How to Support Your Tween or Teen When They Have No Friends with Sheri Gazitt
Making friends in school today is much harder than it used to be! The added stress of Social Media and the constant second-guessing of things posted or said are huge factors in the need for perfectionism and peer pressure.
My guest today, Sheri Gazitt, is the founder and CEO of Teen Wise, an organization dedicated to helping parents and teens through the ups and downs of adolescence through personal coaching and educational events.
Sheri shares with us how to approach your teens when they are struggling with loneliness or friendship challenges, supportive things to say and what not to say, and how to support them on the path to making meaningful friendships.
This is a conversation you donât want to miss! Letâs dive in!
How to Support Your Tween or Teen When They Have No Friends with Special Guest Sheri Gazitt – Moms of Tweens and Teens
What You Will Learn:
- The significant impact of friendships on our tweens’ and teensâ lives, specifically how social struggles can lead to clinical depression and anxiety.
- The visible change in teens’ body language and spark when they see a path forward in their social lives.
- Research on how patterns of popularity and bullying in middle and high school can persist into adulthood.
- Impact of the pandemic on teen friendships and their social skills.
- The “football effect,” where disagreements lead to team formation, exacerbates the situation.
- Common mistakes parents make when supporting their children through social conflicts.
- Building confidence and addressing inner critic.
Where to find Sheri:
Find more encouragement, wisdom, and resources:
Sign up for our Moms of Tweens and Teens newsletter HERE
And here is the episode typed out!
Welcome to the Moms of Tweens and Teens Podcast. If some days you doubt yourself and donât know what youâre doing. If youâve ugly cried alone in your bedroom because you felt like you were failing. Well, I just want to let you know you are not alone, and you have come to the right place.
Raising tweens and teens in today’s world is not easy. And I’m on a mission to equip you to love well and to raise emotionally healthy, happy tweens and teens that thrive.
I believe that moms are heroes, and we have the power to transform our families and impact future generations. If you are looking for answers, encouragement, and becoming more of the mom and the woman that you want to be, welcome. I am Sheryl Gould. And I am so glad that you’re here.
Today, we’re going to be talking about how to help our tweens and teens who are struggling with friendships, and this is really painful as a mom. If you have a kid who is lonely and is struggling with girl drama, it might look a little bit different if you have a boy, but they have their version of that. If they’re spending a lot of time isolated and alone in their room, they’re not connecting outside of social media. Maybe they’ve even been bullied or excluded from friend groups, and they can see that on social media, and then it can be so complicated when they have social media and all that goes with that. When it comes to friendships, it can just complicate things, and they can compare themselves. It can be really rough, and it can be difficult to know what to say and what to do. That’s going to help. And I hear from so many of you emailing me that you’re saying, Gosh, my kid is getting left out. They’re lonely. They’re spending all their time gaming, or they’re coming home and crying every day because their best friend won’t let them sit at the lunch table. It takes on many different forms, and my special guest today is Sheri Gazitt, the CEO and founder of Teen Wise. It is an organization that empowers teen girls to conquer girl drama and establish healthy friendships. And she does private coaching. They have online courses, presentations, and professional trainings. She has been on the podcast before, and she has so much wisdom and insight and a really beautiful way of taking it all and making it really simple and easy to understand. And in this episode, she talks to us about what we can do to help our kids. So let’s dive in!
SHERYL: Well, welcome Sheri to the show. I am so glad to have you back again after the pandemic; that’s nice.
SHERI: We’re out and about these days, and friendship issues remain.
SHERYL: I know this is an important topic, and it always comes up. We will talk about friendships and struggling with friendships when you’re tweens and teens, and it’s a needed conversation.
I would just like you to share and tell our audience a little about yourself and what led you to focus on friendships over the last year or so. So why don’t you tell them about yourself and your background?
SHERI: My background is in psychology and therapy, but I work as a coach because I just want to get teens to where they want to go. Let’s discuss your goals and friendships, and then we can get you there.
So, teens respond well to that. But you know your question about friendships? Why am I focusing on that? Because we all know how impactful friendships are in our lives. They can make our lives so much better. It gives us support when we’re going through the ups and downs. And what I was finding is that there’s a lot of kids who are struggling socially, and that kind of was just around for a while, and that led to clinical depression, clinical anxiety.
