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500 Friendship Tips You Can Start Using Today!

Probably or Possibly?

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Question Mark On Dice Showing Confusion And UncertaintyBy Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs

One of the strategies in our anxiety workbook is to consider whether something may possibly occur or probably happen. I’ve been employing this technique over the past couple of weeks with the kids in my social groups, who have been bringing up current events and talking about how dangerous the world is, the threat of war, that our nuclear plants are growing old and will melt down, and various other huge, scary issues that none of us has any control over.

Probably or possibly questions can be used for big ticket scary things and small ones too. Is it possible you could get stung by a bee when you go outside? Sure. Is it probably going to happen? No. Is a possible you can forget your lines in the school play? Yes. Is it probable? No. Could the many big challenges facing our planet, or devastating weather possibly occur? Of course. Anything is possible.

As I was talking about this with the kids, I was happily surprised by a comment one of the girls made. She said, “Good things could possibly happen too! For example, it isn’t probable that an ice cream truck is going to by, but it’s possible!” That got me thinking that we all spend a lot of time on “what if” thoughts and worrying about the bad stuff that could possibly happen. Wouldn’t it be better to spend our “what if” thoughts on the possibilities of what good stuff could come our way?

Coaches are Role Models for Better or Worse

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By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea

As spring sports swing into gear, I (Nadine) recall when my son played club soccer.  He had a coach at one point who had played the game at the collegiate level. The coach had just finished his undergraduate program and had enrolled in graduate school. He was younger than most of the coaches but knew the game inside and out. As a newer coach lacking in experience, he did not understand the impact that he had on his young players. He used to wrestle with them, which they loved but he didn’t realize that he only engaged with the best soccer players on the team. In practice, the best players received the best from him while comparatively ignored the lesser talented kids.

coach 2Whenever they played the girls’ team in practice, he would make chauvinistic comments. The girls would usually win, which would result in a display of intense anger. If he played against the girls, he would kick the ball at them as though he was on his college team despite the fact that these kids were 10-12 years old. His temper was quick, and he could be intimidating. At one point during a game when the referee didn’t call it the way he saw it, he ripped into her. He was screaming and swearing and losing it on her. She sat in the middle of the field with all the players and parents watching her cry. To her credit, she did yell back that she was only 16 and that he couldn’t talk to her like that. The parents tried to stop him from continuing his attack on her. It was an awful scene and humiliating for the team he represented.

This coach was young, inexperienced, immature and chauvinistic. How much of an impact did he have on this team of 10-year-old boys? No one knows. One can only hope that they weeded through their experience with him as their coach and only the seeds of the positive lessons grew.

Your Nine (Yes, Just 9) Seconds Could Save a Life

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Stop WatchBy Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs

For the kids that attend our centers, bullying is an on-going concern. Lately, it feels to us that bullying is GROWING at an alarming rate, despite all of the bullying prevention talk and programs that are provided at schools.

It is foolish of us to think that we will ever prevent or stop bullying from happening completely. It is also foolish of us to think that children should handle being bullied on their own, learn to suck it up or work it out. We can give kids the tools and the language to use, but it up to us as adults to protect children from physical or psychological harm. There are very distinct differences between conflict and bullying. Coping with conflict is a different set of skills that could be discussed in another post. Kids should not have to cope with being bullied.

As we talk to adults or observe in schools, many times it is a matter of the adult not knowing what to say or do if he or she suspects a bad situation. There is actually a very simple action that you can take, and it only takes 9 seconds.* When do you use the 9-second response? When you see or sense something called Gray Zone behaviors. These are things that kids do to each other that technically do not break the rules. These are actions such as eye-rolling when another child speaks, giving another child disgusted looks, whispering in small groups about another child, insults wrapped in a derogatory tone of voice, cruel laughter or teasing and any other sneaky type of not-nice choices.

If we adults turn our backs, ears or “the sense that something is off” on Gray Zone choices, we are giving those children implied permission to continue those mean behaviors. Children given this permission will increase those behaviors into full-blown bullying because we have allowed it to happen.

The 9-second response is this simple:

Step 1: ALWAYS NOTICE. MOST IMPORTANT. Even if you just suspect it.
Step 2: Separate the kids, don’t mediate. Bringing the bully and victim together has been proven not to work and only makes things worse.
Step 3: Speak to the child who was demonstrating a gray zone behavior by using language such as, “I saw (or heard) that. It’s unkind, and I don’t want to see it (or hear it) again.”
Step 4: Follow up with the other child later only IF NEEDED. Keep the child who was mean on your radar to ensure that it has stopped. It can be in a friendly way, but he or she needs to know you have eyes on them.
Step 5: If it MIGHT be bullying, REPORT it using the systems in place for your particular school system.

