Fortune: “The work will teach you how to do it.”

Explanation: When trying to build or strengthen friendships for children, people often want a template, a series of steps to follow that will guarantee success. Those of us who attempt these activities with any regularity know that such a thing does not exist. What worked for one young person will not necessarily do so for another. Also, what failed in one situation may be worth trying in another.
There are a number of activities to utilize, such as a lunch bunch, service projects, outings reflecting common interests, and so on. However, simply engaging in the activity means a whole lot less than the quality of the interpersonal interactions that take place during it. This is when the adult facilitator is so important. For this is when we can help the children reflect on and learn about each other’s qualities and value. This is when they can see how much they have in common and how their differences can bind rather than divide them.
The most effective friendship facilitator – whether he or she is a parent, teacher, older sibling, or anyone else – must be an opportunist. We must recognize those moments of possibility and utilize them to bring the children together. Otherwise they float away into the dimly remembered past.
How to do this? While we can learn from each other’s experience, and utilize common activities, we really learn from doing it. Our own experience, both success and failure, is our best teacher. In order to best utilize that experience we need to be flexible.
Friendship facilitation is not like classical music, where one plays every note as written. It’s more like jazz, where you start with a certain structure and a certain number of instruments and then improvise within and from the melody. Where you take it depends upon who you’re playing with, how well you listen to each other, and how far you want to take it. Sometimes it just comes out as noise. But the longer you stick with it, and stick with each other, the more beautiful and meaningful the sound.
by Dennis Granzen
Reprinted from Family Footnotes
September 2003

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