So I thought, why don’t we get to them before they reach that level? All kids have friendship issues because they’re learning that their whole job at that time is figuring out how to relate to others. So they do need some guidance.
It doesn’t just happen naturally that they learn interpersonal skills. So that’s where I come in as a friendship expert, that I want to get in there and work through some of these things.
SHERYL: So needed. And what do you find? I guess, for lack of a better way to say it, it lights you up about working with teens and friendships.
SHERI: When they come into my office, it’s their whole body language, or if I’m on Zoom, also, they’re just, you can see, there’s the spark left, and so the day or the moment when I see that spark is back, that’s all I need.
That makes my work awesome: they begin seeing their choices instead of everything happening to them. They have no friends. What can they possibly do? They’ve tried everything just for them to see things differently.
That spark does not always come back because now they have five new friends. It’s because they see a path forward to make the friends and connections that they want.
SHERYL: Friendships are so important. I think about my friendships, like in middle school, when I struggled and was bullied, and they do lay a foundation for how I see myself in future relationships.
SHERI: Oh, yeah, patterns that we create in middle school and high school stay with us for a very long time. There was some interesting research on popularity among people who are bullied and how they see the people around them when they go into the workplace as adults.
So, the popular people go into a job thinking, “These people are going to like me,” and the people who are bullied are on the lookout for mean behaviors or people who aren’t treating them well.
SHERYL: I believe it. Yeah, it’s how we start perceiving ourselves in the world and defining ourselves. So what are you finding kids are especially struggling with now? I mean, do you feel like the pandemic – I mean, it seems like the moms I have worked with their kids since the pandemic started struggling with friendships. Do you think that you see a connection?
SHERI: For sure. Before the pandemic, there were already issues with kids feeling lonely. Part of that was because they were creating connections online, which are great in some aspects, but they’re not like a real-life relationship.
There’s not an energy exchange. It’s just different. And when our kids become online creatures, so to speak, they’re missing out on so many of the interactions they would normally have, with conflict resolution, with emotions, with just talking to people. So all of that, I think, began to come into play.
They showed that loneliness went up pre-pandemic. Up to 38% of teens felt lonely in 2018, so fast-forward to the pandemic. I mean, talk about lonely, right? Everybody is isolated, and you can only meet up with so many people. And so I think that just really pushed us on this trajectory.
SHERYL: So, the pandemic did a number on kids. And what are you seeing as kids come to you and they’re struggling? Do you feel like it’s the numbers? I mean, I guess we know the numbers have gone up. But what are you seeing now? And why do you think that is?
SHERI: I see that loneliness is a big thing; even kids I see who have friends feel lonely. That comes from the pandemic, which affected our kids’ social development.
They had a year, maybe two, where things were just kind of shut down, and they didn’t have that normal social interaction with people. So I think that kind of put them behind in the social skills department and just being comfortable connecting. I think that was a big part of it.
SHERYL: You have mentioned social skills several times, so say more about them. What social skills do you see that they lack now?
SHERI: So there’s kind of a whole cluster of them. So, one of them is connecting with people. How do you talk to people? How do you read their emotions? How do you respond if you’re upset with each other? How do you get vulnerable with people to create those deeper connections?
So there’s that piece, but conflict conversations are also big. What I’m seeing that has been a bit of a shift, even with adults, is that when you disagree with someone, that’s it. We’re done. Versus, let’s work through this. Let’s work it out.
And our kids, what they are doing these days, if they disagree, they’ve got screenshots, they’ve got what they call receipts, and they’re going to show everybody about this disagreement versus hey, let’s talk this out. It becomes a team sport.
SHERYL: Yeah, that’s just brutal. I just think about how hard it was in middle school when I was growing up. It seemed to improve in high school, but it was tough. On top of it, they have all this social media and screenshots.
And how do you even begin to navigate that? I mean it. And then how about just the humiliation, the embarrassment, and it’s not just you and this person? Do you find it’s almost like a gang that they’re saying?