We have all heard or seen the horrific and sad outcomes of children who have taken their own lives due to being bullied. If you think about it, your 9-seconds could very possibly someday save a life.

*The Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) is the source for the 9-Second Response to Gray Zone Behaviors.

 

Two Basic Strategies to Manage Anxiety

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shy (2)By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea

Anxiety can be tricky business. It can come on due to events in someone’s life or a small thing that might happen that becomes a huge deal in someone’s mind. For others, they feel anxious but are not able to pinpoint a particular event that is triggering it. It might just be that they are wired that way or past experiences have left them feeling generally anxious a lot of the time. Others tend to recall only the negative aspects of their lives without any attention paid to the good things that occur. In addition to seeking mental health counseling for anxiety, these strategies have also been proven to be effective. Here are two tips to help begin to manage anxiety.

Tapping

For some people, thinking about anxiety from an intellectual standpoint rather than an emotional one can be empowering. When anxious thoughts and feelings start to take hold, your body reacts. Your adrenal glands release the hormones adrenaline and cortisol through the body. This can make thinking clearly a real challenge. Anxiety can quickly take over so quickly that recalling and trying to use taught strategies can be daunting. To release the anxiety without a lot of cognitive thought, many people benefit from the exercise of tapping. Check out this 5 minute video on how to do basic tapping to see if it works for you. Click here for how to tap

3 Good Things

Another very effective way to begin to feel in control of anxious feelings is to use the positive psychology technique of writing down 3 good things that happen each day and why those things were good. By doing this, the thoughts that you have during the day will focus more on the good than the bad because you know that you will need to write down those things each night. It sounds like such a simple, insignificant task but the effect of the exercise is very powerful. Here is a clip from the psychologist who created this technique, Martin Seligman: Seligman on 3 Good Things.

Research on the efficacy of tapping: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/research-review-shows-eft-emotional-freedom-techniques_us_592ef89ae4b0d80e3a8a3270
For more about stress: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20046037

Nadine Briggs, Director of Simply Social Kids and Donna Shea, Founder of the Peter Pan Center for Social and Emotional Growth are authors of the How to Make and Keep Friends books series. They specialize in creating simple tips that teach kids with social challenges the social language of friendship.

Connect with Briggs and Shea on www.howtomakeandkeepfriends.com, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

When do the adults come into “play?”

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mean teamBy Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs

I’ve spent several pleasant mornings and evenings in the month of March presenting workshops for various extended school day programs. I love talking to these groups because we have so much in common. We, as adults who enjoy the company of kids, are also the front line connection to helping kids learn the important lessons that encompass social-emotional learning.

For those of us in our generation, we remember coming home from school and being sent outside to play. Out there, in the wild, is where many of us learned what worked and what didn’t when it came to peer interactions. If I was bossy or too controlling, the neighborhood kids would go home. If I wasn’t nice, they weren’t nice. We chanted “sticks and stones.” We learned how to avoid the “bullies.” Our parents didn’t have a direct connection to where we were or what we were doing.

These days, the after-school life of kids is typically vastly different than what we experienced. There are many more opportunities for learning more about specific interests, organized sports, etc. Many families with both parents working are utilizing the terrific folks at after-school programs. With this change though, there are more adults in a child’s life than there used to be. Kids are well-supervised in their after school interactions. There is the benefit of less risk of physical injury, making sure homework is done and having an adult intervene when problems arise. Certainly, I can think of several childhood experiences in my own life out in the wild that I wish an adult had been available for help and guidance.

There is, however, a different risk, that might not be so beneficial to kids. At these workshops, we’ve discussed the tendency of kids to rely on adults to solve all of their problems, even the small ones. Many children are not developing the coping skills needed to deal with adversity.

The discussions turned to just how much adults should involve themselves in the play of children. Where do we step in and where do we step back? Personally, I think it is a balance that can be managed when done purposefully. It’s important when observing kids in moments of conflict or adversity (that isn’t physical or aggressive) to wait and see what they are capable of in terms of problem-solving. And then, if needed, teach them to problem solve, rather than solve it for them. And if it isn’t a problem that can be solved the way a child wants or demands it be solved, teach them the coping skills necessary to overcome the moment or the challenge. Resilience is built one coping thought at a time.

