Is Your Child a Loner or Alone?

How Parents Can Help Children with Friendship Issues

Does your child have difficulty with friendships? Here’s a look at possible causes and what you can do about it. 

An age by age guide for parents:

Babies | Toddlers | Preschool Age | School Age | The Upper Grades

What Parents Can Do


By Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D.


"Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm …" That’s the opening line of Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell’s classic novel. I like to paraphrase that idea in regard to children’s social anxieties: Popularity is not important, but children seldom realize this when caught by its power and its lure. Consider the following example:


On the third morning of school vacation last summer, Lily dropped off her 7-year-old daughter, Tess, at day camp. After each of the first two days, Tess had come home miserable, telling her mother how lonely she was and how mean three particular girls were to her.

Naturally, Lily was worried about Tess, so she watched the scene from her car as Tess eagerly ran off to where three girls were sitting, huddled closely together. Tess sat down near them, but not too near, and tried to join the conversation.

Lily saw the other girls give Tess a brief glance and then return to their intense threesome. Tess tried a few more times to get their attention and then seemed to give up. She walked dejectedly up the steps and sat down by herself. Lily tried to wave goodbye to her daughter as cheerfully as she could, but Tess was too busy looking wistfully toward the three girls to see her mother.

This was new territory for Lily, because her older daughter never came home complaining about being lonely. Not because she always had a friend, but because she usually preferred to be alone. Lily had given up on trying to push her older daughter into being more social, because she seemed happy. Tess, however, always wanted to be in the thick of things, with lots of friends around. If one of her friends teased her or left her out, Tess was inconsolable.





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