SHERI: I call it the football effect. When two people are upset with each other, they don’t come to talk to each other. They kind of gather their teams. You know, one girl talks to one person, and the other girl talks to another. They talk to people. And before you know it, there are two teams.
Whose team are you on? So, the original issue might have been small, but when you get teams involved, it’s big. And now the teams aren’t in person. You’ve got the social media behind it and the receipts, texting, and group chats on Snapchat, so it’s everywhere. It’s not just between those two people.
SHERYL: Yeah, what do you think? I mean, my heart, just, I’ve been there. You’re a mom of three. Do you have three girls? And did you see your girls go through this?
SHERI: Yes, for sure. They’re in their 20s now, and it was still going even in college. It’s hard as a parent because you can’t fix it, and you can’t say, “Just do ABC, and everything will be good,” but that’s okay.
Our kids are going to go through these difficult times, and they’re going to learn things about themselves. They will learn our interpersonal skills; if they have the right support and guidance, they can get through those things with more emotional resilience, conflict resolution skills, and an understanding that those big, uncomfortable feelings are okay. Well, they have to have that support and guidance.
SHERYL: Did everybody hear that? I feel like it’s going to be okay. This is such a learning curve for them, and as moms, I mean, I remember with my oldest when she first got in the car, and she had a really tough time with some friendships.
Now she’s 33, so I’ve grown and learned so much since then. But I kind of flipped out. I did not handle it well. My mama bear came out, and as a result, I just kind of made it even bigger than it needed to be, which is like throwing logs on a fire.
SHERI: The mama drama.
SHERYL: And the mama drama,
SHERI: You were probably triggered, right?
SHERYL: It brought up all my stuff when I was in middle school. And then it’s interesting because my youngest daughter is nine years younger, and she went through the same thing. I don’t think you can’t go through middle school or high school without being unscathed and without it happening.
Nine years later, I knew enough to say, “Oh, wow, that must have hurt. What did you do?” She worked it out. The next day, she got back in the car, and she said, “I realized I wasn’t being very nice to Cindy, and she was upset, and we talked it out, we worked it out.”
I was like, wow, this happens, and it’s gonna happen, and it doesn’t mean the other kid is bad. It’s part of that growth process. So, what do you say about some of the mistakes we make as moms?
SHERI: Well, one of them you just hit upon is when we create more drama around the situation. So we have to keep calm and keep our emotions intact, right? And if we have these triggers, we need to process that somewhere.
But what happens when we do that? When we get those big emotions, our kids are like, Oh my gosh, if my mom can’t handle this, I certainly can’t. So, we have to keep that in perspective.
The other thing that we often do is get intrusive. We’re like, we are going to fix it. So we start calling and texting, making our daughter feel like she can’t handle it. This is so big that my mom has to step in and deal with this on my behalf. So that’s another big thing that happens, and then we kind of go the other way and dismiss it, right? Like it’s no big deal. Why do you care? You know, these are just not your friends. Anyway, that doesn’t help either.
SHERYL: So what can we do that would be more effective?
SHERI: I talk about a loving framework, so all they need is love, which stands for listening, offering advice, only giving it if they want, validating their feelings, and empowering them.
When we do things that help them get through this girl drama and friendship issues, they come out the other side stronger. Instead of feeling down and depleted, it builds them up.
SHERYL: So, how do we model a little about the validating and the empowering?
SHERI: Yeah, so validating. I think it’s really important to remember that it’s validating emotions, not behaviors. And the reason that’s important is because when there’s friendship drama, our kids aren’t always dealing with it. Well, they might be adding fuel to the fire.
They might have spread a rumor or be gossiping about people. So, it doesn’t matter what that behavior was; their feelings and emotions are valid. And so we can just say, recognize, like you were saying with your daughter, it looks like you’re upset, or it looks like this was difficult, or I even like to back off and not label it for them, but just say, you know what’s going on. How are you feeling?
Just leaving it at that. We don’t always have to label our emotions. I know we talk a lot about that, but if I’m emotional, I don’t want somebody saying, what is that emotion? I just want to feel it. The labels can come later, but then, with the empowerment that’s about, what will you do next?
