Some people are able to approach social situations with ease, whereas others find it challenging and anxiety triggering even at times. While some of this may have to do with personality, past experiences and development, making friends is a skill that can be learned. This typically requires self-awareness of what's important, choices that one can make, guidance and practice.

Here are 3 tips to help your child make and keep good friends:

1. Help your child understand that not everyone they meet or first meet will become their BFF.

As your child starts to make choices in making friends, they may share too much personal information too soon in order to establish closeness as people tend to respond to personal sharings with caring attention. Help your child to see the difference between people they can talk to about stuffs casually and people who could value and respect them. You could also share about how sharing of thoughts can be done on a varying degree approach with different people. With friend A, they can choose to share 50% of what happened at home and 80% of their hobbies, with friend B, they can choose to share 70% of their hobbies and 10% of what happened at home, etc.

2. Explain to your child how conflicts are a common part of friendships.

Even the best of friends are going to fight, but not arguments would lead to an end of a friendship. Teach your child to manage conflicts such as staying away / not participating when arguments get blown out of proportions on social media for example, or that they could regain control of the situation by telling the other party that "I think we are both upset, let's take a day to cool off and we can talk about this tomorrow."

3. Notice how you pass on your judgements and opinions about your child's friends.

If you don't like a friend that your child has made, find out more about what your child values about that friend using questions like, "Tell me more about what you like about this friend?" This would allow your child to listen to you as you move along the conversation rather than "I don't like this girl that you are hanging out with." If you have a need to criticise a behaviour of that friend, be factual about it, such as "She stood you up at the meeting today, what do you think about it?" instead of "She's terrible! How can she do that to you? So irresponsible!" You would want your child to be able to develop critical thinking of situations with your guidance.

Friendships in their growing up years can be full of different kind of emotions. Your role to provide that secure base is so important so that your child could feel supported and connected while they explore the ups and downs of relationships with others safely.