Teaching children (and yourself) how to choose friends

If you have a child that seems popular and have a lot of friends and family who keep loading your toy box with plush toys that you feel are completely unnecessary clutter, here’s a good use for them: Teach your kids how to choose friends with this discussion.

• Do you want all of those plush toys?
• Mmmeh? No. (If they are TOTALLY attached to all of them, don’t pry them away from them, but if they seem undecided, help them decide.)
• OK, we know all of these plushies are cute in their own way, right, but there’s a bit too many of them. We know there’s a lot of kids out there who would love them SO MUCH, so what do you say, you pick the ones YOU love, and we let the rest of them go to new homes to kids who will love them more than you ever will?

Teach kids that “their friends” have a value that the child (teen) doesn’t HAVE TO give to them. Even if THEY don’t love that plushie or that person, doesn’t mean they’re TRASH. Therefore, always take the plushies to a charity shop, EVEN knowing some of them might STILL end up in the trash considering they are truly… A bit too much to a lot of people.

The problem popular people face is that they feel responsible for giving other people validation by being friends with them, even when we are not very… enthusiastic about that friendship. It is a type of narcissistic reaction: I am ruining your life if I’m not friends with you. Teach your kids that their friendship doesn’t mean EVERYTHING to all people. They are not OBLIGATED to love everybody who loves them. These people already have a worth and value. They are SOMEBODY’s perfect friend or lover (or a plush toy). To someone else, they are perfection. You should never hold onto plushies or people who you don’t think is perfection, because someone else needs them for who they are. They are SOMEONE ELSE’S happiness.

Teach your kids to give the people in their lives enough respect to know they won’t be alone forever even if you won’t be friends with them just now.

The next lesson is to deal with the fact that some kids will actually end up alone… Often, authentically for a reason. Then, teach them to ONLY make friends with that person if they truly feel a connection with that person, and then teach them how to be the kind of person who people want to be friends with.

Teach your kids to choose between making personal friends with that person FOR LIFE (because that’s how it’s going to likely be with a bullied kid) OR take it up as a project: I will HELP YOU find friends, but I won’t BE your friend, because it wouldn’t work right. They need to learn how to make friends rather than how to be your kid’s friend. Obviously, the older the kid is, the better they will understand this problem. And the younger they are, try not to load them with too much responsibility for the bullied kid. Don’t overload them with social pressures and moral high grounds at that age. It won’t be good for them. You need to be SUPER MATURE to HELP someone you don’t want ACTUALLY want to be friends with, as it will become a problem to one or the other kid down the line.

And yes. This comes from my personal experience of ALWAYS feeling obligated to love every plush toy and subsequently charity case friends, and if you regard someone a charity case, they are not a real friend. I cannot emphasize this enough; although you’d be teaching your child to be a good person, you will actually set your child up for a lot of miserable stuff by obligating them to love a friend first, then a man or a woman that they don’t truly love, then their own kids that they had with an incompatible partner and so forth.

Teach them EVERYONE has value without your children’s love and friendship. They will be loved BY SOMEBODY ELSE, because they are not worthless to everybody, even if they don’t have a worth or value to your child.

Also, don’t let your kids RATIONALIZE their choice of friends too much. It doesn’t matter if the plushie is a bit worn, or if they’re the oldest, or if they’re the less expensive one or more expensive one, who gave it to your kid (unless they actually feel that way). Help them find their AUTHENTIC FEELINGS rather than teach them how to manipulate their own feelings into some twisted form of what they actually feel.

Don’t let them give up their FAVORITE plushies either in an act of charity, because THOSE ONES represent their TRUE friends and their TRUE lovers, and you have to teach them to express their love for the people who they GENUINELY love, not people (plushies) who they “SHOULD” love by some bizarre standard as if there were people who deserve more love than others simply by… I don’t know, because they can’t pay their gas bill or because they can..? These things are not factors in “deserving love”. LOVE is amazing because it isn’t about DESERVE. It is about what you REALLY FEEL for someone… Despite it all.

If you have already taught your kids to try and manufacture love for things and people who they probably don’t love, lead up with: “You know how I’ve taught you to love everybody and to be friends with everybody? Let’s try this as an experiment…” And then, ask them: “Which felt better?” “Are you sure?”

Just saying: The thing that FEELS BETTER in a mischievous way is usually the better spiritual answer. It’s REAL. It’s TRUE. It’s the AUTHENTIC FEELING, the one that feels a little evil and selfish.

Subscribe to get a Daily Message