So if your daughter is the target, or your son is the target of something, or they’re the ones who started something, what will you do next? Because that is so empowering, versus you need to do this, this, and this, and I’m going to call this person and tell them what to do, having them think through it. What do they want to do next?
SHERYL: Yeah, I want to be able to help them come up with it because it’s just not the same if we tell them what we think they should do.
SHERI: Yeah, it is even empowering to say, “Do you want my advice?” That right there empowers them. They may say, “No, I don’t want your advice,” but they know they can return later and ask for advice if needed.
SHERYL: I love that. Yeah, no unsolicited advice. It’s hard to do when you see a kid hurting and struggling with something. Just do the validation, the listening, the validating. I liked what you said about my emotions.
Sometimes, we feel like we have to give them; we have to label it for them, but we should just sit back and allow them to feel whatever they’re feeling without labeling it. What do you think about labeling it that can not be helpful sometimes?
SHERI: I think when a couple of things have come up in the last couple of weeks in my private practice with clients, they get tired of things that may feel a little formulaic from parents. So, do you want to try that again? Or, I understand how you’re feeling, that you’ve got to change it up. And so the labeling, the feeling, is hard.
That feels formulaic to the kids. Also, they’re like, I don’t want to think about this. I’m crying here, or I’m angry right now, or I’m whatever is going on. My body’s all heated up. Who cares what it’s called now?
I know some people label it because it helps you get back to the logical part of the brain and helps you understand that emotion better. There’s a time and place for all of that, but when they are emotional, we have to think of it from our perspective. If I’m sobbing, I don’t want someone coming over and saying, Okay, tell me what that feeling is. I would be very annoyed by that.
SHERYL: Yeah, yeah, or you look sad, and they can’t be formulaic. My kids would say, Mom, you’re coaching me. You’re right; it’s like, they get smart like you’re trying to fix me here. You’re trying to use your formula. So it sounds more like just being with them.
SHERI: I’ll give you an example. If your daughter gets in the car, you pick them up from school, like you said. There’s a lot of emotions that come up, right? If they look sad when they get in the car, angry or whatever, you don’t have to be like, hey, tell me everything that’s going on.
You can just put on their favorite music and close your hand to them, but not on them. You know, your kids may want your hand on their shoulder, just like a recognition through body language. I see that you’re struggling. You don’t have to talk to me about it.
Also, you can say something like, “It looks like it was a tough day. Do you want to listen to your favorite music?” Yeah, and they’ll talk about it if they want to.
SHERYL: Yeah, I love that, yeah. Because we sometimes see it, and we’re so uncomfortable with it that we will feel like we need to say something right at that moment.
I love the analogy that I use: Teenagers are like turtles, and if we’re coming at them, they stay in their shells, and then they don’t want to share because we’re just going to jump on it with all this energy. So give space, is what I hear you saying.
SHERI: Exactly. Yeah, we want to know all the details. We’re going to be the best parents ever. I want to know all the details so I can help fix it, but that’s not what they mean.
SHERYL: Yeah, I like that, Sheri. That’s super helpful. So confident, like how I’m just curious about your process. So when a teenager comes to you, and they’re struggling, how do you build that confidence?
SHERI: I have them take a few different steps, but I usually start with the inner critic and the inner cheerleader so that they can see where this lack of confidence is coming from.
It’s this inner critic; it’s louder than the inner cheerleader. So we step back and look at what thoughts always come up, those negative thoughts, and what’s fueling them.
Is it social media? Is it parents? Is it teachers? Is it expectations they have of themselves? Is it a book they’ve read? Is it the people they’re hanging out with? What is fueling that? And let’s look at that. Are there things you can kind of take away from that fire?
And then let’s look at the inner cheerleader and say, how do we make this cheerleader louder? So, we create two characters for them. They draw them out, and we talk about what they smell like. What do they sound like? How big are they? Where are they sitting on your shoulder? Are they over there?
So it’s an external voice now, and when it’s external, you can talk back to that thing much harsher and be like, “You’re gonna sit over there. My inner cheerleader gets the front row spot.”
