Speaking of Psychology: How to help kids navigate friendship, with Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD

It isn’t always easy to navigate the complicated social dynamics of elementary, middle, or high school. Clinical psychologist and kids’ friendship expert Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, talks about how kids make and keep friends; how their understanding of friendship changes as they grow; why most kids are mean sometimes; and how to help kids navigate tough situations, including arguments and friendship breakups.

Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, (also known as “Dr. Friendtastic”) is an author, psychologist, and mom of four, based in Princeton, NJ. She is the creator of the Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic podcast, where she answers questions from children about making and keeping friends. Her blog, Growing Friendships, on Psychology Today, has over 4.9 million views. Kennedy-Moore has been featured many times in major media, including Live with Kelly and Ryan and The New York Times. Her recent books include Moody Moody Cars (for ages 4-8), Growing Friendships (for ages 6-12), and Kid Confidence (for parents). 

Kim Mills: Having good friends is key to kids’ mental health and well-being, just as it is for adults—but it isn’t always easy to navigate the complicated social dynamics of elementary, middle, or high school. Today we’re going to talk with an expert on kids’ friendships about how children make and keep friends, and how parents can help support them as they do so.

When do kids start to form real friendships? How does their understanding of friendship evolve as they grow from young children to teens? Do all kids need a best friend? What do you do if your child is being bullied or excluded by a peer group? What if your kid is the one doing the excluding? What happens when your child has a friend you don’t like or who doesn’t treat them well? And how do kids navigate arguments with friends, and even the inevitable friendship breakup?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I’m Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a clinical psychologist and author based in Princeton, New Jersey. She’s written many books for children and parents about friendship, including Growing Friendships: A Kid’s Guide to Making and Keeping Friends and Kid Confidence: Help your Child Make Friends, Build Confidence, and Develop Real Self-Esteem. She’s also the creator of the podcast Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic, where she answers questions directly from children about making and keeping friends, offering gentle, practical, and research-based advice on all kinds of friendship issues. Dr. Kennedy-Moore has been featured in major print, radio and TV outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN.com. 

Dr. Kennedy-Moore, thank you for joining me today.

Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD: My pleasure, Kim. I’m delighted to be here.

Mills: At what age do kids start forming real friendships, not just playing with the toddler who happens to be next to them in the sandbox? And how does their understanding of friendship change as they get older?

Kennedy-Moore: Well, you’re absolutely right. There is a developmental sequence in children’s friendships, and at the toddler ages we have that “love the one your with stage” where they’re just playing with whoever’s around. And then they expand to what I call the “I want it my way” stage, and this is for ages about 3 to 6, where they have very limited ability to see someone else’s perspective and they assume that kids, other children, see things exactly the way they do. So when another kid wants something else, it kind of blows their mind.

Then we move into, from 7 to 12, the two-way, fair-weather cooperation, which I call “by the rules” kind of friendship. And here kids have more of an idea of reciprocity, but they’re very strict in how they do it. It is very much quid pro quo, if I do something nice for you, you better do something nice for me, or everything falls apart. They tend to be very judgmental of both themselves and others. This is also the age where we see a lot of those secret clubs where they’re talking forever about who’s in and who’s out and what the rules are, and the club never actually does anything. A friend of mine said that her son at this stage was in a band and they would talk about whose role everybody was playing—but none of them played an instrument. Perfect, right?

And then when we get from about age 12 up, we have those more mature friendships where it’s through thick or thin and they put a high value on closeness with friends. They can accept and even appreciate differences between themselves and other friends, and they’re not quite as possessive as the earlier stages. So this is more like what we adults would think of as a friendship. At an earlier age, if a friend has another friend, they feel deeply betrayed, but once they move into the teen years, they understand that, yeah, we can have multiple friends.

Mills: How did you decide to focus on children’s friendship as a subject for your books and your podcast? What got you interested in this area?

Kennedy-Moore: Well, you could say it came from a personal place because when my family was growing up, we moved about every 3 years. So I became an expert at making friends at a very young age because I had to. And then as an adult, I studied the research about children’s friendships. And I’m a clinical psychologist. So in my practice I hear every day, every week about the concerns that children have about their friendships. Getting along with other people is hard. We adults haven’t managed world peace or even perfect marriages, so it’s understandable that kids would also struggle in their relationships.

