and school holidays to find time for your child to catch up with their primary school friends as this friendship will also be important to maintain for many.
• Encourage your child to join a school club that interests them as this will also help them find like-minded friends.

These strategies worked for my son and by the end of the Christmas term he was a lot more settled with the friendship he wanted. I also found this post on can men and women be friends interesting.

**update These boys are now well and truly his tribe. He has a firm friendship group and is very happy with his new friends at his new school.

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