SHERYL: It is so cool to be able to learn those skills young. I did not know that. And just that self-awarenessâthat you’re helping them to developâwhat am I telling myself? We can walk around and feel it, but we’re unaware of our self-talk.
SHERI: Yes, yeah. I tell them you know the game just because you’re even thinking about this, and many people aren’t.
SHERYL: What are some things that we can do as inner cheerleaders? I’m thinking of all of us listening; what can we tell ourselves? What would that look like?
So, oh, those women over there, they’re all popular and in that circle. And here I am, and I better listen and look at my phone because I feel so awkward, and they’re not going to accept me, or I’m not as cute; what do we do? What do we say to ourselves? We’re going to be a cheerleader.
SHERI: Yeah. First, I always tell my clients it’s okay to have that inner critic. There is a purpose somewhere, but we just need to quiet it down. But when those thoughts come up, let’s look at the other side. Right when you’re looking over it, look at the, oh, they’re so cute, or whatever. They just look perfect.
What does your inner cheerleader need to say to you at that moment? You are good enough; you are likable. You have friends. Suppose they don’t have friends. At the moment, you’ve had great friends. Your friends are out there waiting for you. You know how to handle this. You connect to people all the time. You’re a great friend. You listen to people, like all of those things.
It’s really sad when we first start that process because the inner critic is scribbling on that sheet of paper, and they have filled it out. We get an inner cheerleader, and it’s like crickets.
What do I put on here? There are two or three things, and then they just have to think and think. So I have to help them to go back and look at moments in their life where they can see themselves in that positive light, and then they can start scribbling much faster.
SHERYL: I think a lot of us can resonate. You know, that resonates with most of us, that we can be so hard on ourselves and we have many critical voices, and then trying to replace that with positive voices, and it’s like, well, I could say that about myself, but it’s still not good enough.
I could say, “No, it’s not good enough.” I could withdraw that and just help them come up with those things to speak back to that critic, which is powerful.
SHERI: And even by saying them out loud, I’ll have them read it, and as you said, they’ll be like, I’m a good friend. Wait a second; that doesn’t sound like you believe that. Can we try it again?
So they might have to say some of these things two or three times to have that confident voice in saying those things. Do they believe it yet? Probably not. But you gotta start somewhere. You have to hear those words and internalize them so they can take hold.
SHERYL: I love that you’re doing this because I was sitting here thinking it’s hard as a mom to do what you’re doing with your kid. After all, they say, Oh, Mom, you’re just my mother. Like you’re just saying that.
And what would you say to moms? I mean, when our kids are just beating themselves up and saying mean things to themselves. And this is not just girls. This is boys, too. “I’m stupid. I’m this, I’m that.”
I hear from moms that their sons are very critical of themselves. Moms say, “No, you’re not clumsy.” You’re not, whatever, and it just doesn’t land. What do we do?
SHERI: Yeah, so if we try to argue with our kids about their inner critic, unfortunately, it often solidifies the inner critic even more because what they’re going to do is they’re going to prove to you that they’re right. So what we can do instead is open up a conversation about it.
What is it that makes you feel like that? Why do you think that about yourself? Wow, I don’t see that. I don’t see you in that way. What is it that makes you see yourself that way?
You’re not trying to say, “No, you’re not with our kids.” They’re built to argue with this, right? So they will say, ” Okay, I’ll tell you why I’m clumsy. I’ll tell you why I can’t make friends.” We gotta just give them the space to work that out.
SHERYL: And just by them saying it out loud versus us trying to convince them otherwise. Do you find that, in itself, is powerful in helping those lessons?
SHERI: If they say, for instance, nobody likes me, and you say, Why do you think that? And they start talking about why they think they can start seeing some of the cognitive distortions in their way of thinking. And it opens up that conversation, even if you can’t argue with everything they say, right? But it just gets that out of their system and gets them thinking about and talking about it.
SHERYL: I love cognitive distortions, and I don’t think most people know what they are. I know there’s a list, but kids at this age fall into a big one, which is black or white, thinking, “Do you see that one a lot?” where there’s no gray area.
