Picturing Friendship

“Proud Momma” was the title of a text I received this week from the parent of a fourth grader. To my surprise, it contained only a piece of artwork, a pencil drawing created by her daughter, a self-portrait of her with her friends. They were sitting, facing away from the artist, on a bench with their arms draped lovingly around each other’s backs. 

I immediately got why this mom was so proud. I had interviewed her for my book, The Best Things Mothers Do, and I understood that the art work contained a whole journey of social development.

Adults often have a rosy picture of how children’s friendships should be. Parents of two-year-olds sometimes want them to make a best friend when they are just learning to sit next to each other and share materials. It’s normal for children to have altercations and misunderstandings, and encouraging them to develop close relationships involves understanding that the struggle is part of the process.

The fourth-grader who drew the lovely drawing of friendship occasionally had a hard time with her peers starting in second grade when she sometimes felt left out. Her teacher gave her a journal and suggested she record some of her feelings. In third grade, she got brave about telling her classmates that she felt upset if they ignored her on the playground. Her teachers applauded her efforts and she developed new communication skills.

However, the process was painful, and it would have been natural for her parents to blame other children or try to coach their daughter to fit in more easily with her peers. The parents of this little girl took a different, more productive path. They started by widening her social circle. Her dad started coaching a girls’ soccer team. Her mother joined an organization with her called Girls on the Run, and both of them participated in 5k runs together. As a result, the girl made new friends and strengthened her identity as someone with interests outside of school.

At the same time, these parents and others in the class whose children were also having social struggles, started getting together for recreational events of all kinds. The abilities of these adults, coming from many different backgrounds, to intentionally try to get to know each other created caring between the families.

Caring is contagious and the fourth-grade children and parents found themselves connecting in new ways. In that atmosphere of experimental community building, fresh friendships have taken root. In the drawing the proud momma shared, her daughter captured the individuality of each of her friends in delicate detail—their outfits, their hairstyles, all different yet delightful. It’s a story of learning to understand and accept differences.

As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”