But what the research tells us is that friendship is kind of the answer to everything. If you want a child to feel happier, help them make friends. If you want them to cope better with stress—friends. If you want them to be more engaged with school, less likely to be bullied—friends. So we really do want to do what we can to support children’s friendships.

Mills: So speaking of that support, what can parents do that will help their children make friends? That will back them up and give them the knowledge and the wherewithal to go out in the world and buddy up?

Kennedy-Moore: Right, Kim? A lot of times in my practice I see parents who feel very helpless when their kid is having a friendship rough spot, and it’s like, well, I can’t make friends for them. And that’s true, but there are a lot of things that we as parents or as people who care about kids can do to support and nurture their friendships.

What fuels development of children’s friendships from the love the one you’re with friendships of the toddler years to the more intimate and lasting years of the teen years is an increasing ability to understand someone else’s perspective. So that’s something that we adults can help with a lot when we talk through a situation with them. We always want to start with empathy because our children need that understanding and that sense of being held and supported. But then we can help them to imagine the other child’s perspective—how do you think he felt? When that happened, why do you think she did that? And this is kind of expanding their awareness, developing their theory of mind.

We can also talk about feelings as they come up in daily life or as we see it in a movie or a story—and don’t do it so much that you ruin the story, but we can talk about why do you think they did that or, oh, how do you think he reacted there or gosh, she seemed really excited about that—whatever we see. And help them to be aware of this whole inner world. There’s research that when parents talk more about feelings, kids become better able to understand another person’s perspective.

Another thing we can do is place a high value on friendship. Let them see us making time. I know you’re busy, so am I. We’re all busy, but make time for those friendships. Let your child see you going out of your way to get together with friends to do kind things for your neighbors, to put a priority on relationships. And probably the single best thing we as parents can do for our kids to support their friendships is to help them have those one-on-one play dates. That’s what really deepens the friendships. Those one-on-one get togethers. Now in my practice, a lot of times kids will push back and say, “oh, I don’t really know the kid that well.” That’s okay. If you’ve had fun with them once that’s enough, you can invite them over.

Mills: So speaking of inviting them over and play dates, how has social media changed that behavior? Are kids still having play dates or would they rather text and talk on their phones? Well, I don’t even mean talk on their phones. They don’t use their phones to talk.

Kennedy-Moore: They’re not talking on their phones. They kind of have an aversion to do that. It’s really texting or messaging through one of the apps. What research tells us is that social media in general supports and supplements, children’s real life friendships. And for most kids, that’s what they do. Of course, there are cases where they’re just spending all their time on that or it brings them down, but it can’t substitute for that in-person getting together. Inviting somebody over sends a powerful message that, Hey, I like you enough to spend time with you outside of when we have to be together. So it really is a lovely thing. And even if the person says no, you’ve still done that signaling that you are open to friendship.

Often I find that an activity based get together is good because an activity based get together allows the activity to pass over any of the awkwardness because kids know what to do. Often at the beginning of a play date, there’s that awkward moment where one kid says to the other kid, “what do you want to do?” And the other kid says, “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” Right? So we can get past that if you prep your kid beforehand. So have them think of two things that they might want to do with a friend. And then when the friend arrives, you greet the friend and say, “would you like to do A or B?” And that allows the friend to get to playing together as quickly as possible. And that’s what research says, shows whether they’re likely to become closer friends is how much time do they spend playing together. We also want to emphasize to our child that you are the host. So it’s your job to make sure your guest has a good time, and how can you do that? So notice if the guest gets a little bored or gets frustrated, and that’s a good time to suggest two more activities.

Mills: Now, how does a parent’s role change as the child gets older? What happens when you’re dealing with a tween, an early teenage kid who is saying, “mom, I don’t want to talk about this with you.” How can you still help these children?

