Friendship Truths All Kids Need To Know

So one of the first friendship truths, or I guess pieces of advice that I might give to my kids is the treat it as data approach.

Okay, so this is something that's actually helped me a lot in my life as well.

And something that I think we really need to talk about in terms of adults as well, the treat this as data approach basically means that the first time a friend, a coworker, a partner, whoever it is, hurts your feelings, you know, does something unkind to you.

Now it kind of depends, like obviously if it's abusive, different story.

But let's say a friend forgets to include you when they're all playing skipping or something like that, and she forgets to say, hey, you want to come play with us? The first time that they do something like this and it hurts your feelings, take it as data.

This is how I would coach my kids.

A lot of times friends don't mean to hurt us.

They have their own stuff going on, their own... different way of thinking.

They're also trying to figure out where they fit in social settings.

And they might just not always think to say, hey, do you want to come play with me? Or hey, do you want to go skipping? Or hey, we're going to all play tag.

Do you want to be a part of it? They're not always thinking those things.

And that doesn't mean that they're always trying to reject you or not include you.

Or maybe

they're giving you what you feel like is a mean look.

I have a daughter who, you know, if someone's not smiling at her, sometimes she'll be like, they're being mean.

And she's very sensitive, but they're not always being mean.

Sometimes they have their own thing going on.

So the first time that something like that happens, instead of writing them off as a You just say to yourself, OK, they didn't include me today or this happened.

I'm just going to take it as data.

And so what that actually means is we don't write friends off the first time or even the second time they do something that's a little bit hurtful.

We can understand and have compassion and grace for the fact that our friends are humans who might make mistakes too.

But if it starts becoming a pattern and you start to notice that, man, a couple times this week she didn't include me.

Or she gave me a really grumpy face.

Or she said something behind someone else's back and I didn't really like the way that she was gossiping about our other friend.

And it becomes a pattern, then it's different.