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Watching your teen struggle to find their place can ache your heart. When making friends is a struggle for your teen, they can feel quite alone. In this guide, you’ll find practical ways to help your teen build meaningful friendships and navigate social challenges.
How parents can help their teenager make friends
Supporting your teen’s social life is important. You can guide them in building social skills by focusing on several key areas:
Teach conversation basics
Learning how to talk with others is a core skill. Here’s how you can teach your teen to talk to others and meet new people:
- Give helpful phrases: Share simple phrases for talking online or in person. Examples are “That’s cool” or “Good idea.” Practice using these phrases in your talks with them.
- Model good talk: Show your teen how you speak with friends or family. Explain how to start, continue, and end a chat. You can point out what you are doing as you do it.
- Use conversation starters: Use interesting things around people to begin talks with your teen. This shows them how to start chats with peers. You can ask your teen to start a conversation with you by using something they’ve noticed.
Use examples and visuals
Seeing skills in action can make them clearer:
- Watch videos: Find videos or movie clips showing people talking. Notice how they use body language and greet others. You can pause the video and talk about what you see.
- Model in real life: Demonstrate conversation skills when speaking with others. Let your teen see you interact with relatives online or in person. Talk with them afterward about what they observed.
Practice active listening
Active listening means truly hearing and understanding what someone is saying. This skill is important because it helps teens build stronger bonds and show others they care. Here’s how you can teach your teen active listening:
- Show you are listening: Give your full attention when your teen talks. Make eye contact and nod to show you follow along. Explain that this shows respect for the speaker.
- Let them share: Allow your teen to talk freely without interrupting them. Thank them for sharing their thoughts and feelings. You can practice by having them talk about their day while you focus on listening without interrupting.
- Use the LAFF Don’t CRY: This is a way to recall key listening points. It means Listen, Ask questions, Focus, Find a step, Don’t Criticize, Don’t React quickly, Don’t Talk too much. You can review the meaning of each part and practice using it when discussing a problem.
Build understanding for others
Seeing things from another’s view helps connect. Here are activities that help build this understanding:
- Interview people: Encourage your teen to talk with different people. This helps them listen to personal stories and feel what others feel. Help them prepare questions and discuss what they learned from the interview.
- Discuss different views: Talk about how people can see things differently. This helps your teen understand that others have their thoughts and feelings.
Support practice and feedback
Encouraging practice involves several approaches:
- Play talk games: Use cards with conversation starters to practice talking back and forth. Take turns asking and answering questions.
- Observe interactions: Create simple lists to watch social moments together. Talk about what happened and what you learned. You can do this after a family gathering or social event.
- Give helpful feedback: Offer thoughts on your teen’s communication tries. Focus on what was helpful and what could be done differently next time. Let them know that it’s okay to make mistakes as part of the learning process.
Handle tough social moments
Friendships can sometimes be challenging. Guiding your teen through difficulties and helping them resolve conflict can include:
- Discuss disagreements: Talk about how to handle arguments with friends. Explain how to disagree kindly.
- Address bullying: Help your child learn how to respond to mean behavior, such as teasing or gossip.
- Role-play situations: Act out difficult social scenes together. This allows them to practice responses in a safe space.
Be a social guide
You can help your teenager navigate social settings. Acting as a guide means you can:
- Learn their skills: Understand the social skills your teen is working on. This helps you see opportunities to support them. Pay attention to their interactions and notice areas where they are growing.
- Reinforce good behavior: Notice and praise positive social interactions. Point out specific things they did well in a social situation. This can help build their self-esteem.
Join group activities
Group settings offer chances for teenagers to make friends. Supporting participation can involve encouraging your teen to:
- Find sports or clubs: Encourage your teen to join activities they like. These are natural places to meet peers and practice talking. Help them find a group with common interests. Consider extracurricular activities as a starting point.
- Plan social events: Help your teen plan simple get-togethers, such as an outing to the park or a movie. This builds skills in organizing and socializing with friends.
How to not to help your teen make friends
Wanting your teen to have friends comes from a place of love, and it’s natural to want to help. But sometimes, well-meaning actions can be unhelpful. Common mistakes parents or caregivers make when trying to help their teen make friends include:
Too much pressure
This pressure can feel overwhelming to your teen and may include:
- Over-scheduling social events: Filling their calendar with required activities. This might not leave room for spontaneous connections or rest.
- Constant questioning about friends: Repeatedly questioning them about who they hung out with or talked to. This can feel like an interrogation rather than support.
- Arranging playdates: Setting up social interactions without their input or agreement. Teens usually prefer to arrange things themselves or have more say.
Comparing your teen
Sometimes, parents, in an attempt to help their teens make friends, unintentionally compare their child with others. Parents do this when they:
- Highlight others’ social success: Pointing out how easily other teens seem to make friends can feel like a direct criticism of your teen’s struggles.