Kennedy-Moore: Usually when children resist talking about friendship issues, it’s because they’re afraid they’re going to get lectured and scolded, right? So be very, very careful about that. Never criticize your child in front of other kids. There’s actually studies that shows that really hurts your child’s social standing with their peers. And we want to ask questions more than telling answers. When we’re teaching our kids math, we don’t say “the answer is 4.” We take, well, where’s the numerator? Where’s the denominator? And we guide them through that. This is the same thing with learning about getting along with peers. Start with empathy because they need you on your side and pick your moment. When the child is really upset, that is not the time to say, “see, didn’t I tell you if you kept on like that, you’re going to end up like this.” So not a good idea. We have to be first on their side and then we can ask questions. The older the kid is, the more important it is to ask questions rather than give answers. So you might say, “so what do you think you might do?” Or “how do you think she would react if you did that?” And help them to think it through rather than respond impulsively.

Mills: Let’s talk about best friends. You wrote a piece for Psychology Today, the column that you write for that outlet about whether kids need a best friend. What’s your take? Is it important for kids to have a bestie or is it okay to have multiple friendships that just aren’t that close?

Kennedy-Moore: Every now and then in the popular literature, I see articles about, oh, kids shouldn’t have best friends because I don't know why, I guess it’s exclusive, because then they might break up, which is true. But to me, having a best friend is a little bit like falling in love. So we parents and adults, we don’t get to control that for our children, that’s theirs. There are very few ways that children actually have autonomy, but this is one of them. And in the relationships that they choose—so about a third to a half of kids have best friends at any point. There are payoffs to having a best friend in terms of how kids feel and their happiness and sense of belonging. So it can be good, but of course we know that there are different friendship qualities. So a best friend who is getting our kid in trouble, maybe not so good.

And there’s also research showing that the peer group can have a negative influence on our kids. So we want to help our children to make good choices about whom they decide to be friends with. So we can ask them questions, how do you feel when you’re with them? Or do you feel like you can be yourself with them? Or do you feel like you have to kind of fake it or hide things from them? Do you feel like these friends bring out the best in you and guide them towards thinking it through? The one on one play dates can deepen the friendships, spending time together, friendships take time. I read one study and I never saw the original study, so I don’t know how true this is, but it was saying that for adult friendships it takes 30 hours to make a casual friend, 60 hours to make a close friend and 90 hours to make an intimate friend. Isn’t that amazing? So again, I can’t vouch for how accurate those numbers are, but the point is it takes time to build that intimacy.

Mills: So moment ago you talked about maybe your kid has a best friend who’s getting them in trouble, isn’t a child you wish your kid were associating with? What can you as a parent do when you see your kid is with somebody who’s just not a good influence, or maybe isn’t treating your kid very nicely?

Kennedy-Moore: Right? Sometimes kids stick to a not so good friend because they feel like they don’t have any other options. So we can help our kid recognize how they feel when they’re with that friend. Just raise the questions without saying, “dump that kid.” As tempting as it is to say “you’re not allowed to play with them,” be careful because you can have a Romeo and Juliet effect that they suddenly seem more attractive. And if your kid doesn’t have any options, they may feel afloat. Also, they may go into school and say, ”my mom says I’m not allowed to play with you.” That’s not so good.

So I think the best option is to try to fan the flames on other possible friendships and let your child experience the difference between an easier friendship, a kinder friendship, and this one that’s more problematic. You may want to help your child get involved in activities. Kids make friends by doing fun things together. So what is it that your child is interested in or might be interested in that they could do with other people? And that could be a way to find people, find their tribe, find ones that they could relate to and connect with.

Mills: What about when friendships end? How do you help your child through a breakup with somebody who had been a friend? And especially when you get to middle school and everybody goes off in different directions, how do you support your child through that?

Kennedy-Moore: Oh, it’s hard, isn’t it? And research tells us that among first graders, about half of friendships don’t make it from September to June, and among fourth and eighth graders, one quarter of friendships don’t last. So this is very, very common. But children, by definition, lack perspective. They just haven’t been around that long and they haven’t seen that much of the world. So the anguish that they’re feeling right now feels like a forever thing. They’re always going to feel this sad.

There are a couple of ideas here. One is we want to keep the door open—if it was a good friendship before, we want to keep the door open to that reconnecting with that friend. So no slash and burn as things are going about. Don’t diss the other friend to everybody else at school. And what we adults like the idea of kids always talking everything out, but what research tells us is that that doesn’t become, negotiation and compromise doesn’t become the main way that children resolve conflicts until age 19. Before then they either insist and give in or they separate for a little bit and then come back together and just be nice to each other and they step over the conflict.

