SchoolTV – Friendship & Belonging

As we find ourselves in another period of “learning at home”, it is very timely to consider how we help our young people stay connected. Strong social connections are vital to foster and maintain a positive sense of wellbeing and strengthen your mental health. We know that the impacts of the lockdown in 2020 continue to impact young people and their families, but staying connected is one of the biggest protective factors at this difficult time.

Learning how to make new friends and keep them involves a number of skills every young person needs. For some these skills will come very naturally, allowing them to easily move between different friendship groups, sharing their experiences and opening up to new people. For others, this can be much harder to navigate. However, feeling a sense of belonging, with friends that are like-minded with similar interests and values, is highly beneficial to a young person’s wellbeing. It gives them a sense of security, provides a chance to develop skills such as empathy, responsibility, and conflict management, and builds their confidence. When in “‘lockdown’, this is something that all parents can actively help their daughters with!

Positive friendships are an important part of the journey to adulthood and the new types of relationships that they will develop. In order for the girls to create and experience positive, lasting friendships they need to learn what it means to be a good friend and the types of things you need to do in order to maintain these friendships. From Kindergarten, the girls are taught how to establish positive relationships and what qualities make a good friend. For example, recently kindy have been learning about “friendly hand signals” as a way to make someone feel welcome when you see them- it has been lovely to see them learning and practising! The skills and strategies required to maintain good relationships do evolve as the girls get older but the need for mutual trust and respect remain at the core, no matter their age.

You can support your child or teenager by providing guidance in the many social and emotional skills required for a healthy relationship. This will help them to obtain, retain and maintain friendships. However, not all friendship are positive; sometimes young people develop negative or toxic relationships, or feel nervous about being an upstander when they see negative behaviours happening in their wider friendship network. We have noticed, since the pandemic, that in the later years of Primary and the Secondary school that some children and young people are sharing more about their experiences and perhaps not always getting the boundaries right about when they should be speaking to an adult, rather than their peers. Therefore it is also important for them to learn how to identify, avoid or deal with these experiences, and to feel comfortable to talk to you about how they might manage this.

Therefore, we encourage all parents and carers to have a discussion at home about how to navigate the next little while with friends. How will they stay connected? What might they do if they are feeling lonely or isolated? How might they navigate trickier situations such as if they are worried about the mental health of a friend or see bullying happening online? Whilst these are all things that will be addressed in the online learning environment too, regular communication with your daughter about this will be so important. As even more of their world will now be on a screen, and family dynamics can change as the lockdown extends, keeping the lines of communication open and making sure that your daughter knows that you are there to support them will only assist them to maintain social connections and benefit from the wellbeing effects that this has.

Here is the link to this SchoolTV edition https://sceggs.nsw.schooltv.me/newsletter/friendship-belonging . In this edition, you will learn how to support and talk to their daughter about friendship. Please note, this was published before the lockdown. You can also explore past issues, too, on a range of topics which are very relevant to the current circumstances we find ourselves in.

If you do have any concerns about the wellbeing of your child, please contact the school for further information or seek medical or professional help. We hope you take time to reflect on the information offered in this month’s edition, and we always welcome your feedback.

Bethany Lord
Director of Pastoral Care