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Jess and Scott discuss the delicate balance between nurturing children's friendships and maintaining strong parent-child bonds. They discuss the concept of peer orientation, share personal experiences, and offer practical advice for parents navigating their children's social worlds.
Key insights include:
1. The importance of modelling healthy relationships at home
2. How to recognize signs of unhealthy peer orientation
3. Strategies for prioritizing family time while supporting friendships
Whether you're concerned about your child's social life or simply want to foster positive relationships, this episode provides valuable guidance for parents with kids of all ages. Don't miss this thoughtful discussion on one of parenting's most crucial topics!
Want to help your child feel confident navigating friendship struggles and build safe and trusted friendships? Check out our new Nurtured First toolkit: The Friendship Toolkit [https://nurturedfirst.com/printables/the-friendship-toolkit/]. Don't forget to use code ROBOTUNICORN at checkout for 10% off!
Get 10% OFF all parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
We'd love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: podcast@robotunicorn.net.
Learn more about the Solving Bedtime Battles course here [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/solving-bedtime-battles/].
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Okay, before we get into it, I feel like we should do a little bit of an update because there were two episodes that you weren't a part of.
Yep.
And people are missing you.
Not to be dramatic.
But I was very sick.
Not to be dramatic, but you were dramatically ill.
It was not fun.
But I'm better now.
I would say I'm ninety five percent of the way back to normal.
I think I'm tempted to go on a bike ride this this weekend.
I don't know.
I don't know if we'll be able to do it
Yeah.
Well maybe like a just twenty five kilometer bike ride or something might be.
Casual twenty-five K.
That's pretty casual.
Is it
Not for me.
Yeah, I got back to doing yoga class this morning and I'm still definitely not nearly as good as I was feeling before.
It was pretty rough.
We just came back from
a trip together after being sick together at home for eight days and then we went on a trip together for more days.
We spent a lot of time together lately.
So you're very lucky
So lucky.
Are you sick of me?
And now I'm making you record a podcast with me.
My sick of you.
Or do you still want to be my friend
Okay, let's get into this.
I'm not gonna answer that.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
So since the beginning of school, the girls have started at a new school.
Friendship has been top of mind.
Mm-hmm.
The girls, they're trying to get to know new kids and especially for our oldest.
She already had friends and we moved her to a new school.
She's like really trying to focus on building new friendships and
We were talking a bit about it and I was thinking about this question quite a bit while we were on our trip.
But what role should
friendship play in a child's life.
And I actually have a quote.
I might might butcher this quote here.
But it went something along the lines of if you want your children to have healthy friendships, you need to demonstrate this through your own friendships.
So I guess there's two things there.
It's one, what role should friendship play in your kids' lives?
And the other is, do you agree with that quote?
That the way we show our friendships or demonstrate the way to be a friend is how our children will also be friends with other kids
Yeah.
I think let's start with the first question and then the answer to that will naturally move into the second question.
Yep.
So the first question, what role should friends take in our kids' lives?
This is a really common question that I get because I think a lot of times
I was actually just talking to someone today on Nurtrude First.
We feel this pressure to send our kids to play dates to sign them up for sports and to really encourage them to make a lot of friends
And this shift starts to happen.
I feel like at our daughter's age, like six, seven, eight, we start seeing parents put more of like a push and a priority towards friendships.
I think friendships can be a really valuable piece of a child's life.
The role should be that it provides maybe a sense of belonging, community, fun, playfulness.
Someone that they can talk to about what they're going through, someone they can relate to, all of those things can add and should add to a child's
Quality of life.
It's natural for kids to want friends.
And seeing all of that, parents need to matter more.
And
I think as a society, sometimes we kind of shift away from that at this really important age that our daughter's at, like the six, seven, eight into the early preteen ages.
we kind of shift away from the parents mattering more and we start shipping our children off and putting them to play dates.
And I even see in our own daughter, like she has this
Desire to do those things, right?
And it's not wrong to encourage friendships with our kids, but what we want to be super mindful of is who are they spending the most of their time with.
And if
playdates fill up your entire weekend and every evening they're going to gymnastics or they're going to soccer or hockey or whatever it is.
and they don't have that quality time with you anymore, you can get into something that's called peer orientation, which Dr.
