These gentle relationships give us permission to be genuinely happy that others have things or qualities that we don’t. Childhood friendship isn’t about keeping up with the proverbial Joneses.
Friends remind us that we can tiptoe into others’ worlds and stay for awhile, smiling together. We can be happy for each other without finding fault. For that matter, we don’t need to make it about “us” at all. We can love purely and with admiration, without a hint of jealousy.
3. Childhood friends want enduring relationships.
Up until this point, most children have safely and correctly made the assumption that their family relationships are fairly static and immovable. Their natural default, of course, is to want that type of stability outside the home, as well. The whole of humanity is naturally wired for deep connection.
A note of kindness left for a visiting friend
Perhaps kids are onto something: statistically, the friendships they have in childhood may offer protective benefits against loneliness when they get older.
Indeed, lest we be naïve, friends can also be flighty. The title of “best friend” might be transient; tried on and cast aside like a piece of clothing.
At the end of the day, though, be it at school or on a playground, kids want to matter to one another.
The earliest heartbreak, and often one that stays tender long afterwards, is a love between friends gone awry. Indeed, empathy is a learned skill, and to be dismissed or bullied by a peercan be devastating when all the child wants is to simply “fit in”.
At the same time, the ability to move on from a hurtful childhood friendship can illuminate a child to a previously unknown strength. How healthy, necessary, and empowering it is for a child to move forward from that heartbreak. From there, they can find their kindred spirits — and recognise them when they have. These are the friendships that endure; that weave the fibre of their belonging.
“Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s greatest gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one’s self, and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.” – Thomas Hughes
Childhood friends — those that cast us aside and leave us temporarily broken and breathless, alongside those that teach our hearts to sing their first love songs — are going to be among our children’s first memories.
These memories will help define their relationships as they get older.
Will they see themselves as being good company? Will they deem themselves worthy of others’ time and energy? Will they seek out others who make them feel as a kindred childhood friend did when they were younger? There is always comfort in the familiar.
A childhood friend is our first love story
Although some childhood friendships are fleeting, those rare few that endure the test of time can be among the sweetest relationships we’ll ever know. They can provide the most genuinely fond memories to cherish long after the bygone days of our youth. They remind us who we really are at our core.
And maybe, just maybe, a gift of friendship will help us uncover the very parts of ourselves — the hidden, buried jewels of compassion — that we’d never have otherwise unearthed.
Perhaps their purity isn’t lost on us. Perhaps, instead, it’s here to remind us of what matters.
Sarah R. Moore is an internationally published writer and the founder of Dandelion Seeds Positive Parenting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. She’s currently worldschooling her family. Her glass is half full.
