Have you ever felt like no one wants to be your friend? Believe it or not, most kids (even sometimes adults) feel that way at one time or another. When we feel like people avoid us, we kinda like to point the blame at other people. “They are so mean. They are excluding me.” Now, while that may be true, what also might be true, is that we are acting in ways that make other people feel uncomfortable. Those are called “unexpected behaviors”. When that happens, people will usually find ways to avoid us. People don’t like that feeling of being unsafe, or unsure about what will happen next, so when someone acts in unexpected ways, without even thinking a lot about it, other people stop wanting to be around that person. The good news is that once we recognise that we have some behaviors we need to change, we can work on them! We can look at ourselves and see what we can tweak and improve on so that we will be able to make, and keep, more friends.

It is important to know that I’m not saying we should change who we are.  The “who’s” are things like personality, individuality, likes, dislikes, and what we look like.  However, we can change the “how’s“. How we interact with people, how we respond to people, how we handle conflict and problems. The behaviors are the “how’s” and when we work on developing better behaviors, we usually become a better friend. Someone that makes others feel comfortable and safe. Someone other people want to hang around with.