See Below: TIPS, IDEAS & SUGGESTIONS FOR COMPLICATED TEEN FRIENDSHIPS
This post is about Teen Friendships and how to Navigate Complicated Teen Friendships
Navigating Tween & Teen Friendships
Tween & Teen Friendships are often difficult to navigate. Yet, we know how important friendships are during the adolescent and teenage years.
As social beings, we are all internally wired to socialize with others. Therefore, as children, we learn the necessary skills in order to understand how to interact with others throughout our lives.
As a mom of five, now a MomMom, raising my two oldest grandchildren, I’ve seen the pros and cons of socializing challenges. From young toddlers, through adolescence and teen years, children are constantly seeking acceptance.
During the tween and teen years, friendships become much more important. Tweens and teens are looking to find their own personalities within their friend groups and outside of their family unit. They are continuously searching for a sense of belonging. Their ongoing goal is to have friends!
Having friends gives tweens and teens an understanding of building relationships and often figuring out how to work through conflict with others.
Parents and Teenagers
Often during tween and teen friendships, parents feel ignored and left out. Although parents and children may have been very close during their younger years, tweens and teens eventually begin to pull away from their parents as they get older.
Parents need to understand that it is very typical behavior for growing children. Tweens and teens begin to focus on their friends and friendships more than their parents and their family life.
This shift in their relationship focus does not mean that tweens and teens do not love their parents. It simply means their children are maturing and looking for social acceptance from their peers.
Although parents cannot control and choose their children’s friendships, it is important for parents to encourage and support healthy friendships for their children.
Teen friendships are also extremely important for your child’s mental health. Without feeling linked to friends or a friend group, teens can feel socially rejected which can cause them physiological pain and distress.
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Teenage Boy Friendships
While teen friendships can be difficult, that is not always the case. In my experience, boy friendships are much easier to develop than many girl relationships. Boys tend to focus on the positive aspects of having fun and discounting negativity.
Typically, boys find friendships through similarities, such as school, sports, religion, or other social outlets. Most adolescent boys enjoy hanging out with other boys and doing a variety of activities. Boys, at this age can be extremely adventurous and focused on their own peer groups.
Additionally, boys are generally open to expanding their friend group to allow other boys to join them in sports or other activities. Boys are usually not judgmental about other boys and are accepting of having as many male friends as possible.
This is especially true for athletes who may need to gather a large group to play a football or baseball game with. Boys usually don’t limit the number of guys they hang out with because they don’t generally create conflict in friend groups.
As boys become older, they become more interested in girls and having girls as friends and girlfriends. Many times, including girls in teen friend groups, can include conflicts or disagreements within the friend group, but that is not always the case.
Both girls and boys need to be open and honest with their friends and support each other as much as possible.
Teen Friendships with Social Anxiety
Of course, all friendships are different. In our family, friendships have been extremely challenging for my autistic grandson. Since autism includes social anxieties as well as other social limitations, he has always struggled with friendships.
Although he had a couple of friends in elementary and middle school, he didn’t have any friends outside of school.
Being “high functioning”, whatever that truly means, meant that most of the students in his classes struggled more than he did. So, generally, he took to role of “helper” in the classroom, and the teachers loved it.
But most of the special needs students weren’t really able to provide friendship to him. He was caught in the middle of being too smart, but not “typical” enough to have friendships with the mainstream kids. It was and is on ongoing battle for him, and I know he feels the void.
Now, that my grandson is older, he is considered a talented Online Gamer. But, all of his friends are through the computer. He holds them in high regard and feels connected to them, but he doesn’t really KNOW them.
We’ve discussed going to meet some of his online friends and looking into making that happen. Hopefully, we will be able to meet them in person soon and he can establish a real friendship.
It is frustrating when kids don’t or can’t find friends due to social anxieties. My grandson is really a funny, entertaining kid, who would be a great friend to someone if he had the chance.
Hopefully, as he gets older he will be more comfortable establishing friendships with others.
Tween & Teenage Girl Friendships
Tween and Teen friendships are even more challenging for girls. For some reason, which I can not fathom, girls often treat other girls badly.