SHERI: Yeah, they’re either my best friend, or they’re not my friend at all, or they’re my enemy even. And so with friendships in particular, that’s a real problem because friendships aren’t just like, Oh, here’s your magical friend.
It takes time, so they might be an acquaintance, then their school friend, a close friend, and a best friend. It’s not either or. There’s a spectrum there, and your friendships are like that, too. They’re on all different levels. So it’s not either a best friend or no friend. It might be that they are a friend, not the best of friends, and you enjoy that friendship for what it is.
SHERYL: Yes, yes. And how do you even begin to help them? Kind of sort that through, from not having that black or white, that black or white thinking,
SHERI: That is one of the easiest ones. You start when they bring it up; you just say, “Is it like that?” And usually, they’re like, “because you never hear. Nobody ever talks to me. People are always mean to me.”
I’ll say, Okay, let’s think about last week at school. Everybody was mean to you, and they started to see it humorously. Yeah, no, not actually. So, yeah.
SHERYL: Oh, that’s good. What’s another cognitive distortion that you see?
SHERI: Catastrophizing is a big one. It happens when a small thing happens: somebody doesn’t say hi to them or leaves them open, texting, or something, and they start to think the friendship is over. They’re mad at me. They don’t want to be my friend.
This often happens within 30 seconds; the frequency has risen, right? They didn’t text me back in 10 seconds. So now all of these things are what’s going on, and I think that’s a really big one, especially in the beginnings of a friendship, when they’re trying to connect with people that they’re just reading into everything. And that’s where that catastrophizing comes in.
SHERYL: It must be brutal because I can feel it with just their urgency, like the texting, and if I’m even in a text chain. Then, my friends were there, and I said something. Everybody acknowledged Sally’s text, but nobody acknowledged my text. And I’m like, oh, okay, what I said was weird, and I’m an adult.
SHERI: It just magnifies it.
SHERYL: Why doesn’t anybody like this? And I just think it’s so much more magnified when they’re this age.
SHERI: Yeah, they’re wired to create connections outside of their nuclear family. And so, they scrutinize and look at this in every interaction. And when they hit puberty, their brains remodel.
So they begin to think about how they think, have existential crises, and see how they compare themselves to others. All these new thinking skills they’ve acquired create friction in friendships.
SHERYL: The drama, yes.
SHERI: Drama, yeah. And there’s girl drama and boy drama; it’s just a bit different.
SHERYL: Yeah. How do you think boy drama and girl and girl drama are different?
SHERI: I think a couple of things make a big difference. The girl drama often goes under the radar more; it seems more sophisticated. Even though these are not evil masterminds, these are just skills they’re trying to learn, right?
Sometimes, they just fall into these negative behaviors, but many go unnoticed. The other thing with girls is that they are wired to have these more intense, intimate friendships than boys, so it is like they’re picking these apart at the end of the day.
Many girls I work with spiral and think about what she said or something you’re discussing. I put that in the group text. Nobody responded to me, but everybody responded to Sally. Why didn’t she sit by me at lunch? What was that about that last weekend? Did they not invite me to that thing?
Boys, they are going over every piece; they have these things. It’s not that they don’t think about them, but they tend to move on from things. Sometimes, they wrestle it out. There are many teasing and playful behaviors, so they tend to let it go.
Girls are not letting it go. Girls who feel we’re wired to keep our emotions together with a memory. Men and boys tend to keep their memories. The emotions aren’t necessarily attached to them, so we are hanging on to the whole thing, not just what happened but how it felt.
SHERYL: Yeah, attaching the emotions to the memory, and say that again. And guys are more where they separate it, so they have the memory, but the emotions are not attached.
SHERI: Yeah, and this is a stereotype, right? Not every male or female is like that. Some of the research showed this. So yeah, it’s more like they will tell you what they said and did last week. We’ll tell you what was said and done, but we’ll also feel it again.
SHERYL: Yeah, that’s fascinating. So you have a lonely kid; this is a big thing. And I hear from moms more often that their boys are isolating and are concerned that they’re not getting together as friends.
It happens with girls, too, but I see it with moms because I think it’s harder for them to know how to talk to their sons about it than their daughters. I’m not 100% sure if that’s true, but they often look at their text messages because they want to see that they’re talking to other people.
