I think as a parent one of the most difficult things to do is helping your child navigate social situations. It’s particularly tricky because you are rarely there when it things start to kick off and even if you are, you probably missed the start of the exchange. To make matters worse you are dealing with so many variables because you don’t know enough about the other child will react or what their values are. Telling the difference between mean social behaviour and bullying can be a minefield, plus it can be impossible to know whether you have got it right or not. It’s a real minefield, so it’s useful to get some help.
I have been reading The Friendship Maze by Tanith Carey as I got sent a copy to review. It’s an easy read and lends itself to either reading cover to cover or dipping in and out of it. It covers a wide age range from nursery right through into secondary school. It offers practical, research-based strategies to help families guide their children through the maze of social relationships. Sections covered include:
- Helping your child deal with classroom and social media politics
- Inoculate your child against the effects of peer-group pressure, cliques and exclusion
- Learn what’s really going on in your child’s social circle
- Bully-proof your child throughout school
- Work out when to step in and out of your child’s conflicts
- Help your child make friends if they are stuck on the sidelines
To be honest I think with H I’ve had relatively few problems to deal with social situations compared to many. I know though that we have a lot more to come. Currently H only uses Whatsapp in terms of social media. He hasn’t dabbled with Instagram or Facebook. I’m hoping it will stay that way, but I’m aware that Whatsapp could get nasty if group chats get out of hand for instance. We started using it to share pictures and news as a family, but he’s now in groups with his friends. I was interested to see that helping your children navigate social media was one of the sections in the book because this is something that I wanted some strategies to deal with, even though I probably understand more about social media than many parents because of the nature of my job.
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The Friendship Maze Book
All H’s life we’ve been visiting my friend who lives on a farm, in fact we were there just this week for the day. Luckily she has a son, who is close enough in age to get on well with H, and we have had some lovely days together there. When H was little he used to love playing with tractors and farm animal toys, especially when we’d just been to the farm for a visit. The only problem we had is that we didn’t have setting for his farm and he’d create one out of whatever we had to hand. It was much better when we visited the real farm as they’d kitted their son out with a large toy farm as well as all the animals and machinery.
As your child gets older their childcare needs changes. To begin with you might need a nursery or a childminder to provide you with cover whilst you’re at work, but as they get older you need wrap around care and maybe some babysitting. It isn’t always easy to find the right person or company for the job though. If you are new to your area and have no support network to turn to for advice or help then it’s harder still to source the care you need.