That’s also very important because one of the basic friendship skills is being able to forgive a friend for those unavoidable mistakes that they make that we’re going to make also. So when a child is going through a friendship breakup, and this can be as bad as a romantic breakup for an adult, the pain is real. We want to empathize with them. Extra time with family can be a good consolation that yes, you’re still wanted, you’re still loved, you still belong. That can be very, very helpful. But we also might want to create opportunities for them to make other friends and just leave the door open that maybe at a later point they can reconnect. I worked with a kid once where he and another boy were best friends, but then they did different sports and they kind of drifted apart and my boy was just really, really hurt by this. And then time went on a couple of years and they started doing the same sport again and they reconnected. So if it was a good friendship once, chances are it may rekindle.

Mills: What if you discover you see signs, maybe that your child is the one who is being mean to other kids or excluding other children. How do you deal with that?

Kennedy-Moore: Oh, that feels awful, doesn’t it? As a parent and it’s like, oh, my gosh, what did I do? How did I fail that this kid would do something mean to somebody else? But let me tell you an interesting study. The researchers got teachers to identify the kids who were especially aggressive or especially non-aggressive, and these were elementary aged kids, and then they video recorded the kids on the playground. I don’t know how they got permission to do this, but they did. What they found was that those especially aggressive kids did some kind of mean behavior every two minutes. But those especially non-aggressive kids, they did some kind of mean behavior every three minutes. So this is common—children’s empathy is not fully developed. They’re not that good at imagining other people’s perspective. They will get better with time.

If we think of ourselves, we are more empathic at age 29 than we were at 19 than we were at 9. Just more experience in the world gives us a greater capacity to empathize with others, and the little frontal lobe grows into, so that helps. So it is normal that kids will make mistakes about getting along with people and they also, so their empathy isn’t fully developed and they experiment with social power. That’s not nice. But it’s also kind of like the baby throwing the spoon off the highchair just to see what happens, right, they’re experimenting.

What we don’t want to do is say “you’re bad” and “you’re a bully” and so forth. Just labeling the kid as bad is not useful. One of the principles that I use in my practice is that we can’t help a child move forward by convincing them of their badness. And when we’re angry, that’s often what we tend to be drawn to do. It’s like you keep doing these mean things. If you end up keep on this, you’re going to end up like that. None of that is helpful because it applies that the next chapter in the story is more meanness. Children learn. We also don’t want to blast them with a punishment because children learn not through suffering, but by doing good. So that’s what we need to figure out is how can we get this kid back on track with being a kind child?

So one technique that I developed, which is probably the best thing I ever invented because it works and it works with children, it works with spouses, it works with coauthors, coworkers, and it’s called a soft criticism. Now, the normal response to criticism is to defend, well, it’s not my fault, and you do it too, and they do it more. So the soft criticism is designed to get around that normal defensiveness. And we start step one by giving an excuse, excuse the excuse says to the child that we know they’re a good person with good intentions, even when they mess up. Also, in order to think of an excuse, we have to stop. Imagine their perspective. That raises our empathy, lowers our anger, great place to start. Plus just at a practical level, if we give them an excuse, they don’t have to come up with one and we can just kind of step over that. So you might say something like, I know you didn’t mean to, you probably didn’t realize. I get that you were trying to whatever it was.

Then step two is the part we want, which is describe the problem. And here what you want to say is when you—bad behavior, bad outcome. So an example might be, I get that you were really frustrated that that girl was saying that you couldn’t sit at the table and that was a mean thing to do, and you were really upset at the same time when you shove her out of her chair, you could really hurt her and you’re the one who ended up in trouble. And then the third step, which is the most important step is we talk about moving forward. So you might say, “what can you do to help her feel better?” Or “what could you do instead if that happens again?”