I’ve had some clients with whom I’ve tried to support them in not doing that because it’s driving the mom crazy to see it happening. And what would you say to the mom who’s listening, whether it’s a girl or a boy, who is lonely and doesn’t have friendships?
SHERI: I think it’s very important for them to understand that. They just say, “Hey, just talk to somebody,” “Hey, just ask them over that,” which wears down their confidence and self-esteem because they’re like, “Oh, my mom or my dad wants me to have friends.” I’m disappointing them so they can start to withdraw.
So, I think the important thing is that the opposite of loneliness is connection. The connection may or may not be their peers. A connection may be at a volunteer organization with people like elderly people, right? I might be going to the local animal shelter, and they’re connecting with the people working there. It doesn’t always have to be at school.
So, if you see that your kids are super lonely, it’s great to create connections elsewhere that build up their self-esteem and confidence and increase the dopamine in their bodies so that their energy when approaching their peers is very different. They feel like they are worthy of that connection and friendship.
SHERYL: Yeah, rather than call this friend or invite kids over because they’re at that age where you just can’t have the playdates you used to. Now they’re inviting a friend over, but if they don’t want to, just find out how they can connect, right?
That’s very important, and that will build their confidence. That’s powerful. It takes it takes a lot of the pressure off, too. Yeah, so find something that they can be interested in. How would you say that they should start to have that conversation?
SHERI: They can just tell their kids that you look very lonely even if you don’t want to. You know, that’s already labeling this feeling for them. Just say, You know what? I’ve noticed it looks like you’re not hanging out with a lot of people at your school. I get it, no problem. I think would be great for you to connect elsewhere.
Are there volunteer organizations you want to dive into? Or what are your interests? What do you want to explore? Right now is a great time to do it. If you’re in summer. The beginning of the school year is a great time to do it.
It’s just like you don’t want to put it as if you need to make friends because they won’t like that. That’s going to be a put-down. So, just get excited about it. I won’t be like, oh, thank you so much, Mom. You know, give that dream away, but you’ll be there to support them and discover and explore connections.
SHERYL: This is so good, Sheri; I think we should do a workshop. We’ll talk offline right before school starts. Have you shared this? Will moms and caregivers be able to ask questions because this is a real challenge for moms?
We watched their kids struggle, watched them with the friendship drama, and tried to support them in working through conflict. We didn’t even talk about how to help them learn some of those skills. So we’ll talk about it because this is good stuff. Tell them what you’re up to and where they can find you because you are doing quite a bit around this.
SHERI: A bit. Yeah, yeah. So, the easiest place to go is Teen-wise.com. There’s lots of info there. And then, in my Facebook group, I have constant training and information going on there. And that’s the parenting web. I think there are a couple on Facebook, but if you start on my website, it’ll get you there.
And then I have the summer, something called the Socially Supercharged Summer, and that is a course called Fostering Friendships. It’s art-based, going through some of the basics of creating friendships and dealing with the emotional piece, right? You might be rejected, and that’s okay. Then, there’s Ready Set Connect, which gets very specific on how to make new connections.
The last piece is about ten ways to respond to girl drama, straightforward phrases, and ways to minimize girl drama and rise above it.
SHERYL: So, giving them the words,
SHERI: Exactly, simple words and techniques, yep.
SHERYL: Can you give us just one?
SHERI: Yeah, one would be that I don’t like to talk about people. It was like that when someone’s coming to you and starting to bad mouth another girl just saying, Yeah, I don’t like to talk about people. Yeah,
SHERYL: That’s a good one for us, too.
SHERI: It is, you know, and it’s one thing if you share updates on what’s happening with people. But when it’s like, oh, that’s so and so said this and that, you know, it’s like, I need to be part of that. Yeah,
SHERYL: That is good. Yeah, because we can model this, too. We can do it.
SHERI: Yes, they’re watching us.
SHERYL: Well, Sheri, thank you so much for attending the show; it was a good conversation. I appreciate you and what you’re doing.
SHERI: I love being here. Thanks for inviting me.
SHERYL: That was great. Yeah.