 

Finding Personal Power on the Playground

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By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea

An innocent girl just wanting to be friends sits unknowingly at a lunch table in her elementary school. She sits with the same group of girls everyday. She likes them and she wants them to like her. The other girls are chatting excitedly with each other. But they don’t chat with her. They are enjoying this social time with Softballeach other but not engaging with her. She, however, doesn’t realize that she is not wanted at that table. She thinks these girls are her friends. They are not. She follows them outside to recess wanting to run, play and have fun. They are not wanting to run, play and have fun with her. They form clubs to exclude her. They tattle to try to get her in trouble. She asks to play and they say no. They do what they can to see her cry. And cry she does. Nearly every day alone in a corner seemingly unseen by the adults who are meant to keep her safe. Each day, she feels worse about herself, powerless even, and each day she keeps trying to get them to like her. Each time they make her cry, they become more powerful.

But then she learns that she’s worthy of better. She begins to see that this isn’t friendship at all. She gains self-confidence and some control over her fragile emotions. She learns that she has a choice and that within that choice lies power.

She asks them to play and they say no. They are expecting the tears. They want to see her be destroyed by their rejection. But she makes a choice. She decides that they aren’t worth the sadness. She pulls her head up, looks around for someone else to play with and she walks away. No tears, no hiding in a corner, and no sadness. She finds a new friend and she runs, plays and has the best recess ever. She has found her power and with that, the bullies have lost theirs.

Nadine Briggs, Director of Simply Social Kids and Donna Shea, Founder of the Peter Pan Center for Social and Emotional Growth are authors of the How to Make and Keep Friends books series. They specialize in creating simple tips that teach kids with social challenges the social language of friendship.

Connect with Briggs and Shea on www.howtomakeandkeepfriends.com, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

It is More Important That I Listen

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Listen To Me Sign Showing Notice Or Message

By Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs

I (Donna) just finished reading the book “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” by Angela Duckworth. This quote she used from a parent stuck with me enough to email it to myself, so I am sharing it with you:

“Jackie remembers that when Jeff decided to build an infinity cube, essentially a motorized set of mirrors that reflect one another’s images back and forth ad infinitum, she was sitting on the sidewalk with a friend.” Jeff comes up to us and is telling us all the science behind it, and I listen and nod my head and ask a question every once in a while. After he walked away, my friend asked if I understood everything. And I said, “It’s not important that I understand everything. It’s important that I listen.”

I have conversations on a daily basis with kids about things and topics I don’t understand. Minecraft is the first thing that comes to mind. I tell the kids that I most certainly support Minecraft, but I don’t speak it. But I listen to opinions on creative versus survival modes and all of the other topics that excite and interest the young people I see each week. We have mentioned in a past blog the 2 x 10 strategy of spending 2 minutes listening to a child for 10 days in a row and talking about anything that the child wants to talk about. I was reminded of it again as I presented a workshop this week. Here is the full article.

Kids are typically in the position of needing to be the listener and being told what to do. Imagine how good it must feel to have the chance to have a turn to be listened to.

A Good Sport Plays By the Rules

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By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea

During a social group last week, a group of 9 year old boys decided to have a “Connect 4” tournament. They had figured out how to have two games going with the winner of each to play each other and so on. All sportsmanship sharingwas going relatively well until one player suggested they try a“Connect 6” version. Mayhem ensued. This seemingly innocent suggestion was met with a fair amount of yelling. “NO WAY! We ‘re playing Connect FOUR!” and “THAT”S NOT GONNA WORK!” The yelling response is a blog for another day and, quite frankly, why some of the kids are in a social group. But the mere suggestion that the group play by a different set of rules set them off. Changing the rules or the way the game is played is common among kids. The adult perspective is that they like to add their own “flair” to games or it’s just their imaginations coming out to play. The peer perspective is that they are ruining the game.

Playing by the rules is one of the key elements of good sportsmanship. Here are a few tips for following the rules from our soon-to-be-released book, I Need to Win! Tips for Kids on Good Sportsmanship.

  1. Reviewing the rules before playing can help to avoid confusion or disagreements. If there is a disagreement on the rules, a good plan is to check the rules. People may have different ways of playing a game. The internet is a good place to check for official rules (kids should check with an adult before going online).
  2. If everyone agrees to change a rule, then it is okay to use the new rule (but everyone must agree to the change).
  3. “Customizing” the rules or changing them constantly to a person’s own advantage will be annoying to other people trying to play.
  4. Kids should be encouraged to play strategically (making the best move available) instead of revengefully (getting even with someone for something they did to you in the game). There are fewer arguments when everyone plays strategically.