Gordon Mufeld talks about.
where the child starts to lean towards their friends when they have a hard time instead of leaning towards their parent when they have a hard time.
And that's where we can see a lot of difficulty.
Okay.
What is the harm in your children being
a little more pure oriented as they get older.
Like I can understand it to a point.
Like you want the parent to be the most involved in the child's life and for them to trust their parents with everything.
But the my default way of thinking would be, is there really that much harm in your child?
I don't know, making friends and having like a best friend that they want to do everything with.
And they feel so close and comfortable that they want to share their struggles with them as well.
What is the risk in that?
I think
Peer interaction is really important.
It teaches our kids what a social norm is, right?
How to navigate maybe disappointment
how to stand up for themselves, even how to play, how to relate, how to s share stories of being similar to someone else, a sense of belonging, all of those things happen through friendships in the early years.
So definitely don't get me wrong, friendships are important and they play a very important role in our child's social development.
The difference between what I'm talking about is when friends start to become more important than parents, is when we start to see
what I was talking about called peer orientation.
And so the problem with peer orientation is that now instead of going to your parent, and maybe like I don't know if you can relate to this or not, I actually we haven't really talked about this before
But instead of going to your parent when something happens and telling them what's going on, you're going to your peers.
And so now you're turning to your peers to help you learn how to cope with difficult things that are happening, how to navigate hard situations in your life
But your peers are also young and they also have immature brains.
Yeah.
And they also don't know how to cope.
So if you start getting your coping tools
from your friends, then you might be starting to learn at a pretty young age some unhealthy coping tools, right?
Because they're all children, they all have immature brains and probably don't know how to cope.
And then where we see the challenge lie is if the parent hasn't formed that really strong connection with the kids in the early years and has
kind of just pushed friendships on them and they haven't been that safe base at home that the child always goes back to and tells what's going on.
In the teen years this can become really difficult
We see a lot of peer-oriented teens.
Yeah, for me that like that sounds like that's the default teenager.
Right.
The default teenager is the one that doesn't want to hang out with their parents and wants to hang out with
Other kids instead.
And it would almost I don't maybe this is the wrong way to think about it, but it almost sounds weird for a teenager to want to do the opposite
Right.
So it's not even that they want to only hang out with their parents.
Let me give you an example.
Okay.
So I would say I always had a really strong relationship with my parents when I was young.
Right?
So as a child, I had a few good childhood best friends.
I would have play dates with them.
I'd have sleepovers at their house.
Some of the best childhood memories.
We had so much fun together
Okay?
Then all of a sudden in grade six, seven, eight, there starts to be drama with the girls in the class.
But this whole time that I've had my best friends, I've been doing sleepovers, I've also had my parents pouring into me
I've had them prioritizing family time.
I've had them saying, yep, you can have a sleepover, but just one friend visit per weekend, right?
Only one night per weekend is it okay for you to be at a friend's house.
Because the other night
we spend it as a family.
I had my parents be like, you know what, we're not gonna put you in too many sports.
We'll do one sport in the summer, maybe one in the winter, but that's it, so that all the other nights
We're home with you and we have the family time.
Right.
So they prioritized both.
They allowed me to have these cherished friendships, but they continued to prioritize family time.
Then when I am a preteen and I'm sure so many of the women listening can relate
Grade six, seven, eight were really tough years.
All of a sudden I'm not invited to a birthday party and I'm feeling so sad, right?
Or I don't make a team that all my friends are on and I'm starting to feel really sad
But instead of turning to my friends for support and guidance, I knew I could still turn to my parents.
And so in those preteen years when difficulties were happening with my friends, even though my parents prioritized allowing me to have friendships
I knew I was always safe when I got home.
And home was my like oasis away from any of the friend drama that was going on.
And I feel for our kids today where it's
so much harder for them to have that oasis at home because they have social media, there's phones, there's always access to their friends at all times, right?
At that time in my life.
I didn't have access to my friends when I was home.
So when I got home and I would see my dad or my mom after a long day and they'd give me a hug and say, How was school today?
And I'd be like, terrible
Nobody played with me.
