Helping Your Child With Friendship Breakups

Every child experiences friendship breakups at some point.

They often fall out with their friends and then make up again quickly afterwards, but that doesn’t mean these friendship problems aren’t important. Falling out with a friend can feel like the end of the world to your child.

So how can you help them when they go through friendship breakups?

1: Listen to them

It’s hard to be a good listener. We often jump in with helpful advice, or tell stories about how we got through similar experiences. But good listening gives your child the encouragement they need to open up.

To have good conversations:

• • Be led by them, rather than forcing a conversation

• • Think about their schedule to pick the best times to approach them

• • Really focus on them by putting your phone away and not getting distracted by other things

• • Talk while out for a walk, cooking or tidying up, to stop it feeling too intense

• • Keep calm to show them talking about problems is the right thing to do

• • Listen carefully and repeat back what you think they’ve said to check

• • Don’t turn it into an interrogation by asking lots of questions

For more ideas about improving conversations for the whole family, our popular video series called The Ask is full of helpful advice.