Brett Berk

A friend recently wrote to the Gay Uncle asking how to deal with an issue her Kindergartener is having. Apparently his “best friend”¯ has turned-coat and become a “best enemy”¯. Worse, the ex- is now trying to incite mutiny with the boy”s new closest cohort.

Gunc has never been a fan of the “best friend”¯ moniker for young kids” social setups, as he thinks it tends make inevitable just this kind of unraveling. Kids this age have a limited understanding of peer relationships, so encouraging them to pick a favorite is like trying to toilet train them before they know where their butt is. The best way to expand this knowledge is to give your child access to many friends and acquaintances through casual contact and informal and formal playdates, as well as modeling positive social interaction yourself.

It”s also important not to vilify the former friend. This kind of BFF BS is probably not the result of inherent cruelty, it”s more likely””like most things with young kids””the product of formulating responses based on a very limited repertoire. At the school the G.U. ran, he had a rule, You Can”t Say You Can”t Play, that required kids to allow access to anyone who wanted to join them, and ensured that a teacher would help them work through incidences of teasing or exclusion. The goal was not (only) to create a utopia, but to provide kids with real, functional social skills and tools as well as myriad opportunities to practice using them.

The same goals can be applied to this situation. The Gay Uncle’s friend can tell her son to use words to communicate his dissatisfaction. She can teach him to let trash-talk roll off his back. She can encourage him to form many new bonds. But perhaps most importantly, she can be reminded that the kinds of problems from which we can’t totally insulate or protect kids (e.g. teasing, ear infections, junk food) are best responded to not by fretting, retrenching, or attempting control, but by providing them with actionable skills for responding appropriately.