How to Help Kids Make Friends: What the Research Says

Friendship is one of the most important
contributors to children’s wellbeing —
and one of the areas where parents feel
most helpless when things go wrong.
Watching a child struggle to make friends,
sit alone at lunch, or be left out of
social groups is among the most painful
experiences of parenting.

The research on children’s friendship
development is more specific and more
actionable than most parenting advice
suggests. This article covers what the
research shows about how friendships
develop, what helps children make and
keep friends, and what parents can
specifically do to support their
child’s social world.

Why Friendship Matters

Research on friendship and child
development consistently finds that
the quality of children’s peer
relationships is one of the strongest
predictors of long-term wellbeing —
independent of family relationships,
academic achievement, and other
commonly measured outcomes.

Research by William Bukowski at
Concordia University and by
Willard Hartup at the University
of Minnesota — among the most
prolific researchers on children’s
friendships — finds that children
with at least one close, reciprocal
friendship show better emotional
regulation, higher self-esteem,
better academic engagement,
and lower rates of anxiety
and depression than those without.

The protective effect of even
one genuine friendship is significant:
research by Gary Ladd at Arizona
State University finds that children
who enter kindergarten with at
least one established friend show
significantly better school adjustment
than those who do not — better
attitudes toward school, higher
academic performance, and fewer
behavioral difficulties.

How Friendship Develops Across Childhood

Children’s understanding of friendship —
and the skills required to form and
maintain it — develops gradually
across childhood:

Early childhood (ages 3-6):
Friendships at this age are
primarily proximity-based and
activity-based — a friend is
someone you play with, who
is nearby, who has toys you like.
Research by Robert Selman at
Harvard on friendship understanding
finds that children at this age
have limited capacity to take
the friend’s perspective or
to understand friendship as
a reciprocal, enduring relationship.
Friendships are frequent, relatively
shallow, and quickly formed and dissolved.

Middle childhood (ages 6-10):
Friendships become more stable,
more reciprocal, and more
emotionally significant. Children
begin to understand friendship
as involving mutual trust, loyalty,
and shared interests — and to
feel the genuine pain of friendship
loss. Research finds that the
social skills required for
friendship at this age —
entering groups, resolving conflict,
maintaining connection across time —
are significantly more demanding
than in early childhood.

Adolescence (ages 11+): Friendships
become the primary source of
emotional support, identity
exploration, and belonging —
often rivaling family in
their importance. Research
by Janis Smetana at the
University of Rochester on
adolescent social development
finds that friendship quality
in adolescence is a stronger
predictor of wellbeing than
friendship quantity — one
or two deep, genuine friendships
are more protective than
a large but superficial social network.

What the Research Shows Helps
Children Make Friends

Social skills that can be
explicitly taught. Research on
children’s social competence
identifies several specific skills
that are associated with friendship
success — and that can be
explicitly taught and practiced:

Initiating contact. Research on
how children enter social groups
finds that successful entry
typically involves observation
first — watching what the
group is doing — followed
by a comment or action
related to the group’s
activity, rather than
a direct bid for attention
or friendship. “Can I play?”
is less effective than simply
joining and contributing.

Responding to others’ bids.
Research on friendship formation
finds that children who are
reliably responsive to others’
social bids — who acknowledge
when someone talks to them,
who follow up on shared interests,
who remember things the other
person said — form friendships
more readily than those who
are less responsive.

Conversation skills. Research
on friendship and conversation
finds that children who ask
questions, who listen and respond
to what the other person says,
and who share information about
themselves reciprocally form
friendships more readily than
those who dominate conversations
or who respond minimally.

Conflict resolution. Research
on friendship maintenance finds
that the capacity to navigate
and repair conflict — to
acknowledge one’s own role,
to listen to the other’s
perspective, and to find
a solution that both parties
can accept — is one of the
strongest predictors of
friendship longevity.

Facilitating opportunities.
Research on friendship development
consistently finds that opportunity —
simply being in the same place
as potential friends, repeatedly —
is one of the strongest predictors
of friendship formation. Children
make friends with the people
they encounter regularly.

Parents who facilitate repeated
contact with the same children —
through playdates, through
shared activities, through
consistent participation in
the same groups — are creating
the conditions for friendship
to develop.

