A new school year brings new classrooms, activities, and opportunities to meet other children. Parents may hear their child mention the same classmate repeatedly and wonder: Could this become a real friendship?
Meeting someone is an important first step—but simply spending time near another child does not automatically create a friendship.
Research on children’s peer relationships distinguishes between being accepted by a larger peer group and developing a reciprocal friendship with one particular person (Hartup, 1996). Friendships develop over time through repeated interactions, shared experiences, mutual interest, reciprocity, and eventually trust.
For some children, this process unfolds naturally. Others may need more guidance understanding how to move from “That’s someone in my class” to “That’s my friend.”
Friendship Usually Starts With Familiarity
Think about how many potential friends children encounter every day: classmates, teammates, neighbors, club members, and children they see at after-school activities.
Repeated contact creates opportunities for children to become familiar with one another. In younger children, friendships often develop around proximity and shared activities. As children mature, friendships increasingly involve reciprocity, emotional connection, loyalty, and a shared history.
That means simply putting children together creates an opportunity for friendship—but children still need the skills to build upon it.
A child might sit beside the same classmate every day without ever learning much about them.
Parents can help children take the next small step.
Instead of asking, “Did you make any friends?” try:
“Who did you talk to today?”
“What did you learn about them?”
“Did you find out anything you both like?”
These questions shift the goal from immediately “making a friend” to getting to know someone.
Finding Common Interests Creates Connection
Friendships often grow through shared experiences.
Two children may discover that they both love soccer, drawing, Minecraft, animals, musical theater, or the same book series. Common interests provide an easy reason to continue interacting.
If your child mentions another child frequently, help them become curious.
You might ask:
“What does Maya like to do?”
“What do you two like doing together?”
“What’s something you could ask her about tomorrow?”
The goal isn’t to script every interaction. It is to help children recognize that friendship requires learning about the other person—not simply talking about themselves.
Friendship Requires Reciprocity
One of the most important features of friendship is reciprocity.
Reciprocity means that interest and effort move in both directions. Research with school-age children has found that reciprocated friendships are associated with higher friendship quality, stronger peer identification, and greater self-worth (Peters et al., 2019).
In everyday life, reciprocity can look very simple:
I ask about you—and you ask about me.
Sometimes I choose the activity—and sometimes you choose.
I invite you—and eventually you invite me.
I listen to your interests—and you listen to mine.
Children who struggle socially sometimes miss this balance. A child may dominate conversations with a favorite topic, always insist on choosing the activity, or repeatedly pursue a peer who is not showing similar interest.
Teaching children to notice reciprocity can help them identify relationships with the potential to become genuine friendships.
Friendships Need Time Outside the Classroom
A child can have wonderful interactions with someone at school without the relationship progressing much further.
Eventually, friendship usually requires additional shared experiences.
This might mean sitting together at lunch, playing together at recess, attending the same activity, exchanging contact information with parental help, or arranging a get-together outside of school.
Parents can provide the bridge without taking over.
For younger children, this may mean contacting another parent and arranging a short, structured playdate. Older children can gradually take more responsibility for initiating plans themselves.
Rather than saying, “I’ll invite Noah over for you,” try:
“You’ve mentioned Noah several times. Would you like to invite him to do something?”
This allows parents to create opportunities while helping children develop independence.
Watch the Pace of a New Friendship
Some children move slowly in friendships. They enjoy talking to someone at school but never take the next step.
Other children move very quickly.
After one positive interaction, a child might immediately describe someone as their “best friend,” repeatedly seek them out, text frequently, or expect the other child to spend all of their time with them.
Healthy friendships generally develop gradually.
A useful message for children is:
Friendships grow through many small, positive experiences over time.
Parents can help children notice whether the relationship is developing at a comfortable pace for both people.
Good Friendships Aren’t Conflict-Free
Even close friends disagree.
In fact, friendships provide an important environment for children to practice negotiation, perspective-taking, emotional regulation, and conflict resolution. Research on friendship quality identifies companionship, caring, support, disclosure, and conflict resolution as important positive features of children’s friendships (Eggum-Wilkens et al., 2020).
The goal, therefore, isn’t to prevent every disagreement.
Instead, children need to learn how to repair relationships.
That might involve saying:
“I didn’t like what happened earlier.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Can we start over?”
“Next time, can we do it differently?”
A disagreement doesn’t necessarily mean a friendship is unhealthy. How children handle the disagreement matters.
Parents Can Coach Without Taking Over
Watching a child struggle socially can be difficult. Parents naturally want to fix the situation.
But friendship is a developmental skill that children ultimately need to practice themselves.
The American Psychological Association recommends helping children develop skills for navigating peer relationships while providing support appropriate to their developmental level.
Parents can be coaches.
Help your child think through what happened. Practice a conversation. Brainstorm ways to initiate a get-together. Encourage them to notice another person’s perspective. Then give them an opportunity to try.
From Meeting Someone to Knowing Someone
Friendship rarely happens in one big moment.
It develops through dozens of small ones:
Saying hello.
Remembering someone’s favorite activity.
Choosing to sit together.
Sharing a joke.
Inviting someone over.
Working through a disagreement.
Showing up again tomorrow.
Research consistently demonstrates that the quality of children’s friendships matters, not simply the number of peers they know. High-quality friendships provide opportunities for companionship, support, cooperation, emotional growth, and the development of social skills.
At Compass Clinic, our social skills groups help children and adolescents practice these real-world friendship skills in a supportive environment. Children work on starting and maintaining conversations, identifying common interests, understanding different levels of friendship, developing relationships at an appropriate pace, navigating conflict, and creating opportunities to spend time with peers outside of group.
Because meeting someone is only the beginning.
Learning how to turn that connection into a meaningful, reciprocal friendship is a skill—and like other skills, it can grow with practice.
References
American Psychological Association. (2023). How to help kids navigate friendships and peer relationships.
Eggum-Wilkens, N. D., et al. (2020). Children’s friendship quality trajectories from middle childhood to early adolescence and prediction from sex.
Engle, J. M., McElwain, N. L., & Lasky, N. (2011). Presence and quality of kindergarten children’s friendships: Concurrent and longitudinal associations with child adjustment in the early school years. Infant and Child Development, 20(4), 365–386.
Hartup, W. W. (1996). The company they keep: Friendships and their developmental significance. Child Development, 67(1), 1–13.
Peters, E., Riksen-Walraven, J. M., Cillessen, A. H. N., & de Weerth, C. (2019). Friendships in middle childhood: Links to peer and school identification, and general self-worth. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 37, 211–229.