Playing by the rules is one aspect of good sportsmanship that kids should keep in mind. Sometimes kids can be so focused on winning that they don’t see the longer impact of not playing by the rules. Children will not want to play with kids if the play becomes frequently frustrating. It is an often unnecessary source of conflict that can be avoided. For more tips on good sportsmanship and friendship, check out our book series on Amazon.com.

Nadine Briggs, Director of Simply Social Kids and Donna Shea, Founder of the Peter Pan Center for Social and Emotional Growth are authors of the How to Make and Keep Friends books series. They specialize in creating simple tips that teach kids with social challenges the social language of friendship.

Connect with Briggs and Shea on www.howtomakeandkeepfriends.com, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

8 Tips for Interacting with an Anxious Child

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By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea

Children who seek a high level of control can present with a great deal of rigidity when they are asked to go about their daily routine. It becomes a struggle about things going their way or not at all. As parents, this lockdown mode can create a high anxietylevel of frustration as we struggle to convince our kids to comply. Here are eight tips to try the next time your child is locking down due to extreme anxiety over their for control:

  1. When you feel frustration, communicate empathy- tell him or her you understand that they are upset and that you will do what you can to help.
  2. Keep your responses vague – if you start to offer possible solutions to a problem when someone is upset, there is a good chance that they will dismiss all of your ideas. A phrase such as, “we’ll figure it out” that is vaguer is more likely to offer comfort without fueling the anxiety.
  3. Find ways to consider the good things in life without being obvious – “Did you see the super cute thing Rover did today? ”
  4. Be careful with what your child hears you say to others – assume that your child is always listening. Kids can become very upset when they hear their parents recount unpleasant events or express their anger or disappointment.
  5. Remind your child that people do the best they can – when things don’t go the way your child expects or if people don’t respond the way they want, it might be helpful to remind him or her that everyone is doing their very best. Their best might not be perfect or even ideal, but it’s their best.
  6. When your child is calm, make a list of things he or she can control vs. things that are not within their control. For example, things that happened in the past are not something that can be controlled. Ruminating on past events is not going to change things but planning a strategy for if it happens again is something they can control.
  7. Change the channel from the bad things that are upsetting to ideas for how to make things better.
  8. Try not to be authoritative even if they are breaking the rules or being disrespectful. Instead tell them that you know things seem hard right now and that you are there to support them.

Understanding how to react to kids during very anxious times can help parents reduce the anxiety and work towards compliance, rather than becoming a source of escalation and further frustration.

Nadine Briggs, Director of Simply Social Kids and Donna Shea, Founder of the Peter Pan Center for Social and Emotional Growth are authors of the How to Make and Keep Friends books series. They specialize in creating simple tips that teach kids with social challenges the social language of friendship.
Connect with Briggs and Shea on www.howtomakeandkeepfriends.com, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The Secret to Friendship

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By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea

Have you ever considered why your friends are your friends? What is it about those particular people that draws you toward them and them toward you? Among the people you meet, how do you decide which ofanxiety, friendship, social thinking them you want to invest time in to develop a friendship? Certainly logistics of how often you see that person and whether or not you have common interests come into play but what is the secret ingredient that tips a person from being an acquaintance to being a buddy? There’s a secret to friendship that goes beyond shared experiences and interests.

I (Nadine) play a game in my teen social skills groups called Talk Show Host. The teens take turns being the talk show host and guest. We prepare them by discussing some of the greats like Jimmy Fallon or Ellen Degeneres. If needed, we will also write a list of interests or facts that we know about this person to prepare for the interview. Then we share the secret.

Good friends genuinely care about the life of the other person. They ask about and listen with interest to the good, the bad and the mundane without overly discussing themselves.

If you watch talk show hosts interview their guests, they are excited to see that person, they lean forward when interacting, they show interest with laughter or follow up questions. What they don’t usually do is talk about themselves. They also don’t give unwanted advice or tell the person about mistakes they’ve made. When we play Talk Show Host, kids have an opportunity to practice the secret of friendship with their “guest”.

They listen, show interest and care about the other person. That, above all else, is the secret to friendship.

Nadine Briggs, Director of Simply Social Kids and Donna Shea, Founder of the Peter Pan Center for Social and Emotional Growth are authors of the How to Make and Keep Friends books series. They specialize in creating simple tips that teach kids with social challenges the social language of friendship.
Connect with Briggs and Shea on www.howtomakeandkeepfriends.com, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.