Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘friends / friendship’

People are social creatures. They live in groups, they need the groups and they rely on the groups to survive. This creates some dependency that no one likes. Yes, some people need friends more than others do, but living on our own, not seeing or being in contact with the outside world, would bring an end to human kind.

Friends and friendships are very important to all people, even to those who find it hard to admit, and what social skills we do not have naturally, we can develop.

In the past year, I have had many opportunities to talk and write about my successes. When I examined each of them, I realized that being a very social creature, loving people, understanding the way they function and using my good social skills were real assets to me.

Social skills – Nature or Nurture?
I have not always been a very friendly person. Not that I did not like company, but until the age of 16, I did not really understand the social rules I needed to live by. I had no friends, I got into frequent conflicts with the ones I did hang around with and I was lonely and miserable. My parents had no friends either, so I could not learn from them the right things to say and do around other people.

Then, I stopped reacting without thinking about the impact it has on my relationships and I learned that friendly people are happy people and that social skills can be learned.

From time to time, 10-year-old Noff makes me so proud I just have to write about it. This girl inspires me so much I want other parents and kids to be inspired too. To me, these are the things that make the world a better place. This time, Noff showed how to be a good friend.

Noff’s school has a special unit for children with various disabilities. These kids spend much of their time in “normal” classrooms and go to the special unit for additional support, specific exercise and maybe a little bit to get out of classroom competition.

At the same time, the school includes these special students in every extracurricular activity – choirs, school plays, instrumentals bands and even dance troupes. We are amazed and moved to tears watching the little brave souls get up on stage with walking frames or in electric wheelchairs during concerts and performances and pour their heart out, their faces beaming with joy.

Some time ago, I picked Noff up from school and she said that one of the special education teachers had approached her and a few other girls for a secret mission. She said, “She wanted us to help one of the girls without telling anyone about it. She said the girl needed someone to help her get from the special unit to class and back and someone else to protect her in the playground from bullies”.

“Wow”, I said, “Are you proud she picked you?”

“Yeah!” she beamed at me, “And straight away, I asked her if it was Kelly [not her real name] and she looked surprised, but I know it’s hard for her to walk all the way to the special unit and back with all her stuff and I know some kids are picking on her”.

Every parent wants well-connected kids. Many people invest a fortune to allow their kids to hang around others they may benefit from. The saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, is very tough but true.

I learned it the hard way that connections get you places and that there is no need to fight it. I remember the first time I realized it when I was about 24 years old and went to the bank to get with a credit application. As Gal and I sat down in the manager’s office, he looked at us like we were two young kids and said, “Never! I don’t know you and I can’t give you any credit”.

People like doing business with people they know. There is an assumed trust with someone you know. My dad had suggested he come with us to the bank, but I said, “No! It’s not supposed to be like that”. We both had salaries, we owned our home (and had a huge loan my dad had organized) and I was convinced the bank manager would look at the facts and understand we were a reliable couple, but he did not.

At one stage, I asked the bank manager, “Do you know my dad?”

He asked, “What’s your dad’s name?”

When I told him, he cried, “Why didn’t you say so? Sure, I’ll give you credit! Here, give me the form and I’ll sign it”

I was furious, but I realized my dad had built this connection for a long time and it was just wise for me to take advantage of it. I also realized I had to do the same for my children.

Much of our success in life depends on our ability to network and connect with other people. This is a very important skill that your kids will learn from you. It is almost a form of art.

In my leadership training, I tell the participants that good leaders have good networks and they build them like spiders. Every person they meet, they weave a web that connects them. This is true in life and in business. You connect with people and you both benefit from the relationship. Benefit does not have to be financial, it can be emotional, but as long as both sides benefit, the relationship will continue. This is a very important social skill to teach children – having a network of friends is important for their success and it based on “give and take”. In a good relationship, you cannot be a constant giver or a constant receiver.

All parents dream of having polite kids with good manners. Some of the desire for manners is rooted in an old discipline of obedience that was part of every family structure in the past.

I have challenged this quest for good manners for many years. When I was a child, I was very rebellious and hated anything associated with manners. I believe I did that because my parents and my teachers used manners as a way to control their children and students, instead of explaining what manners meant and how we would benefit from using them.

I know many parents who still use external motivation today, repeatedly telling their kids to say “please” and “thank you” without helping them develop their own understanding and motivation. But I believe that when children know what it means to have manners and how they benefit from them, they are polite and show excellent manners naturally and effortlessly.

Kids can tell when they do something to please their parents and when they do it because they want to. After my kids have a sleepover or a party, many of their friends’ parents ask them, “What do you say to Mrs. Baras?” and the child is embarrassed and mumbles, “Thank you for having me”. This is a typical example of how parents confuse following orders (“You do what I tell you to do just because I told you to do it and I am God almighty and you’d better listen to me or else…”) with a lesson that equips children with rules of behavior that will make their life successful and happy.

