How to Teach Teens to Handle Friendship Problems
Your teen may come to you with her friendship troubles, or you may have to approach her. Either way, teaching your child how to deal with friendship troubles is how she'll learn to handle relationship problems for the rest of life. Your teen must learn to express her feelings and problems, and she may need to vent her frustration to you, a third party, at first. Her conversations with you about the situation gives you an opportunity to teach her relationship skills without you solving the problem for her.
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Instructions
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Talk to your teen at the first sign of friend trouble. Ask her to tell you what is going on and listen to her response. Tell her you're always there to listen if she needs an ear but that she must take steps to handle the situation on her own with the advice and tools you're going to give her.
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Ask your teen to consider both sides of the friendship and the problem. She must know how to see the situation from her friend's point of view as well as her own. Taking both viewpoints into account helps her consider her friend's feelings.
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Talk to her about using positive stress outlets if she's upset. Outlet activities, such as exercising, listening to music and playing sports, help her let go of negative emotions. She must learn to gain control over her emotions before talking to the problem friend; she may say or do something she'll regret if she confronts her friend before calming down.
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Encourage her to talk to her friend directly. Stress that avoiding the situation or going behind her friend's back — gossiping to mutual friends, for example — usually makes the problem worse and may ruin the friendship.
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Tips & Warnings
Your teen may need to let go of the friendship if the friend is unwilling to consider her feelings or address the problem.
Don't tell your teen her problems are unimportant when compared to "adult" problems. Sometimes parents unintentionally minimize their child's feelings, and this may lead to bad consequences.
