Talking with Kids about Friendship
“Friendship is a life skill you need to learn, so why not start now?” Jackson, Age 9 I spent yesterday evening making friendship bracelets and talking about friendship with a group of campers. We were outside, near pine trees and a campfire — the perfect camp setting. At one point, a deer walked by about…
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Growing Friendships: A Kids’ Guide to Making and Keeping Friends
I just read a fantastic book to help kids learn about friendship skills – Growing Friendships: A Kids’ Guide to Making and Keeping Friends (Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore and Christine McLaughlin). The book clearly explains simple strategies kids can use to both initiate friendships and be more aware of their “friendship busting” behaviors. With clever cartoons and…
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Why Making Friends is One of the Most Important Things that Happens at Summer Camp
“Friendship is the gold of childhood” Michael Thompson, Ph.D. When I saw this TED Talk by Susan Pinker, “The Secret to Living Longer May be Your Social Life,” I was reminded once again of the crucial importance of relationships and social connections to our children’s (and our own!) life-long health and happiness. Children and adolescents…
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3 Simple Techniques to Help Kids Make Friends
Coaching kids on their social skills is one of the most helpful things caring adults can do to positively impact children’s lives. Why are social skills so important? We need look no further than the 75-Year Harvard Study (and our own life experience) to know that it is NOT what college our kids attend or…
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11 Ways to Help Kids Create REAL Connections
A 75 year longitudinal study of adult development at Harvard Medical School had two main findings. Researchers George Vaillant and Sheldon Glueck determined that “good relationships”—not wealth or accolades or privilege—“keep us happier and healthier.” Their second, almost tongue-in-cheek finding was that “if alcoholism is not the root of all evil, it is closely correlated…
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Quick Friendship Activities
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.” Ralph Waldo Emerson Earlier this year I reached out to my dear friend Tiffany, with whom I have been woefully out of touch since the 20th century. The Christmas card I had mailed to her had come back, undeliverable, and I needed her new…
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10 Ways to Teach Kids to Calm Down
Being able to resolve conflicts is one of the most important social skills our kids need in order to thrive in relationships and life. I’ve written a series of posts about different conflict resolution skills, including how to apologize well. When kids (or adults) are really mad, words and reactions can be ugly. The inability…
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10 Ways to Create a Happy & Connected Class
Part of the “magic” of camp is that from the first moment, we focus on building relationships and getting our cabin groups connected. We train our counselors to help kids develop social skills so they can form friendships and feel a bond with their peers. The minute kids arrive at camp (or get on the…
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Play, Hygge, and other Good Ideas: A Review of The Danish Way of Parenting
I was recently talking to a friend who spent a year in Spain, and she shared with me how different it was living there. Each day, she’d see whole families walking (ambling slowly, not hurried) together to pick their kids up from school for their two-hour midday lunch and siesta. Every Saturday, many families met…
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The Power of Positive Words
Well, I don’t know the child that was returned to me on Saturday. It definitely wasn’t the child I dropped off two weeks earlier. The only logical explanation is that your camp is magic. Magic transformed my scared, sad, not always happy boy, into a confident, smiling, laughing young man. -Email from a Camp Parent I have…
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Helping Kids through their “Low Point”
During one of our final training sessions with counselors, we ask them to think back to their “low point” as a child or adolescent and remember what, if anything, caring adults did to help them through. It’s a great reminder to counselors to think about the developmental stage of the campers they’ll be working with…
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Celebrating Strengths
What are the qualities you like best about yourself? If you’re like me, I’ll bet you haven’t thought about that question much. You may tend to focus more on the things you don’t like about yourself or the qualities you see in other people that you wish you had. One of my favorite quotes is…
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