What’s the importance of friendship ? More often than not, we as parents, while focusing on improving the physical health of our children, tend to forget about their emotional and mental wellbeing. This is where childhood friendships become important. While making friends is something that comes naturally to kids, there could be instances, when they may feel hesitant to meet new ones. This is where they need your help as parents. Did you know that childhood friendship comes with its own set of benefits? Let us take a look at them here.

Builds self-confidence:

The entire process of meeting new people, picking up conversations and then becoming friends is bound to have a positive impact on a child’s confidence levels. These very skills would become very important as they enter adulthood, when they play a key role in personal and professional success.

Teaches empathy: 

Childhood friendships teach children about empathy at a young age. Children get to know each other, as well as respect another person’s point of view.

Stress busters: 

Friends are known to be one of the best stress busters. This is perhaps true for any age group. After all it is with your friends that you share a good amount of your thoughts and spend the most amount of time, at school.

Builds social skills: 

One of the most significant fact that develops and depicts the importance of friendship during childhood days is…Childhood friendships play a key role in developing the social skills of children. It helps to sharpen their inter-personal communication skills. These skills developed at a young age, are known to last a lifetime. These very skills would help them later on when they enter a professional environment, where team bonding becomes important. If your child feels hesitant to strike up conversations with other fellow children, then help them overcome the challenge. Teach them about the ways in which they could break the ice with other kids.

Need to do as a parent

While the above were some reasons shows the importance of friendship during childhood days, there are certain things that you need to do as a parent to nurture these friendships.

• The first thing that you need to do is to be the ideal role model. Remember your child is always observing your behaviour. Show them that you are caring towards your friends.
• One of the best ways to encourage friendships at a young age is by allowing children to participate in different sports. Apart from the health benefits, sports also helps develop friendships, apart from teaching children about the importance of team spirit and conflict resolution skills.
• As parents you can always read out bed time stories about great friendships from different parts of the world. Teach your children about key character traits such as sharing and empathy at a young age, also the importance of friendship that lasts for their lifetime. All this will make it easy for your child to make some really good friends.

As one of the best CBSE schools in Coimbatore, we have designed several activities which help develop their inter-personal communication and social skills. And also, we make sure that children are given the right kind of atmosphere to excel in academics, while also nurturing their innate talents.