Why Your Child’s Friendships Matter More Than You Think
As parents, we are focused on academic success, including report cards, test scores, and establishing and maintaining homework routines (even when it’s painful to get your child to do their homework). And while these school elements certainly matter, there’s another powerful (and often overlooked and undervalued) factor shaping your child’s growth, school experience, and academic success: their friendships.
Recent research on elementary-aged children – 3rd graders, ages 9–10 revealed that peer groups play a significant role in how kids behave and emotionally function at school. Surprisingly, these peer connections have more influence on behavior than academic ability. In fact, kids in the same friend group often demonstrate not just similar attitudes, interests, and activity levels, but interestingly and not discussed - emotional strengths and social behaviors, even if their grades differ.
Why This Matters
This is a fascinating discovery because friendships during middle childhood are more than just social fun, your child’s friend and peer group have substantial influence on your child’s development. Your child’s behavior and social-emotional development is deeply connected to the friends they choose to be around. As a parent, I can see both the benefit and downfalls of that. So making sure your child is surrounding themselves and spending quality time with quality friends that resemble the qualities you would like your child to embody is vitally important. Here is how your child’s friendships and peer groups influence your child:
Emotional Intelligence (EQ): Kids learn how to navigate emotions, build empathy, and manage conflicts with their friends in a safe space while navigating the nuances of relationships.
Self-Regulation: They practice patience, sharing, and perspective-taking in group settings throughout the day.
Social Resilience: Supportive friendships can buffer against bullying, anxiety, and social stressors that can be seen from this age range all the way through adolescence when it has been found that just one solid friend can help thwart anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
Researchers found that when children have these strong, healthy friend groups that are assisting in strengthening their social-emotional development and skills are more likely to:
Behave positively in class, in which both students and teachers recognize this positive behavior.
Have stronger teacher relationships which directly influence teaching quality.
Achieve more and have deeper learning academically over time.
Have better grades.
The Parent’s Role
While we can’t choose our children’s friends, we can guide and support those relationships by:
Creating space for connection – Encourage group play via playdates and hangouts, shared activities and extracurriculars, and regular time with peers outside of school who model positive behavior.
Talking about relationships – Ask about your child’s friends, how they feel in those relationships, and what they notice about their personality and redeeming qualities that can be emulated by your child.
Modeling emotional awareness – The way we handle emotions and relationships at home becomes their blueprint. So, parents, let’s keep modeling the behavior we want to see in our children and how we treat people we care about and vice versa.
Nurturing their emotional strengths – Skills like empathy, communication, and emotional expression are just as teachable as math and reading. Social-emotional learning (SEL) happens in the classroom as well as at home so ensuring sure parents continue to provide developmentally appropriate ways to do so (please let us know if you need help providing that developmentally appropriate support for your child – we would be happy to help!)
Using strength-based approaches - Research found that children specifically in this age range responded most positively to strength-based approaches that acknowledge the good we observe and hear about both at home and school. When we focus on the good, we boost children’s intrinsic motivation, confidence and resilience in stressful situations – skills they take with them throughout their lifetime.
Looking Beyond the Report Card
Academic skills are measurable and still important, but emotional intelligence is transformational. Focusing on your child’s emotional world is not just “extra”—it’s essential. By supporting healthy friendships and strong EQ, you’re equipping your child with tools for life success—not just school success. How children learn to be in healthy relationships, and how we treat others, and how others treat you are paramount lessons as they begin to shift their attachment focus to include friends, peers, and partners as they get older.
At The Parenting Collaborative, we offer 20 minute complimentary sessions to help parents strengthen their child’s emotional intelligence, foster healthy peer relationships, and navigate school-age development and social-emotional learning with confidence.
📩 Ready to dive deeper? Visit www.theparentingcollaborative.com to book your free session or reach out for more resources.
Let’s raise kids who are not just academically smart—but emotionally strong, socially confident, and deeply connected.
