ohbloodyhell8

My oldest is worried about how many friends he has.  He wants more friends this year at school.  We talked about why he thinks some of his classmates aren’t “friends”.  He thinks it’s because he goofs off a lot.  When I asked him what he could do about that, he said, “I know, I know, don’t goof off so much.”  Smart kid.

How many friends you have doesn’t really matter, of course.  What matters is how good of a friend you are to others.  Yep,sounds a bit like the wizard.  I have had some really great friends over the years.  Apparently though, I’m not good at keeping the friendship going, the sustaining part of friendship.  I wish I could say I don’t know why, but truly I think I do.  I tend to be rather annoying, clingy, and possessive.  It’s something that I hope I do not teach my sons and yet not teach them to be aloof in the process.  I see bits of me in both of them, obviously since I’m their mom, but one has to contemplate nature versus nurture.  Will my style of nurturing override their natural state of being?  Or do I need to nurture to to try to shape their natural state of being?

My big mistake over the years has usually been to misinterpret the friendship.  The level of importance was not as balanced as I wanted to think.  I thought of myself as more important in the other person’s life than what I was.  My perception and perspective was skewed.  It took me many years to figure this out, but once I did it freed up some space in my brain.  I am a worst-case scenario-ist and so I go over all the possibilities and usually focus on the worst ones.  This creates a higher level of wondering…what did I do, not do, say, or not say that ruined the friendship?  In reality, many of the times it came down to friends being more important to me than I was to them.  This was not their problem, it was mine.  The other big error I would make involved how much I really had in common with the person.  Not necessarily the little things (books, movies, music, interests) but the important stuff-values, priorities, goals.

How do I keep my sons from creating a similar imbalance in their friendships?  All I could say tonight to my son was to be thoughtful, considerate, and remember the other person’s point of view.  I told him he is a wonderful boy, with a lot of neat energy.  I pointed out that he has done a lot of growing up this summer and to begin the school year with a positive attitude.  I also told him that he should be friendly to everyone (and hopefully everyone is friendly back) but that not everyone will be his friend.  And that is okay.

We did a study of a book in Sunday school and during it  we examined friendship.  There were exercises to graph your friends to see where they place within your life, your inner circle out through the acquaintances you have.  I didn’t reach the maximum on any of the circles.  I wonder if that is good or bad or simply me.  I suppose if I didn’t have a strong enough group of friends I would feel “lonely” but I don’t mind being alone.  Does that impact the way I am with friends?

Another thing that I realized over the years is that everyone’s perspective of what is important is so different.  I want to teach that to my sons, help them understand it.  I haven’t figured out how to do that yet without it sounding judgmental or cynical.  Perhaps combining it with a healthy dose of how everyone is usually just doing the best they can, and if they seem grumpy, maybe they are just having a bad day.

Friends are very important in life.  Family is more important still.  Surround my sons with a loving family and the friends will come along.