Scotland's Source - How to...Make Friends

How to...
Make Friends - #2

There are so many skills in life that people seem to take for granted. Some people are naturally good at some physical things such as throwing a ball, swimming, balancing or running. Other people develop skills in creating things like paintings, sculptures, working with wood or clay. One skill that a great deal of people find difficult to work on is relating well with others. Unlike natural skills this is an area that everyone needs to develop and work on, yet there are few resources readily available to people.

When I first started my career as a social worker I was a counselor in a residential treatment program. The treatment program was setting up new units for the children to complete to achieve the goals they needed to work on. Each counselor was assigned different areas to develop the units. One of the units that I was assigned was how to make friends. When I first saw this I thought that it would be very easy to develop. I had always had lots of friends is high school and college and so I thought it would be easy to teach a young teen how to make friends.

When I sat down to right the objective for the goal I found that this was very easy. The reason that people need and want friends is to have someone to share your problems with and also to have companionship and someone to share good times with. When I came to the part of writing the task on how to make friends I was stumped. It was hard to find a way to teach someone, especially an emotionally disturbed adolescent how to make friends. I had never stopped to think about how I did this. I realized that I had never consciously set out to make friends with anyone. My friendships had developed over time of seeing someone in classes and working on projects together and then going for coffee or drinks. I had never entered a class or work situation and thought about making a friendship with someone, the relationships evolved.

As I started to think about how the relationships formed and how to help others to follow steps to form friendships I realized that the main thing I do is to be myself. I smile at people and I ask them questions about themselves. I also listen to their answers and showed interest in their lives. I decided that the main thing I would have the children concentrate on in how to make friends is listening to others with genuine interest. This would be a challenge for many teens that tends to be quite self-centered.

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