Research on friendship formation
finds that one-on-one playdates —
particularly in a familiar
environment where the child
feels comfortable and confident —
are significantly more effective
for building friendship than
large group social situations,
particularly for shy or
socially anxious children.

Interest-based activities.
Research on friendship formation
finds that shared interests are
one of the primary foundations
of children’s friendships —
and that interest-based groups
(sports teams, art classes,
drama groups, coding clubs)
provide both the shared
interest that generates
connection and the repeated
contact that allows friendship
to develop.

A child who struggles socially
in their school peer group
may find friendship much
more accessible in an
interest-based context
outside of school — where
the shared interest provides
an immediate connection
and the social hierarchy
of the school environment
is absent.

Coaching rather than directing.
Research on parental involvement
in children’s peer relationships
finds that parents who coach —
who help children think through
social situations, who role-play
conversations, who debrief
after social experiences —
produce better social outcomes
than parents who either
direct (telling the child
exactly what to do and say)
or who are uninvolved.

The coaching approach:
“What happened? What did
you try? What else could
you have done? What might
you try next time?” —
builds social problem-solving
capacity rather than dependence
on parental direction.

What Does Not Help

Forcing social interaction.
Research on shyness and
social development consistently
finds that pushing children
into social situations before
they are ready — requiring
them to approach peers,
to join groups, to perform
socially — increases rather
than reduces social anxiety
and does not produce
the genuine social engagement
that organic, supported
approach does.

Solving social problems for
the child. Research on
parental involvement and
children’s social competence
finds that parents who
intervene directly in their
child’s peer conflicts —
who call the other child’s
parents, who speak directly
to the peer, who solve
the problem on the child’s behalf —
undermine the child’s
development of independent
social problem-solving capacity.

The exception: genuine bullying,
safety concerns, or situations
that are beyond the child’s
developmental capacity to navigate.

Overemphasizing popularity.
Research on popularity and
wellbeing finds a distinction
between sociometric popularity —
being well-liked by peers —
and perceived popularity —
being seen as high-status
and dominant. Research by
Mitch Prinstein at UNC
finds that sociometric
popularity (genuine likeability)
is associated with positive
long-term outcomes, while
perceived popularity is
associated with risk-taking,
aggression, and worse
long-term outcomes.

Parents who focus on helping
their child be genuinely liked
— kind, trustworthy, fun
to be with — are supporting
the right goal. Parents who
focus on social status and
popularity may be supporting
a goal that research finds
does not serve children well.

When to Be More Concerned

Most children go through
periods of social difficulty —
friendship transitions,
falling-outs, periods of
loneliness — that resolve
with time and appropriate support.
A few patterns warrant
more attention:

A child who has never had
a close, reciprocal friendship —
who consistently struggles
to form any genuine peer connection —
warrants a conversation with
your pediatrician or a child psychologist.

A child whose social difficulties
are significantly affecting
their mood, school attendance,
or daily functioning.

A child who shows significant
anxiety about social situations
that does not ease over time.

A child who is being consistently
excluded or targeted by peers.

The Bottom Line

Friendship cannot be manufactured
for children. But the conditions
in which friendship develops —
repeated contact with the
same children, shared interest,
specific social skills, and
the confidence that comes
from knowing a parent is
available to coach without directing —
can be created and supported.

The research is clear on
what matters most: not
the number of friends
a child has, but the
quality of at least
one genuine, reciprocal connection.

That connection — one child
who is genuinely known
and genuinely known by —
is worth more for a
child’s wellbeing than
any number of acquaintances.

Help your child find that one.
Everything else builds from there.

Sources

Bukowski, W. M., Boivin, M., &
Hartup, W. W. (1996).
Friendship and its significance
in childhood and adolescence.
In W. M. Bukowski, A. F. Newcomb,
& W. W. Hartup (Eds.),
The Company They Keep.
Cambridge University Press.

Ladd, G. W. (1990). Having friends,
keeping friends, making friends,
and being liked by peers in
the classroom. Child Development,
61(2), 312–331.

Prinstein, M. J. (2017).
Popular: The Power of Likability
in a Status-Obsessed World.
Viking.

Selman, R. L. (1980).
The Growth of Interpersonal
Understanding. Academic Press.