Or who do you think could help in this? So we’re helping the child to think through options. Research tells us that kids who tend to be aggressive, there are two characteristics from different studies. One of them is that they tend to assume that other people are doing things out of deliberate meanness. And what I do in my practice is I talk about the maybe game. So maybe they’re doing it out of deliberate meanness because they want you to suffer, but probably not. Deliberate meanness, real intentional cruelty, it’s pretty rare. So what are some other reasons why they might have been doing that? And if we can get the child to think of other possibilities, it makes the deliberate meanness explanation less likely. So for example, Jeffrey took your pencil. Now maybe he did it at a deliberate meanness, he wanted you to suffer, but probably not. What are some other possibilities? Maybe he just borrowed it for a second. Maybe he took it without realizing maybe he thought it was his pencil. Maybe it actually was his pencil. They wouldn’t come up with that one.

And then the other thing that these aggressive kids struggle with is they don’t know any other options. So when we as parents can slow things down in a calm moment, not when they’re very heated, when they’re very heated, we just empathize, empathize, empathize, but in a calm moment, help them to think of other options. Or my favorite question, what can you do to help that person feel better? And then we get them back on track of being a good kid.

Mills: What should you do if you have a very shy child and you feel like your kid just isn’t making friends and you’re worried and you think she’s just really unhappy, or maybe she’s not. Maybe she seems fine, but she doesn’t have friends. What should you as a parent do?

Kennedy-Moore: Be careful about labeling the child as shy because that makes it sound like it’s something inherent and unchangeable. So you might use language like it takes you a little while to get comfortable in a new situation, or you like to watch first before you dive in. The other thing we have to keep in mind is that there are many ways to be social and not everybody has to be bounding into the room life of the party. Extrovert, right? There is certainly room in the world for a quieter way of interacting. We want to work with rather than against our child’s natural tendencies. So this might be by choosing activities that fit this child’s interest and then it’s very easy for them or it’s easier for the child because the conversation comes naturally from whatever the activity is. And that could be a way in.

Sometimes we want to help them learn specific skills like how give a friendly greeting. I talk about four steps in this. So you smile to show that you’re happy to see the person, you look them in the eye, or if that’s uncomfortable, you look them in the forehead. If you look people in the forehead, right between the eyebrows from a little bit of a distance, it looks the same as looking them in the eyes. So that can be a way for kids who are uncomfortable with eye contact to do that. Then you say hi, and you say the person’s name because that makes the greeting personal. It’s like, I’m happy to see you. Now, some kids will resist this. I don’t want to do that. It’s weird. So with those kids, I start a step back and say, “okay, tomorrow when you go into school, I just want you to count how many greetings you see.” And what they come back with is, and they come to see that that is the expected behavior. That is the typical behavior. So they’re actually standing out by not grading people.

Kids who feel anxious around their peers tend to look down and look away, and they’re focused on their own distress. But the message that they’re sending to other kids is, I don’t like you and I don’t want anything to do with you. That’s not how they feel, but that’s where they’re communicating. So with these children, we can help them role play greetings until they feel comfortable doing them and then maybe even set a goal of greet however many people each day, and little by little they will become more comfortable with it. There was another study that I read that was talking about socially anxious children, and they found that there were two main groups. One group of these anxious kids withdrew and stayed by themselves. The other group was equally anxious, but they were in the mix of things and they just kind of smiled and nodded, and those kids did just fine.

So with some of my clients, I’ll say all you have to do is smile and nod. Sometimes you can help them to just learn some tips about how to have a conversation. You can enter a group with a compliment, a sincere compliment. It’s like a little gift and it tells the person I like you. Also, we tend to people who appreciate our finer qualities, so it makes them like you a little bit better also. Or there’s another thing from research about how to join a group. We adults tend to tell the kids, go over there and introduce yourself and ask if you can play. No, this is not what happens on the playground. So what they need to do is a sequence that I call “watch, then blend.” So watch what the other kids are doing and then slide into the action without interrupting it, without drawing attention to yourself.

Think about it from a kid’s perspective, going over there and saying, “hi, I’m Sara. Can I play too?” is rude because it stops the play. Everybody else has to turn around, look at your kid, decide if they want her to play, and that’s just too much of an opening for the mischievous kids who are going to say, “no, you can’t play.” So that’s not ideal. So instead, they can join by either giving a compliment or just trying to slide into the action and do what everybody else is doing. So look around, see what they’re doing. Do that, do that.

Mills: Sounds like good advice for navigating a cocktail party too.

