Your children’s friends will have a strong influence on them and this can be positive or negative. There can be rather a fine line between being nosy and being concerned. However, you do need to have a protective presence in your child’s life. You need to keep an eye on relationships to make sure they are healthy and positive.
- Open your home
One of the easiest ways to get to know your child’s friends is to make them feel comfortable coming to your home. They can interact with your child and you can subtly supervise them in the background.
In this way, you know what they are up to and it gives you the opportunity to find out more about them in a relaxed setting without interrogating them.
Be friendly but do not intrude too much so that a child does not start to feel uncomfortable. When you get to know their names and more about them, you can keep their contact details in a family address book.
Installing the SpyFone app on your child’s phone can give you reassurance as you will be able to check his or her location, internet use and other activity on the phone. It can also be of benefit to your child as there is a lost phone feature and a panic button.
- Get to know the parents
When you pick your child up from school or drop him or her off at a friend’s house, try to get to know more about the parents. By being friendly with the parents, you can help ensure that your child’s friendship is a good one and you may even find that you share the same values and concerns as them.
You can take the initiative to get to know the parents better by inviting the mom for a coffee date or including the parents in a social gathering. When you know the parents better, you can speak about any issues regarding the children together and share advice.
- Invite friends on family outings
As your children grow older, they will start spending more time away from home. If you want to encourage them to spend more time with you, invite their friends along on family outings.
Your children are safer when you know where they are and who they spend time with. When they are always at other children’s homes, you have less control over who they are with and what they are doing.
- Take part in school events
When you take part in school events, the children in the school get to know you. You can observe how your child interacts in a school setting and how the friends relate to teachers and other authority figures.
By interacting with teachers, parents and other children at such events, you will quickly pick up useful information. If your child’s friend is known for resisting authority figures, not caring about school and mocking others who do care, you may have to talk to your child who could be negatively influenced by this attitude.
- Keep an eye on interactions
You should never take a completely hands-off approach to friendships when your child is still young. At this stage, your child is still learning about relationships and will not understand when a relationship is unhealthy.
If your child is being bullied by another child, you need to know about it and put a stop to it. If your child starts making demands and being rude to you, you need to find out whether friends are influencing this behavior and talk about it.