You know, I walked around the playground by myself, or so-and-so had a birthday party, and I just found out every single other girl in the class was invited, but I wasn't invited
I could share that with my parents because I had that safe base.
And then going into the teenage years, same thing.
I had lots of friends.
I had
friends.
Not all my relationships were healthy.
And I was just telling you about this, I think it was this morning, right?
That one time I was having so much drama with one friend.
And
It was just chaotic, right?
And now in hindsight I can see, oh, that friend had that relationship with her parents.
So she was bringing that into the friendship with me, right?
Kind of some of those toxic behaviors and challenges
And even though at school it was so hard and the girls would be mean and I would be sad when I got home I was safe even as a teenager
And I would be able to say to my parents, this is what's going on at school.
And I remember so many days just bawling to them, being like, This is what's happening at school.
It's so hard.
And
My dad, this is what I was telling Scott this morning, one time said, drop all your friends and you have Scott and you have and then he named my other childhood best friend.
He's like, that's it.
You don't need anybody else.
And they were able to coach me and always be my safe place to land.
That's what I'm talking about, peer orientation.
As soon as we
push our children too much where we're like just saying here have friends and and we're not continuing to tune in with the relationship who would I have gone to in those moments?
I probably would have found
other friends to go to.
And maybe their answer would have been, let's go party, let's go drink, let's go do drugs, or something like that.
Or
A bit of it.
Well, let's talk about teenagers.
One end of the spectrum to the other.
But
What happens in teenagers?
Like I think a lot of times we hear about, oh, they're all doing drugs and drinking and partying together.
Yeah, maybe I'm just naive to that.
Like I mean, I know that was happening when we were in school, but Right.
Okay
Yep.
It's a stretch.
That's the far the other end of the spectrum, right?
Or like very extreme that you go from one end to the other.
Or maybe you have
Just toxic friendships in there.
You have and I feel like what I'm wondering is if we just have two different experiences of friendship too, because I think female friendships can be
unique in a way, maybe compared to your experiences.
Yeah, I mean like when you talk about peer versus parent orientation, I don't know that I had either.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you just didn't talk about your feelings, period.
Yeah, I would just with all the experiences that I had, all the situations I had, I would just bottle all that up.
So it's not like I would talk to anyone about it.
Yeah.
So let's move away from talking about that.
And I guess what does that look like?
Like how what would a parent know if
My five year old who's in kindergarten is peer oriented or parent-oriented or like how would you know the difference?
Yeah.
'Cause like I think it would be easy to choose the extremes and say like well my child has friends and we
Let them play with their friends once or twice a week or whatever and that's all of a sudden you could feel bad about that based on what you're saying.
So like how would you know if your child is peer or parent oriented and if they are
peer oriented, how would you move them back to being parent-oriented?
Great question.
First off, I think if your child's hanging out with friends a couple times a week, like I don't want you to feel guilty about that, because that's fine in our own children
crave to hang out with their friends multiple times a week, right?
I just think it's just seeing how people take things on social media, I wanna name the fact that it would be very easy for someone to take what you've said
and go to one extreme or the other based on that without getting all the context.
Right, exactly.
Like parents mattering more than friends doesn't mean friends don't matter.
Yeah.
Right?
Friends still matter.
So I think going back to the example that I was sharing about my own childhood experiences, right?
Yes, I hung out with friends, sleepovers at my friend Steph's house, shout out Steph, were one of my favorite
childhood memories and that was great.
And then my parents would prioritize also having time with us.
So something I would get parents to tune in with when they're thinking about this in general is
How am I prioritizing spending time with my kids?
It's easy to become so busy that we're gone all the time, or any of our free time as parents is also we have our own friends
Scheduled in, right?
We have our own outing scheduled in and we don't have that quality family time.
So if you're curious
It's not that sending our kids to be with their friends is bad, but it's also does that take away from your only quality time that you have with your kids?
And if that's the case, then I would choose
the family time with your kids.
Or some the person I was talking to this morning is like, I have so much pressure.
All of my friends tell me that I don't do nearly enough play dates, but my child
does one play date a week, that feels like enough for them and I want to spend more time with my child.
Like am I wrong?
So if you're feeling pressure that my child has to have more play dates, but they're not even seeking it.