Kennedy-Moore: Exactly. Well, the same principle applies to older kids and teens and adults. And here the watch then blend sequence is about matching the emotional tone of the group. So if everybody is talking about the latest collectible and our boy comes over and says, “well, these are stupid. I mean, they’re just cardboard with pictures printed on them.” That’s like a sour note in a melody. And he may as well have a sign above his head saying, “I don’t belong here.” So we don’t want that. He can either ask an interested question starting with how or what, avoid why, because that can sound very judgmental. Why did you do such a thing? Or he can, yeah, so ask an interested question or just give a compliment or make a comment about the thing that matches the tone. If everybody’s enthusiastic, he has to be enthusiastic or he has to find a group where they all hate the collectibles, and that’s fine too.

Or another example is if everybody’s complaining about the social studies test and our girl comes in and says, “well, I thought it was easy”—sour note there. Now she doesn’t have to lie and pretend that she’s stupid, like deceit is not a path towards intimacy. But what she could do is match the tone and say, yeah, I can’t believe there were four short answers, or it’s so unfair that we had the social studies test on the same day that we had the math test or whatever, and that she’s matching the tone of the group.

Mills: Now, do you see the same friendship dynamics at work in boys and in girls? I mean, as adults, men tend to have fewer close friends than women do. Is that true among children?

Kennedy-Moore: There is some research about differences between boys and girls friendships and anybody who’s ever looked at a playground. So the separation at a certain age, and then they come together as they get older towards the teen years. So some people have kind of characterized it as a deficit for boys that girls have more intimate friendships. Boys tend to be in larger groups. But the flip side of that is that girls tend to have higher expectations of their friends, so they feel more betrayed when the friend doesn’t meet those expectations and isn’t there for them the way they think they ought to be. Boys tend to, and again, these are generalizations, but boys tend to be better at stepping past a conflict and keep the game going kind of thing, and that is a strength. So there’s been mixed results about whether boys or girls have more conflicts, and I think they’re about even is my read on things.

Mills: Now you host a podcast for kids called Dr. Friendtastic—great name—where you answer questions directly from children. Do you have any favorite questions and answers you could tell us about?

Kennedy-Moore: Sure. Yes. So this is probably my favorite work activity. So the podcast comes out weekly and it’s just five minutes, and every episode features an audio recording of a question about friendship from a child. And the kids’ questions are deep, I just love them. So one of them that came up recently, there was a little 8-year-old girl named Vera, and she sent in a question asking, do we have to change ourselves to make friends? How cool is that? Oh, my gosh, I couldn’t wait to answer it. So my answer was that my favorite questions in life, not just on the podcast, are ones where it looks simple on the surface, but the more you think about it, the more questions it raises. So what do you mean by change? What do you mean by self? What do you mean by friends? This is just delicious.

And I went through all of those and I talked about how we are all different in different situations, different relationships, and we also change over time. At the same time, we do have a sense of authenticity, of moments where we think this is who I am or want to be, and that’s beautiful, that’s beautiful, but we also will sometimes do what a friend wants, even if it’s not exactly what we want. But this is very authentic because it taps into our deepest values of caring for the friend. So the answer to the question, do we need to change ourselves to make friends is no, we need to show up as our most authentic caring selves.

But I love the intellectual challenge of, can I say something meaningful and practical in five minutes? And the children’s voices are delicious, and their questions are really, really wonderful. Some of them are very specific to kids. So I had a little boy who called, sent in a recording saying that somebody had punched his example owl. Oh, my goodness. But some of the issues are just things that we as adults are continuing to grapple with. So I had a little girl who sent in a question about a friend breaking off the friendship because of just one little thing, and I got to talk about perspective taking that sometimes what feels small to us might feel big to her. Another kid wrote in about a friend lying to them. Then I was able to talk about, well, yes, lying is bad, but do you make it easy for your friend to tell the truth to you?

So I’m always pushing for empathy and reflection and what can you do? So I wrote an article once about the limits of #mentalhealth, and I’ve written 10 books. I’ve done dozens of videos, and I don’t know how many articles, so I believe deeply in giving psychology away. But what I don’t like is a lot of times #mentalhealth is about pointing out how somebody else is bad. That’s not useful in therapy. If you are talking about somebody else’s foibles, you’re not doing therapy because that person’s not in the room. We can’t control them. We can only control what you do, how you think about the situation, how you respond to the situation, the choices that you make.

