Troublesome Friends: Grade School Buddies

Friend or Foe? Dealing With Your Child’s Troublesome Friends- a 3-part Series

By Antoinette Donovan Hemphill

It’s a phrase dreaded by parents everywhere – “But all of my friends are doing it!” And while the old standby – “If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” – can be an effective reply, the original plea is still a jolting reminder of the powerful influences that your children’s friendships carry.

This is usually not a problem when the buddies in question are mellow, respectful do-gooders whom you adore. If only that was always the case.

“Unfortunately, the kids who receive attention from adults and attract their peers are often the ones who don’t follow the rules,” says Nina Senatore, a professor of education at Simmons College in Boston.

What do you do when your child chooses a friend whose actions and behavior clashes with your family’s rules and values? Focus on the behavior, not the friendship, child development experts say. And tailor your approach to your child’s age.

In this segment we focus on:

Grade School Buddies

As children progress through elementary school, they tend to test social boundaries, making friendships a trickier area for parents.

“Most grade school kids go through phases of being rude, direct or too clever,” says says Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, author of Making Friends: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Child’s Friendships (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2009). “They need to, in order to find out how it feels to step over the line and how, then, to pull back. They often talk like this to each other at school and have to learn not to do it to adults or elsewhere.”

When you witness questionable banter between your child and a friend, it’s tempting to interrupt the situation. Take a step back, advises Anthony Rao, Ph.D., a behavioral psychologist at Harvard Medical School and in private practice, and co-author of The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World