Every parent knows that dealing with other human beings is not always smooth. We find ourselves interacting with different people all the time, with a wide variety of communication styles, values, beliefs and perspectives. That diversity can cause all kinds of misunderstandings, awkward moments and sometimes even serious friction.

Yet much of the time, most people operate under the assumption that “every child knows” what they know, that what seems clear and simple to them is as clear and simple to others. In fact, it is not the differences between us and the other people that create the friction, it is our expectation that they can see our point of view.

The TV series Lie to Me has brought the interpretation of facial expressions and body language into our living room, but unless you have developed these skills with a lot of supervised practice, it is likely that you can read what someone else is feeling correctly as often as not. If your partner walks in the door looking upset, are they sorry they are late, did they have a flat tire, did they get fired or did they just step in something unpleasant? It is hard to tell.

Here is an example.

John gets fires from work. He is so upset he cannot speak and decides to wait until the kids have gone to bed before sharing the bad news with Betty. Not knowing what has happened, Betty casually asks him if he can pick something up on his way back from work tomorrow.

John explodes.

Betty has no idea what just happened.

Our highly commercialized world pumps us with the idea that being rich and famous is a good thing. Even things “mere mortals” find difficult to deal with, like going on a diet or breaking up with a partner, are leveraged to create more fame and more fortune for the celebrities. Scandals are just useful ways to sell the next movie or the new album. So useful, in fact, that some of them are manufactured.

In their song Lifestyle of the Rich and the Famous, Good Charlotte sing about how celebrities complain all the time and say their life is hard, even though they have money, mansions and other things money can buy. By contrasting fame and fortune with living on the streets, this song reflects general public sentiment very well.

But it is not true.

If you have been anywhere near a TV set in the past few weeks, read any newspaper or even glanced at a magazine at the checkout line, you have seen them – Prince William and Kate Middleton. Their lives and upcoming wedding were covered from every angle and then, their wedding was covered in even more detail. Anyone who had anything to do with them at any time was interviewed ad nauseam and every bit was replayed over and over again.

As with the other posts in this series, the points below show that in life, there is no gain without a loss and no loss without a gain. Life is just wonderful that way.

Some of the points were inspired by Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, a high recommended book Ronit and I have been reading and discussing lately. Other points were just inspired by life.

Should police be armed better or will this lead to more violence?

Should possible offenders be chased down and captured or will this lead to unnecessary damage?

Do you really know why? What would happen if you had to explain yourself?

Is it better to be safe or does being safe sometimes make you sorry?

Do social media sites help us make friends or lose the ones we already have?

If you want your kids to be friendly and succeed in life, you must help them develop social skills by providing them with many opportunities to experience interaction with friends. So what are those social skills kids need?

Last week, I described the first 8 out of 15 friendliness skills and today, I will introduce you to another 7: Avoiding criticism, Being positive, Keeping secrets, Never gossiping, Not being bossy, Listening and Being fun.

I believe that these skills are more important than academic and thinking skills, because social skills can clear the way to good academic performance, but not the other way around. Stress is the biggest inhibitor of thinking and creativity, so having good social skills and a good social group can make sure your child is happy and confident, which will expand their capacity for learning.

I am sure you will agree that kids need social skills and they cannot learn them by sitting in front of the computer. In order to learn how to be friendly, you simply have to spend your time with real friends and engage other people directly in various situations.

If you want your kids to have friends, you must teach them the right friendship skills and provide them with many opportunities to experience and develop those skills. So what are the social skills kids (and grownups) need?

There are 15 of them and today, I will introduce you to 8 of them: Sharing, Having Manners, Giving Compliments, Starting Conversations, Winning and losing with grace, Collaborating, Working in a team and Helping.

As a parent, you must have found yourself facing a stubborn child who will just not do what you ask of them. No matter what you want – clean your room, do your homework, stop nagging me to go home – kids sometimes seem to insist on doing the exact opposite.

If that is not enough, your partner may suddenly have strange notions of what should be done and how it should be done with money, around the house, in the yard or on vacation. You find yourself wondering if they have “lost the plot” and if you are the only person who can see things clearly.

These sorts of clashes can be very unpleasant and distressing. They also have the nasty habit of escalating to scary proportions very quickly. Whatever you do to make the other side “get it already”, they grow more persistent, until both sides start throwing hurtful comments, calling each other names and absolutely fuming.

Well, I am here to offer another way of looking at things, which is likely to help. But first, a couple of stories.

The Experiment

Last week, Ronit and I watched a movie called The Experiment. It is loosely based on Stanford University’s prison experiment, but instead of students, a group of adults who really need money are promised $1,000 a day for a “perfectly safe” 14-day experiment. They are taken to an isolated warehouse (the real experiment was in a campus basement), where they are divided into Guards and Prisoners. The guards are given simple rules and told to respond “commensurately”, which means “in proportion to the offense”, and never to use violence. In the “guard” room, there is a red light that will come on if the experiment has to be terminated.