This week we discussed middle school friendship issues as well as SHAME. Oof! I’m going to save that topic for another post because it’s a big one and deserves its own space. : )
Middle School is difficult in and of itself; not only individually as far as mental health, puberty, etc. but socially as well. In fact, the social aspect of adolescence overall is a roller coaster to say the least! We can all vividly remember our own experiences with friends and romantic partners (see previous post on that time in development for more info) and because I respect the time you take to read these posts, I’m going to keep the recap and additional thoughts as concise as possible with bullet points below…
Creating friendships from scratch take time. Often, our kids (and the parents!) are anxious to make things happen quickly and it’s just not typical for that to happen. Practice patience and model that to your kids.
We need to be careful about not laying our own friendship experiences/trauma on our kids. This is one of my MAIN suggestions as a parent coach and therapist - Let your kids have their own experience in every context! That doesn’t mean you don’t coach them based off of your experience but don’t project all of your stuff on them and/or expect them to follow your same path. If we don’t have boundaries around what’s ours and theirs, we can create more intensity that doesn’t need to be there. We can add a lot of stress to an already difficult situation. Asking your kiddos questions about what they contribute to a friendship, what the other does, etc. can help you understand what’s important to them in those relationships.
Start teaching kids from a young age that there is a ME, a YOU and a WE in every relationship. We can honor individuality and both contribute to the WE. If the energy put into a relationship doesn’t equal out over time, we may need to reconsider if the friendship is healthy for us. Question for yourself and your kids: What fills your bucket about each relationship? Where might it be a little or a lot lopsided in a relationship?
We are meant to have several people in our lives meet our needs, not just one or two people. This goes for friendships and romantic relationships. Each friend can serve a purpose and fill our buckets in different ways. I have some friends I love to go out with, some that I vacation with, some that are “my people” for helping me navigate tricky life stuff, etc. Any age of human can draw a person or write their name down and identify what that person contributes to the relationship. Then identify what YOU bring to the relationship. Are there areas of growth for you? Dig deep on this one. In relationships, it takes two to tango and being accountable for how we show up in relationships is essential to its well-being. We can always be learning and growing how to be a better human in relationship with other humans. You can anticipate a lot more of where that comes from in the book I’m writing… : )
We go through phases in our lives where we may have lost some relationships for a variety of reasons. These phases call for extra self-compassion while being open to possibility. We can ask ourselves, “I wonder where I will meet my next friend/partner?” and then proceed to put ourselves out there in ways that may feel slightly uncomfortable until we aren’t uncomfortable anymore. We can’t expect friends to fall from the sky into our lives - we need to actively pursue opportunities to expand our social circles if we have some friend spots to fill.
Last but not least, we need to remember to speak the OTHER person’s love language to them, not our own love language to them. That’s like speaking Spanish to someone who only speaks Japanese. Not much connection is going to happen there. So learn your friend’s/partner’s love language and speak it to them. Lots of possibility for connection there!
Friends/partners come and go. It’s only been in the last half a century to a century that humans are living as long as they are and that puts some interesting pressure on relationships to last a long time. Let’s be clear: Longevity is NOT a sign of a healthy relationship. Joy, connection and growth are and those things can occur in a 6 month relationship and a 60 year relationship. Consider how what you think, feel, say and do in relationships impacts the health of who you connect with AND what you’re modeling to your children/students/grandkids/etc. As always, leveling up how we move through relationships always positively impacts what kids observe, imitate and repeat.