Girls may talk about other girls behind their backs and say really rude things about them.
Unfortunately, girls tend to hurt other girls’ feelings who they consider to be their friends without truly thinking about how damaging it is to them.
Girls also judge other girls very harshly for no apparent reason, which is extremely sad and damaging for all girls.
Honestly, I don’t understand why girls can be so rude and hurtful to girls they call their friends. And regardless of how many times you discuss the meaning of friendship with girls, they typically continue their behavior.
I assume some girls behave this way to make themselves feel better. Since many tween and teen girls sadly have low self-esteem, they may put other girls down to make themselves feel better. It’s awful!!
We as parents and grandparents need to inspire our children to do better and treat their friends, both male, and female with more admiration and respect. Especially our girls!
Changing Friendships
When my granddaughter moved in with us she was in elementary school. Her school was not in our neighborhood, but it was still in the school district. It didn’t seem fair to remove her from the school she was familiar with, so she stayed there.
Since she had been through so many changes in her life we felt that moving to another school was not necessary. I made the decision to keep her in her school and drive her to school in the morning and made arrangements for pick-ups in the afternoon while I worked.
I knew those years would go by quickly, and they did. Her Middle School was close to our home, so I knew eventually it would all work out. And it has.
What didn’t work out, the way she imagined it would, was her ongoing friendships with her elementary school friends.
Since she no longer lived in their neighborhood, she didn’t have an opportunity to play with her elementary friends often. Although their parents and I made multiple efforts to get the kids together, it rarely happened.
When they went to Middle School, her elementary school friends were bused to the school, while she walked only a couple blocks from our home.
By then, their relationship had changed and they no longer had the same connections they had throughout their elementary school years.
It was sad for me to see their friendship end, but she seemed to move on well, while always telling me they were still her friends. But they weren’t. It definitely became a very complicated teen friendship.
Friendship change as we get older, but we can still remember the innocence of our precious childhood friendships. To read more about childhood friendships, read SEEING LOVE IN THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIPS.
Games & Activities for Tweens & Teens
Tweens and Teen Friendships are generally shared through shared interests. Some activities and games that may keep teen friendships alive may be through GameStop, Apple Products and Fat Brain Toys for Board Games, Puzzles and other toys.
Friendships for Tweens & Teens
Fortunately, my granddaughter now has lots of friends and friend groups. But, between social media and tween and teen insecurities, her friendships are still hard.
I see how much friends mean to her and I see her struggle between being true to herself and bending over backward for her friends. Sometimes, it really stinks and it’s sad.
Her friendships make me think about my own friendships and my own truths at that age. I hope she gains the confidence she deserves as she moves through her teenage years.
When I think about her relationship challenges ahead, I imagine there will be plenty of complicated teen friendships along the way.
But, I hope both she and my grandson will have satisfying friendships as they mature and grow throughout their lives.
This post is about how to navigate complicated tween and teen friendships and how to work through the challenges.
This post may include affiliate links, which means I will receive a small commission if you purchase through my link, at no additional cost to you. For full disclosure read here.
TIPS, IDEAS & SUGGESTIONS FOR COMPLICATED TEEN FRIENDSHIPS
- Be patient when you see friendships changing. As children become older they learn which friends they feel comfortable with and which ones they don’t. Let them make their own decisions about friendships (with some monitoring depending on the age or if there is a reason not to trust someone)
- Try not to push kids into becoming friends with kids you feel they should. Children have their own intuitions about other children. Forcing a friendship can be counterproductive.
- It’s ok if friendships change. Many friendships are established during similar activities, such as school, sports, theater, etc. When those activities change, those friendships may also change. We all have experienced various friendship relationships throughout our lives, which can help us grow as an individual.
- Social Media and internet exchanges can be extremely dangerous. It is important and totally acceptable (and necessary) to monitor our children’s social media and internet activities. Nothing is safe or private on the world wide web. Continue to advise your children about the use and dangers of the internet.
If you are looking for additional information, Talk Space is a wonderful resource to discuss friendship challenges or to find professional support.
