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Hostess: It can be so hard for kids to make friends at school but it is even more challenging if they've been excluded from a clique. And in this morning's Perfect Parenting, we have tips for helping your kids cope. Merry Wallace is a family therapist. Good morning.
Merry Wallace: Good morning.
Hostess: Why do cliques happen because they begin as early as nursery school?
Merry Wallace: What happens is it's naturally for children to form groups because they wanna feel that they belong, that they have an identity. But sometimes the groups can become very exclusionary, they don't want other new members to join in.
Hostess: So clique is a bad thing. It's different from something like a group of good friends. Right?
Merry Wallace: Yes. We tend to associate it with actively excluding other children, you can't sit at my table in the lunchroom, you can't walk down the hall with me.
Hostess: Does it affect girls differently than boys?
Merry Wallace: I think that whenever it happens to a child whether you are a boy or a girl, it's very devastating and makes you feel lonely and miserable.
Hostess: It's so hard for parents too to see your child in pain but you have some great tips for us. As you say, one of the first things you need to do as a parent is to convey optimism about the situation. How do you do that?
Merry Wallace: First of all, you want to reassure your child that your child is fine, there is nothing wrong with the child that sometimes other kids just do this because they wanna feel more important. And if you talk to them about your own experiences, and say "This happened to me and then I found some friends and I got through it". It really gives your child hope.
Hostess: So you don't want to put down the kids that are in the clique, in other words, you wanna sort of keep it on the positive note. Right?
Merry Wallace: Yes. Because your child wants to be friends with these kids and you don't want to put them down. And in fact later on they may become friends with these children.
Hostess: You say it's a great idea to practice role playing. How would you go about doing that?
Merry Wallace: Well, you might sit down with your child and make a list of the kinds of phrases that you can use when you are teased. For example, that's rude or I don't like what you are saying. And have your child actually practice saying these things to you? You can pretend you are the teaser.
Hostess: OK. So that seems to be very valuable, very practical. But and I love this next tip, you say, encourage different activities, right?
Merry Wallace: Sometimes if a child is feeling very lonely because the social situation is not working out well, if you encourage him to join a special interest group, for example, if he likes maths, then he will have the opportunity to meet some friends who have a common interest.
Hostess: Yeah. I told that to my daughter, just do something that you enjoy doing and then maybe the friends will evolve out of that. Is that sort of the way you are thinking?
Merry Wallace: Absolutely. Because you are gonna focus on the activity and you're gonna have less of the need for these children that you are hungering for.
Hostess: Right. That activity might make your child happy in another itself. And you also say you'd be a good role model, right?
Merry Wallace: Yes. Because our children learn about social relationships by watching us, so we wanna be respectful to others, we wanna avoid exclusionary behavior ourselves, otherwise our child will model that behavior.
Hostess: Right. They don't wanna hear you say you are not gonna invite so and so to this party because of whatever right so?
Merry Wallace: Exactly!
Hostess: Watch what you are saying, what about, you know, pe(ople), parents who are just so desperate that they might wanna head to school and sort of get to the bottom of the problem? I can't imagine that, that's a good idea, is it?
Merry Wallace: Well, it's best to wait a while to see if your child can resolve it, because, sometimes your child can. And then if you feel that it's really not going well, ask your child, as a permission. Say, I need to go, because I need to take care of you.
Hostess: Alright what if your child is in sort of the in-crowd, if they may be a leader of a clique, a member of a clique, what sort of messages do you really need to tell your child, about how to behave.
Merry Wallace: You wanna tell your child that it's important to be aware of your impacts on others and not to hurt other people, and so you can remind your child of the times that he or she has suffered any kind of social rejection like the time you didn't get an invitation to a party. And remember how you felt about it you don't want to do this to someone else.
Hostess: There's a need to be vigilant, even if a child isn't in a clique. Right? (Yes. ) Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Merry Wallace: Oh, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
Hostess: We appreciate that.
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