Like they're not even asking for it
And you want to have that quality time with your family, just want to give you permission that that's okay too.
So it's not that we shouldn't encourage friendships in our kids, is that we should also equally prioritize
quality family time together.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I mean it makes sense to me.
Yeah.
I just wanted to clear the air on that one.
I just wanted to talk about peer orientation too.
I think we see a lot of that when you see
kids, especially once they're getting into that preteen age, like a little bit older, but even our daughter's age, like seven and up, when they become very cliquey, right?
So you can see, especially in groups of girls sometimes
I mean it can be the same for boys too, but we can become very cliquey and very like codependent on each other.
And often within these cliques of girls or boys, there's a lot of
toxic behaviors happening, right?
There's talking bad about other kids behind their back, there's not allowing certain kids in the clique and there's often like this separation energy that we've talked about in other podcasts coming up where it's like, no, but I want to be friends with them and
If you start to see that type of behavior in your child or in their friend group where you're noticing it's becoming a really unhealthy pattern and your child's coming home.
Crying and upset, that would be a good time for you to step in too and be like, okay, first, how can I prioritize time with my child?
Because they need to know that there's a safe base that they can fall back on.
And B, how is these friendships serving my child
and kinda tuning in with your child in that.
Because children do need support with their friendships.
It's not something that we can just take a full step back from.
Friendships is a relationship.
Throw them into relationship or throw them into a plate date and expect that's all gonna go perfect.
Yeah, we need to remember these are children with all their own different upbringings, their own different parents, different communication styles.
When I was working with kids, I worked with a lot of girls.
Grade six, seven, eight.
And they would say, like, I feel like my parent has no idea what's going on with me at school.
Right.
And so if we want to avoid that peer orientation or even like secrecy and that type of thing in friendship, we have
to stay connected with our children and know what's going on with their friendships at school.
So would you say the peer orientation is unlikely, let's say for our four-year-old, she's in
Junior kindergarten here in Canada.
Mm-hmm.
It's unlikely for her to have pure orientation at this point?
It's less likely, but it's still possible.
Okay.
It's still possible, but I at least this is more for older school kids, like primary school and then beyond.
Yeah, I would say we see this more again in like the grade one two plus
So not older, but past kindergarten and preschool, JK, they're still even developing the ability to want a friend.
Right.
They're kind of doing a lot more of that parallel play.
Like they'll play right next to each other.
But they're not necessarily playing with with each other in that moment.
Yeah, and they don't necessarily have the ability to develop that intimacy that comes with friendships yet.
We might see that a little bit more in our older child, but even still she's not quite at that point where she would maybe disclose how she's feeling to a friend
But as they get older, we'll see more of that.
You can see some of these behaviors starting to form when you see kids who are being really mean, kids who are very protective and don't want anyone else to play with
a friend that they have, kids who try and exclude other kids, like we might see some of those behaviors in in those kids starting to form at a earlier age.
Right.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk
tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurture First.
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Making friends is tough.
I think Yeah, I remember it was for me.
But I mean I was bottling up all these feelings.
Yeah, what was friendship like for little Scott?
Uh not great.
I think I just pushed everyone away
Mm-hmm.
I trusted no one.
So then I w wouldn't say I had friends really either, right?
Mm-hmm.
Would you say you had like as you got older and you were still in elementary school, did you have any like friendships where you would
say anything about what was going on in your life or were you mostly just kind of masking at school?
Like about all the shitty stuff that was going on?
Yeah.
No, no, definitely not.
No.
I w
Right.
That kinda brings me to my second question, right?
Which was
the quote that you had read about children learn how to form friendships through watching their parents form friendships.
Yep.
And I think that that can be true to a point.
Like we don't want to put too much pressure on parents, like, hey, you need to have all these friends so that your kids know how to make friends.
I don't think that's what it's about.
It's about the communication styles that are modeled to you.
the behavior that is modeled to you that will be mimicked in your friendships.
So like would it be more accurate than to say
your child's friendships model more so like let's say the interaction between us.
Yeah.
They're seeing how we interact with each other and
Therefore using a lot of those things that they're seeing us demonstrate with than friends at school.
I would say on an even deeper level, the way you treat your child.
And the relationship that you have with them will be the relationship that they mimic in other places.
