Friendship

Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. ~Robert Brault, http://www.robertbrault.com/

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
Japanese Proverb

Remember: "What makes you popular in High School makes you homeless at 40". Jeremy Johnson
While that's not always true, it IS something to think about...and for those who do the wrong things to be popular, it often is.

"A friend is someone who knows everything about you and still likes you."
author unknown

While this is all true, a friend is also someone who makes you, or helps you to make yourself a better person.

We all need friends. Even young children need socialization and “Positive peer relationships—Parent(s) and caregivers seek to provide opportunities for the child to interact positively with other children”. http://www.search-institute.org/system/files/40AssetsEC.pdf

Parents have a significant role in helping to determine the type of friends their children have and are able to keep. Friends have a big impact on behavior and future success.

What are some of the things you can do and why are they important?

Help your child prepare academically and socially for school by teaching basic academic and appropriate social skills and providing practice opportunities.
This is important because children, who struggle with school, often tend to “hang out” with other children who struggle in school, and display disruptive behavior as a way to seek acceptance from a group of peers.

Get to know your children’s friends, by inviting them over and providing appropriate pro-social activities.
Parents who are involved in the lives of their children and who know their children’s friends can help their children develop positive peer relationships.

Know where your children are and who they are with at all times.
With cell phones today, it is pretty easy for children/teens to check in and tell you where they are; while you may not really know where they are. Assuring your children are involved in positive healthy activities helps to keep your children out of trouble and helps them build success for the future.

Involve your children in positive extracurricular activities through organizations such as scouting, 4-H, religious organizations, and positive community minded organizations and agencies.
This provides both an opportunity for children to learn and practice positive skills. Be involved yourself; don’t just leave it to other adults. Show up and help out. Even if it’s not all the time, if you’re there part of the time, you are helping others, learning some good things yourself, and even if you don’t necessarily work directly with your own child, you have a better idea of what’s really going on.

Set curfews for your children.
When any of us are tired or under stress, we have less ability to make good judgments and have more of a tendency to react and cave in to peer pressure and respond to emotion rather than clear thinking.

Search for additional information through the Google Parenting or Scholar Search Engines below.

Supplemental Material:

Children First-40 Developmental Assets: A community project for youth development
Teaching social skills and making friends may not be the first thing we think about when planning our children's individual education programs
Study Explores How Children With Disabilities Make Friends
The Importance of Having a Few Good Friends
Helping Your Child Make Friends
This longitudinal project examined peer influence across five risk behaviors: cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, marijuana use, tobacco chewing, and sexual debut
Friendship Quality as a Predictor of Young Children's Early School Adjustment
Coaching Children in Social Skills for Friendship Making

A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be. ~Douglas Pagels

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world. ~Leo Buscaglia

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. ~Sicilian Proverb

A good friend is cheaper than therapy. ~Author Unknown

If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. ~Edgar Watson Howe

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. ~Elisabeth Foley

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails. ~Donna Roberts

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair. ~Samuel Johnson

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable. ~Dave Tyson Gentry

You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job. ~Laurence J. Peter

The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you've had. ~Author Unknown

It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. ~Marlene Dietrich

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. ~Toni Morrison, Beloved

It takes a long time to grow an old friend. ~John Leonard

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ~Henri Nouwen

A true friend reaches for your hand and touches your heart. ~Attributed to Heather Pryor

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859

The best time to make friends is before you need them. ~Ethel Barrymore

Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little. ~E.W. Howe

If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue. ~Alice Duer Miller

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world. ~Thomas A. Edison

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. ~Plutarch

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
Czech Proverb

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity, 2002