Mills: So last question. We’ve just hit the 4-year anniversary of the COVID pandemic. There was a lot written early on about how COVID isolation could affect kids’ development and their friendships. So 4 years out, do you think we’re still seeing effects from the pandemic?

Kennedy-Moore: I do, and I don’t have data on that, but my teacher colleagues tell me that children are less able to deal with conflict and less willing to reach out. Oh, my gosh, I have to pressure my clients to, say, get together in person because they’re used to too used to staying apart. So I think that that is really, really important. This finger pointing, I don’t know if it’s the pandemic or it’s the times we live in, but I think that that is really unhelpful. For instance, I think the word bullying is thrown around way too easily. And as a clinical psychologist, I have seen the very serious cases of peer abuse. So that is very difficult and very important. But what I’ve seen a lot more often is what I call ordinary meanness. And this is just clumsy efforts to handle a conflict. For instance, I had a young girl who was very upset because her friend was sitting with someone else on the bus, and so she decided to write a long letter to the friend listing everything that the friend had ever done. She was convinced that this friend was bullying her by excluding her.

The friend got the letter and accused my client of bullying her because the letter was really mean. But there was no bullying on either side. It was just really a clumsy effort to resolve a conflict. It was hurt feelings and just not knowing how to get past that friendship rough spot. So I don’t believe in trying to separate the good kids from the bad kids because we all make mistakes, but I believe in helping kids learn to speak up in kind ways to forgive their friends. In one of my books, Growing Friendships, I talk about forgiveness guidelines. I had a client once who—it was the mom and the kid and I were talking about who could he get together with? And the mom said, well, how about the boy down the street? And the kid responded, oh, because 2 years ago in travel soccer, he never passed the ball.

Do you think that other kid remembers that? Absolutely not. So the forgiveness guidelines are things like, if it wasn’t that big of a deal, let it go. If it happened once and is never likely to happen again, let it go. If the person is genuinely sorry for it, let it go. If it happened more than a month ago, definitely let it go. We don’t want to be holding onto grievances like beads on a string. This is part of being a good friend, is opening our hearts to forgiveness. There’s another thing that I see a lot, which is anxiety about friendship. And what happens is the kids will seek reassurance. We know that that’s one of the characteristics of anxiety is constantly seeking reassurance to try to make the anxiety go away. But it actually raises the anxiety because as soon as you get the reassurance, the worry pops up again. Because what if it might look like with kids is one girl says to another girl, are you mad at me? And she says, no. Are you sure you’re not mad at me? No. Really? Are you absolutely positive? You’re not mad at me. Now I am. My friend was like, well, I wasn’t.

So it’s actually a gift that we give our friends by giving them our trust that even if we’re not together, and even if we haven’t spoken in a little while, there’s still a connection, there’s still a liking. That can be a hard thing to do.

Mills: Well, Dr. Kennedy-Moore, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been very edifying, I think, to everyone, not just kids and parents, but to all listeners. We should all be paying attention to your advice.

Kennedy-Moore: Good. Yeah. And I do have a book that was published by Magination Press.

Mills: And is that Moody Moody Cars?

Kennedy-Moore: Yes. So this is for the little ones, 4 to 8. And this one I partnered with Michael Furman, who takes these gorgeous photos of vintage cars. And to me, they look like they have faces and expressive faces. So the text goes, “Freewheeling! Full of feeling! Traveling near and far. Honk if you see me, I’m a moody, moody car.” So it’s very fun. And research tells us that when children at 5 years old, if they are better at recognizing emotions, then 4 years later they’re better socially and emotionally in their functioning. So this is important. The foundation is giving kids a glimpse into that emotional world. And my most recent book is Growing Feelings, which talks about children’s feelings about friends, because where do the big feelings come up? Right? In friendships, it’s not usually just in the abstract. It’s because of our relationships. So this one talks about how to understand and cope with and communicate about our feelings in ways that build strong and caring relationships.

Mills: Well, again, thank you so much. This has been very, very interesting and a lot of fun to talk to you.

Kennedy-Moore: My pleasure.

Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. 

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I’m Kim Mills.