Your job as a parent is to teach and guide your child through the world. This includes lessons on how they should interact with others in the world. For example, you want your child to know how to be a good friend to others. While most children are born with good natures, that doesn’t automatically equate to being a good friend. Children can also be selfish or have limited capacity to understand or empathize with others, hindering their friendships. Here is how you can teach your child to be a good friend!
Is Your Child a Good Friend? Here’s How to Teach Them
1. To Be respectful
Teach your children to respect others, and to respect their differences, and other people’s beliefs. A good friend will always respect others.
2. Golden rule: Treat others as you would want to be treated
Teaching your kids to treat others as they would want to be treated themselves is an important component on being a good friend. On the other hand, they also need to recognize when a friend isn’t treating them kindly as they are treating that friend. One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.
3. Be supportive
A good friend will be there in a time of need. Teach your children to support others and lift them up.
4. Be loyal
A good friend sticks by you even when no one else does. Teach your children the importance of being loyal to people in their lives.
5. Be thoughtful
The person who is always thinking of himself or concerned how everything will affect him is self-centred and won’t care for others or won’t have time to about others. Teach your children to be thoughtful of others.
6. Be honest
Honesty is one of the most important traits of a good friend. Before someone can trust you, they have to know that you are an honest person.
7. Have Self-esteem
If your children have confidence and self-esteem in themselves, they won’t be searching for others to fill an emotional void or emptiness within. As a parent, praise their successes, hard work, and best attributes on a regular basis. This will help set them up to be a good friend to others.
With these tips as your guide, you can teach your child to be a good friend. Remember also that the most important thing you can do is be a good example.
These are some great tips. My parents instilled these values on us growing up. Very important.
A great post and very important too that children learn what it means to be a good friend.
These are great tips I remember my mother reminding me at times to Treat others as you would want to be treated and I also though that to my children.
Same with me! It’s an awesome value to teach our kids!
Always some good tips, to be selfless, and helpful to others- an important thing throughout life. It’s the key to being a good person to lean on
This is such good advice <3 I loved it. Thank you!
My pleasure!
Great ideas! Teaching a child the ability to empathize with others is so important. I remember my grandmother teaching me the Golden Rule when I was a child.
Yes, the Golden Rule is definitely taught from one generations to another!
Kids learn to be a good friend and make new friends, great tips to think about not only for children but for adults too.
Thank you!