So yes to what you're saying.
Yeah, I guess I could see that.
But the blueprint
for all relationships comes from the way you communicate with your child.
And that goes back to other conversations that we've had on the show about things like
Spanking or yelling at your kids or giving them the silent treatment, ignoring them.
We're teaching them, as we discipline them, the way to be with other people.
Right
Yeah, so they're seeing that interaction between or experiencing that interaction between you and them.
Yeah.
Yeah, the the reason like I find that quote a little bit
difficult to agree with fully is how often our our kids, at least maybe with us, because I was just saying to a buddy last night and I have
like a monthly dinner with one of my buddies and I told him that typically our default is to say no to most things because we want to spend as much time as we can with the girls.
Yeah.
So anything outside of work, even maybe some work related things we're saying no to.
Mm-hmm.
But it's not like our kids are seeing us interact with our friends that much.
It wouldn't bear on them and they wouldn't use that
as much as like the interaction that I have with you, they're seeing that constantly.
Yeah.
And yeah, of course, the way I interact with our girls, that's going to affect the way that they interact with their friends at school.
Yeah.
But I don't think the point of that quote is to say, like, the way you interact with your kids doesn't help them understand.
It's more, does the way you interact with
your friends change the way that they interact with theirs.
Right.
And I just I personally feel like it doesn't really because they don't see it enough
I think that's not nearly as important.
Like I remember when I s I read that quote on social media.
It was going viral one time and I couldn't remember who wrote it, but I was reading it through all the comments being like, well, I'm a parent and I don't have that many friends
So does that mean my kids can't have friends?
Or like you, I hang out with my friend once a month at when my kids are sleeping.
Like does that mean they're not gonna have friends?
So like it's not like they're gonna see it.
And even if we do get together with our friends
The kids are usually off playing and doing their own thing with their other friends.
Yeah.
And I would say that I think way more important than having your own friends, which is important, but for you as a parent, that's important.
I think
is the way we treat our kids and the way our kids see us treat each other.
That modeling that happens inside of your home behind closed doors that nobody else sees, that is what's teaching your child
how to be a good friend to others and even more so what to expect from a friend.
Right.
Even this morning I was reading a different message from someone because I'm talking today on Nurtured First about
friendship and she was saying she's like my best friend became incredibly toxic.
She was mean to me.
She would bully me.
She would say all these things.
But you know what?
That's exactly how my parents treated me.
So I that's what I thought was okay.
That's what I thought relationships were like.
And on the flip side, what I was saying before, where when I had that toxic friend in my life, I knew that her behavior wasn't okay because I was never treated that way before
And so there was a little alarm bell that went off inside of me saying, this is not how people treat each other.
It's not okay.
And I only knew that because of the relationship, the blueprint that was set out for me from my parents.
And I mean we see that in our own daughter
Like I remember one time someone was mean to her on the bus and she came home.
She's like, how could someone say that?
This isn't what we say.
Yeah, that's right.
Our family doesn't talk like this
And all the things that we had said to her, right?
And she was able to identify that that wasn't okay behavior because of how that was modeled to her within the home.
Yeah.
And to go back to your point about you not really having friends as a kid, right, if you look at what was modeled to you.
And I even wonder like the value that you placed on yourself
being worthy of being a friend and being loved and having that type of intimate relationship with someone else.
I mean maybe I don't know that little Scott's mind would have been able to get to that point.
It probably could get to the point of I don't trust people.
Yeah, I think that's honestly what it was.
I was such a pain in the ass to the teachers because I would see the error in their logic and would call them out for it, be like, you're an adult, you should know better.
And I would get in trouble for it, obviously.
And I just feel like that was the way it was.
I was kind of, I don't know.
I wasn't like a friendly kid.
Yeah.
So then why would other kids want to
hang out with a kid that's unfriendly to them.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
So I don't know, like maybe that was the deeper reason.
I don't know.
I would say instead of that, it's probably more the fact that I just had all of these feelings bottled up
And was never allowed to show it and like we talked about on our episode we recorded yesterday.
The default is anger.
That's the only th acceptable thing outside of happiness that you're allowed to show.
Mm-hmm.
The default for me was just
anger and annoyance at every one and everything.
