How To Learn To Be Friends With Families? - Society

“We are friends of families: we often visit each other, go out of town, go on vacation together at sea” - do you know such families? Have you heard about them? Or are these words about you and your family friends with another family? We will talk about the psychological characteristics of such a relationship. About what difficulties you can meet, how to get around them and strengthen friendship.

Where to start?

Quite often, family friendships arise from children. Children can study in the same class, study in the same circle, group or sports section, etc. First they get to know each other, and then mom or dad "pull up". If parents see that their child has developed a good relationship with another boy or another girl, then they usually maintain this friendship by connecting their adult resources - and then the children come to visit each other, celebrate birthdays and other holidays together. And if the parents have common interests, then all the prerequisites for friendship between families are there.

In another scenario of the emergence of friendship between families, it starts with the relationship between adults. Often they are work colleagues or business partners, but it is not uncommon for parents to become friends when they were children themselves, for example, they went to the same school or lived in the same yard.

Pros and benefits

As we look at examples of long-term friendships between families, we will see some general "conditions for success."

• 1. In terms of composition, such families correspond to each other, that is, for example, each “friendly” family is a father, mother and two children. The meaning of such a match is clear: otherwise, someone will be left without a “pair”.
• 2. It is important that friendships are in parent-parent and child-child pairs.
• 3. It is highly desirable that there is sympathy between all family members - without it, a joint pastime, especially a long one, is unlikely to be a joy.

Family friendship has many positive aspects that make it strong and lasting.

Thanks to her, our needs such as social contact and time structuring are easily satisfied. The first need speaks of the importance for us of interaction with other people, communication, joint actions, or even just being in a group where we are well treated. The second means the need to fill the time in some way, preferably with useful, interesting activities. So family friendship creates wonderful conditions for one and the other. In addition, such relationships are psychologically very comfortable: in them everyone feels calm, comfortable and enjoys communication and common affairs or entertainment.

And yet, as in the friendship between two people, here the feeling of security increases: if a difficult situation arises, we can count on the help of the family with whom we are friends.

Traffic rules - rules of friendly traffic

For those who are fortunate enough to be friends with their families, psychological advice will help strengthen and prolong the friendship.

Even with the best of intentions, refrain from criticizing and nagging another family member.

• Tip 1. Find out what each member of the other family likes: what dishes dad prefers, what style of clothes mom loves, what books the son reads, what music the daughter listens to, etc. Consider their preferences in your joint projects.
• Tip 2. Do not limit yourself to communication "as a whole": let the children meet with each other more often and let the parents have their own topics of conversation and reasons for meetings.
• Tip 3. If you are drawn into an intra-family conflict, they offer to become a judge in a dispute, refuse and do not enter into a coalition with anyone: the spouses will make peace, and your intervention will not be forgotten.
• Tip 4. Do not be jealous of the family with whom you are friends of other families. The format of relations we are considering involves a free choice of whom to communicate with, meet, spend time with, and not limiting obligations.
• Advice 5. If friendly relations with another family are a thing of the past, keep secret all the information about it, about its members, which became known to you during your friendship.

Based on the book by Ilya Shabshin “Your Personal Psychologist.

44 practical tips for all occasions"