At times clients have come into my office and talked about their lack of friends. “I don’t have friends because everyone is mean to me!” “I don’t have friends because everyone else has a cell phone and I don’t.” “If I was allowed to play ____ (Minecraft or a multitude of other video games), I would have friends.” Other clients have talked about having lots of friends but don’t remember their names, have never met them because they only know them from playing online video games with them, are not included in any social events with that “friend”, never have texts responded to, and have “friends” who are always too busy to get together. At times, clients have been known to offer gifts or money to peers they would like to be friends with. Such stories are heartbreaking to hear, but even more heartbreaking for these clients to experience. When children and young adults have difficulties with social interactions, this not only affects their ability to make and keep friends, but is also tied to academic performance (which we will discuss in another blog), classroom and family interactions, confidence development, and emotional states which sometimes result in depression.
All too often, people approach the idea of forming friendships by having their children or clients engage in social groups or activities with the idea that children will naturally establish friendships by being in situations with peers. Unfortunately, it is not always that simple. Many of our clients have difficulty with various skills which makes social interactions more difficult. Difficulties could include the following areas:
Ø Receptive language: Are they able to easily process and understand conversations so they can follow along? Understand the vocabulary and slang of peers? Understand more complex sentence structures? Understand figurative language? Understand implied meanings and humor?
Ø Expressive language: Are they able to quickly formulate a response to keep up with the pace of the conversation? Express their true intent? Retrieve appropriate vocabulary in order to adequately express their intent? Speak in an age-appropriate (sentence structure, tone of voice, pitch, etc.) manner or do they sound immature to their peers?
Ø Situational awareness: Are they able to assess the important aspects of the situation to determine the expectations of the situation? Determine how peers are acting so they are able to act in a similar (but appropriate) manner for the situation? Determine how to join in on the conversation or interaction? Know appropriate things to say?
Ø Do they recognize the perspectives of others? Know how much information to include so they are providing enough information but not so much that they sound like a “professor” who is teaching rather than conversing?
Ø Are they able to converse about topics that others introduce or do they prefer to only converse about their own interests? Develop topics based on comments and questions?
Ø Are they able to do self-assessment and identify cause-effect relationships or do they have difficulty which could result in them blaming others for breakdowns rather than recognizing their part in any breakdowns that may occur?
Ø Do they have difficulty “reading” non-verbal language such as tone of voice (such as sarcasm) and body language (such as facial expressions and overall body posturing) which may result in misinterpretation of interactions?
Ø Do they use inappropriate topics or actions which could result in potential friends being uncomfortable around them?
Ø Are they familiar with the interests of others and age-appropriate topics for the given situations?
Needless to say, there are other needs that could affect someone’s ability to make friends. Many of our clients benefit from having such skills identified and taught to them. As some clients have developed underlying skills, they have been able to generalize some of these skills into peer interactions on their own. Other times, they have benefited from receiving therapy with an individual peer prior to generalizing newly learned skills into more complex group situations. The social demands of group situations increase as the individual must be able to not only interact with each of the peers in the group, but also begin to recognize and respond to the interactions between the other peers. For some, making friends and maintaining friendships is a lot more complex and challenging than it may seem.
One thing many of our clients have trouble with is the idea of what a friend is. Look for my next blog: What is a Friend?