Friendships
“A friend is one of the best things you can have and one of the best things you can be”
Over the years I’ve picked up a few key things to help keep us all ticking over in our friendships. I weave them through the sessions I deliver where we do alot of work on our friendships. The aim of the work being to help us all keep solid boundaries and feel safe with each other. Here’s 4 things that I use in sessions but also with my own kids and myself to help everyone get along, create an inclusive environment and foster positive relationships with each other.
Remove the pressure of a best friend/ BFF and encourage a top 5 friendship group. Not that it's done in an order because that negates the purpose of it but it's less exclusive to have a group rather than a top spot. Naturally of course we have friends that we are closer to at different times but removing the best friend prized place alleviates the competition to be in that top spot and allows room for flexibility, fluidity and changing dynamics in our friendship groups, lives and thinking space without creating a mega issue around it.
Create a chart with a 1-10 ladder and place your friends on different steps of the ladder depending on how close you feel to them at the time. We will have friends who are really close in and they’re classed as a 1 friend - the further down the scale you go the less closeness you feel to that friend. This is a simple way to help us track where our friendships are. For example a friend who’s journeyed with me far and deep I would place as a 1 or a 2, the things I tell them and the expectations I have in return from them is higher than a friend who is at a 5 or 6. It sounds simple and it is. It helps us to guard are hearts a little but also to keep them soft and supple where we need to. It’s not a fixed scale or a grading system but an indicator to help gently remind us that not everyone responds or gives the same as we do. Relationships can also slide up and down the scale as our paths intertwine or separate as we go along life’s journey.
Discourage keeping secrets and whispering. These 2 things have a habit of excluding others, creating hierarchy and exclusivity. It’s not fun is it when others know something and you don’t. You don’t feel good enough to know as if you’ve done something wrong and therefore haven’t earned the right to the information. In my experience with my own kids and working alongside children it feels so harmful and hurtful to them when others know a secret and they don’t. Earning the trust of someone to get the secret information takes away our power as we tend to do what the teller of the secret wants us to do in order for us to feel included. No one wants that for their kids and so I actively discourage secrets and whispering. Keeping secrets can also turn into something really heavy for our kids hearts and minds. There’s no joy having to keep something private especially if it raises a red flag in us and makes us feel uncomfortable and carry something they may not want to. Also from a safeguarding perspective, it’s not good practice to keep secrets. Secrecy and hidden information can turn into something nasty quickly.
Pranks are another tricky subject to navigate. It’s all fun and games until it's not and the unsuspecting victim can be left feeling embarrassed and awkward. Some families have a strong prank culture and it’s all part of their family culture and everyone is okay with it or at least understands that its not meant to harm or embarrass. Some families don’t have that culture so pranking them leaves them feeling awful, small and confused. It can take more time and effort than you think to unwind a prank that hasn’t been perceived as one.
If you have any more culture pieces that you use to guard your kids hearts and minds against toxic friends then I’d love to hear them.
Thanks for reading, hope you’re having a great week,
Rachel x