Yeah.
And so then you became that child that probably other parents like
Yeah, we maybe we don't want Scott over or Yeah, probably we don't want It wouldn't surprise me that that was the case.
Yeah.
Well I see that all the time in my work when I was a school counselor.
It'd be kids like you who are clearly struggling.
Yep.
They're arguing with the teachers.
They have a very difficult time making friends.
They're angry.
They don't want to really be friends with anybody else.
That's also a sign that, okay, there's something deeper going on here.
And then
they would all of a sudden also not be invited to birthday parties.
Yeah, like I had that all the time.
Yeah, because other parents and other kids would be like, ooh, yeah, well if they're over, they're not respectful, they're not the nicest kids, so we probably won't invite them
Yeah.
And they become more and more and more isolated.
It increases the anger.
It increases the lack of trust in people.
Yeah, right.
The kids who bullied not that you were a bully.
I don't think you were a bully.
You were just angry.
I don't want to say all the time, because that may be false, but from what I remember of grade school, like I'd be the one standing up for the kids that were getting bullied.
Yeah
I was very feisty.
You were feisty.
You had a strong sense of justice.
Yeah.
You still have that, but now you know how to maybe use that in a better way.
Channel it in a better way.
But I even see that in kids who are bullies
I was just talking with a colleague about that this morning and she was saying, Yeah, we're helping all the kids who were bullied but then the bully, the question is, well, how do we give them more discipline?
Yeah.
We keep sending them to principal's office not working.
It's like, well this bully is
Struggling.
Yeah.
Bullies are being bullied.
Yeah.
Where did they learn this behavior from?
And we're sort of getting off topic here.
I know about this.
Well, it has to do with friendship.
But yes.
So to go back to your point to how do children learn how to be friends and have healthy friendships, it comes from their relationship with us.
It doesn't mean that the relationship with us is the only relationship they can have, but we're modeling it to them and we're teaching them what to expect from a healthy friend.
Yep.
Okay.
I'm gonna leave you with this final question.
Uh how do you know that the way you are showing your affection and being
that loving kind parent to your child.
How do you know that that's working in their friendships?
How can you tell that the work you're doing is actually
helping them create friendships that are lasting.
Like I would say for oldest, she's started at a new school.
She's what, three weeks in, but for a week of that she was
sick roughly.
So she's not really had that much interaction with the peers there yet.
How do you know that it's working for her and she will make the friends that we hope she does and that it's not gonna go too far and all of a sudden she will be peer oriented.
Mm-hmm.
It's a really good question.
I'm just trying to think of exactly how I want to answer this for you.
I'll get to your question.
But I think we put a lot of pressure on our kids' friendships.
And I know for me personally a lot of that can come from my own wounds.
And we can feel like we want our kids to make all these good friends and we want to make sure that they're healthy.
I know friends of mine who were bullied as kids, right?
They have their guard up
They're worried about all their kids' friendships.
Yeah.
And we have this strong desire to like make it work.
And I think we want to be careful about the pressure that we put on our kids.
I think how I know
for our own daughter that it's working is actually something that first triggered me, which is she'll sometimes come home and tell me she didn't play with anyone today.
And I'll say, why?
And then
Immediately my mind used to race to why did no one want to play with you?
Were people mean to you?
Like what's wrong?
Like how did you feel about that, right?
Because I'm projecting my own issues that I had as a child.
And I remember one time she just said to me, No, I just wanted a break.
I kind of just wanted to play by myself.
And that to me tells me it's working.
Yeah, I remember her.
She does that from time to time where we'll ask her, how come you didn't play with anyone at first or second recess?
Um, I didn't really like the game they were playing, so I just decided I wanted to w collect snails or something like that on the playground.
And we have to make sure that we don't project our own
Insecurities and challenges onto our children because I think friendship is one of those topics that for a lot of parents brings up a lot of wounds
Like I know for me, it brings up a lot of wounds.
The ways I see it quote unquote working, aka being loving towards her child, working and helping her develop her own friendships
is when she says things like, Oh, I didn't want to play with anyone, so I just did monkey bars by myself.
That's confidence.
That's a child who knows that she just needed a break and that's fine.
And she's confident playing alone
That's not something I need to be worried about.