- Ask why they aren’t like someone else: Expressing confusion or disappointment that they don’t have a similar social circle to a peer. This ignores your teen’s unique personality and the challenges they face.
Not validating feelings
When your teen shares their pain about friendship difficulties, it’s important to validate their experience. Ways you might not validate their feelings are:
- Saying “It’s not a big deal”: Minimizing the importance of their social struggles. For a teen, peer connections are often very important.
- Telling them to just “get over it”: Suggesting they should move past the hurt or difficulty without processing it. This doesn’t offer practical ways to cope.
- Sharing your easy social history: Implying that friendship was simple for you at their age. This can make them feel like their struggle is unusual or wrong.
Over-involvement
Over-involvement could look like:
- Intervening in their conflicts: Getting involved directly in disagreements with their friends. This takes away their opportunity to learn how to resolve issues on their own.
- Telling them exactly what to say or do: Providing a script for every social interaction. While guidance is helpful, they need space to find their voice.
- Contacting others directly: Reaching out to other parents or teens to smooth over social bumps without your teen’s knowledge or consent. This undermines their independence.
Disregarding needs
Teens have different social needs and comfort levels. Disregarding their needs might involve:
- Expecting them to be outgoing: Pushing a naturally quiet teen to act like an extrovert. This goes against their core personality.
- Filling all their free time with social plans: Not allowing downtime for an introverted teen to recharge alone. This can lead to burnout.
- Ignoring their comfort zone: Pressuring them into large group settings if they prefer one-on-one interactions. This doesn’t honor their social preferences.
Focus on numbers
Having many friends isn’t the only measure of social success. This focus on numbers might lead to:
- Asking about the size of their friend group: Showing more interest in the number of friends they have than who those friends are.
- Suggesting they need more friends: Implying that their current friendships are not enough if they only have a few close connections. Quality, supportive friendships are often more beneficial than superficial ones.
Signs your teen needs support for social challenges
Sometimes, teenagers with mental health challenges may find it difficult to make friends. Seek support when you notice:
Severe or persistent difficulties
If your teen is struggling significantly with making or keeping friends, and this has been going on for an extended period, it may be necessary to seek professional support.
Consider seeking help if you observe signs such as:
- Chronic difficulty connecting: An ongoing struggle to form or maintain connections with peers, even when opportunities are available.
- Noticeable emotional distress: The difficulties with friendships are causing them to experience anxiety, sadness, or withdrawal. You may notice significant or concerning changes in their behavior or mood.
Impact on daily life
If your teen’s difficulty with friends seriously affects other parts of their life, it’s a clear signal that professional help could provide support. Consider support if the challenges with friendship mean they:
- Avoid school or activities: They try to skip school or refuse to participate in clubs or sports they used to like. This avoidance is often due to social fears or past negative experiences.
- Struggle in other areas: Their problems with friends are causing stress that affects their schoolwork or family relationships. The difficulty is spilling over into other important parts of their life.
Constant expression of distress
A teen’s feelings about their friendship struggles are very important during the teenage years. If they talk about feeling hopeless or express significant distress about their social life, it’s crucial to listen and consider professional support. Pay attention if they say things that show:
- Intense sadness about being alone: They often talk about feeling lonely or left out and seem deeply unhappy. Their words show they are in pain.
- Feelings of worthlessness: They express thoughts that they are not good enough or that no one likes them. These thoughts can be linked to social rejection or difficulty forming connections.
- Lack of hope for change: They feel like things will never get better or that they will never make new friends. This sense of hopelessness needs professional attention.
If you have an autistic teen that finds it difficult to socialize or always spends time alone, our guide shares gentle, step-by-step ways to help them connect with peers.
Final thoughts
Helping your teen build friendships takes time and patience.
You play a crucial role by guiding them through conversations, listening attentively, and navigating social situations.
Finding a hobby or activity based on similar interests can be a great way for teenagers to make friends. Remember, you’re not alone in supporting your teen; help is available if you need it.
Sources
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2. Toombs, E., Unruh, A., & McGrath, P. (2018, January). Evaluating the parent–adolescent communication toolkit: Usability and preliminary content of an online intervention. Nursing Open, 5(1), 29–36. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.107
3. Berthelsen, D., Hayes, N., White, S. L. J., & Williams, K. E. (2017, June 2). Executive function in adolescence: Associations with child and family risk factors and self-regulation in early childhood. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 903. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00903
4. Spruijt, A. M., Dekker, M. C., Ziermans, T. B., & Swaab, H. (2019, January 15). Linking parenting and social competence in school-aged boys and girls: Differential socialization, diathesis-stress, or differential susceptibility? Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2789. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02789
5. NYU Langone Health. (n.d.). PEERS social skills program. Retrieved from https://nyulangone.org/centers-programs/child-study-center/our-services/peers-social-skills-program
6. González Moreno, A., & Molero Jurado, M. M. (2024, December 2). Social skills and creativity as elements that build resilience in adolescence. Behavioral Sciences, 14(12), 1158. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14121158