That's that's beautiful.
I see it work when she comes home and says that someone said something mean that day and it bothered her.
It tells me that it's works when
her friend was crushing snails at school, or like a peer was crushing snails at school.
And she felt deeply uncomfortable with him doing that.
And it's like, that's not a way that we treat animals.
And
I just I didn't like that he did that.
Yeah, and that's why she's sort of collecting snails to protect them.
That tells me that the love and
the pouring in that we're doing is working.
I see it working when even our four year old sees a friend fall and trip and hurt herself.
runs up to her and says, You need a band-aid?
You need teacher?
You know, like she tries to help a friend.
And it's in those little things.
that I think we see it working.
It's not some one big thing where all of a sudden your child's seven and they have a best friend and they're gonna have that friend for life.
They might not.
Right.
And I think let's not put that pressure on our on our kids that they need to have one best friend for life or like friendships that last forever.
I think it works when we can see
the very same love and apologies and yes, we make mistakes as parents too.
We might yell at our kids and we might apologize after when we start seeing that behavior modeled in our children and their friendships
That's how we know that the work that we're doing makes a difference in their life.
Does that answer your question?
That answers part one of it, yeah
Okay, what's part two?
The other part was how do you know the it hasn't gone too far?
Which you sort of have answered through this episode.
But
I think some signs that you might want to just tune back in is just even thinking about your own schedule and the amount of quality time that you're spending with your children without other friends around.
Right.
So you're talking more proactively, looking and trying to make sure you have enough time in your week with your kids.
Yeah, and I'm not saying every night or every weekend day.
I'm just saying tune in.
and notice that if you're feeling disconnected with your child, if you're feeling like you're constantly fighting with them or they're constantly strong-willed or even going to school is a battle, then I might tune in with that time
You might also see that it's going a little bit far the other way if you're noticing, let's say you have a bit of an older child, like seven, eight, nine, and they want to spend like
every waking moment with friends.
And remember that that's a totally natural impulse that they're gonna have.
Even our daughter, she told me, I was away last week and I'm going away next week, and she told me
I want to go spend a sleepover on Saturday and on Sunday with friends.
Okay, so and I was like Did she not realize I would be home?
She did realize that I would be home.
No, on the weekend I'm home.
She wants to go spend Saturday and Sunday with friends.
And I said, well, this is the only weekend I'm home.
I'm gonna be gone next weekend.
Yeah, that's okay.
But so know that your children will ask for that and still you get to decide to take to set a boundary, right?
So my boundary with her was you can choose one friend and one weekend day you can do something with your friend.
Yeah, for like the afternoon, right?
Yeah.
That's what we're gonna do.
For the afternoon.
That's she's gonna spend an afternoon with a friend.
Yep
So just know they might ask and ask and ask, and that doesn't mean that you have to say yes every single time too.
Right?
It's your job to be the parent and prioritize the balance.
And then the other thing that I could see might be a warning sign is if you're noticing that your child is the friend who maybe you're getting calls from the school, they're being mean, or there's been issues with bullying, or there's been issues with like the friend group.
Don't go down the road of being guilty and blaming yourself.
Like there's lots of reasons that could happen.
It's not necessarily having to do with the relationship with you.
We see that happen often in neurodivergent kids and maybe difficulties at school, learning, all sorts of things.
But that might be a sign to just tune in and and see how you can connect with some children.
Spend some extra time with them.
Just so that they know, hey, if school's tough.
Home is always safe.
And that's the really the message that we want to give our kids.
Through Nurtured First or Robot Unicorn, we want to help kids have safe and loving homes to fall back on when life feels tough.
Sounds wonderful
Well I think that's a good place to end this today.
Yeah.
Thanks everyone for for listening today and we hope you enjoyed this episode.
Yeah.
I absolutely love this topic.
If you have any more questions on friendships
I would love to answer any questions that you have.
Scott would love to too.
I know he'd love to do a round two of this podcast on friendship
So make sure to send us an email.
We've been loving reading your emails.
Thank you so much for sending them in.
And we're really trying to use them to inspire different podcast episodes and answering your questions.
So can't wait to hear from you.
We'll talk again soon.
Thanks.
See ya
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