How to express your feelings with friends (Aida, Age 5)

Here’s a brain teaser for you:

What runs through all friendships, building them or breaking them, quietly or loudly or silently?

Can you guess?

The answer is: our feelings!

Stay tuned to hear more!

(Music & Intro)

Hi there! I’m Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore, also known as Dr. Friendtastic. I’m an author and clinical psychologist based in Princeton, NJ. Each week, on the Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic podcast, I answer a question from a kid about making and keeping friends.

If you have a question you’d like me to answer, you can send it in at DrFriendtastic.com/submit.

Here’s today’s question:

Hi, my name’s Aida. I'm 5 years old, and my question is, how do you show your feelings?

Hi, Aida, Thanks for sending in this interesting question! Letting friends see your feelings is an important part of helping them get to know and understand you.

There are two main kinds of feelings we need to show in friendships: positive and negative. They’re both important for building strong friendships.

Expressing positive feelings helps friendships grow. You can do that without words or with words. For instance, you can smile at a friend to show you’re happy to see her. You can laugh with a friend to share a funny moment. You can use your words to compliment, encourage, or comfort a friend or do an act of kindness to show she matters to you. All of these ways of expressing positive feelings help you and your friend feel closer to each other.

What about negative feelings? Negative feelings are our internal signal that something is not right. Sometimes, our negative feelings are mild. For instance you might feel a bit annoyed when a friend talks with her mouth full of food. That’s yucky, but it’s probably not something that would end your friendship.

On the other hand, because our friends matter to us, we can sometime have very strong negative feelings about them. So, you might feel furious at a friend who told your secret, or jealous when a friend hangs out with someone else.

What do you think might happen to your friendship if you never expressed negative feelings? Most likely, your negative feelings would build and build and build, because you never told your friend what bothered you, so your friend keeps doing whatever that is. Yikes! Saying nothing when you’re upset could end up ruining a friendship!

But what do you think might happen if you complained and yelled at your friend every time you were even slightly upset about something she did? Double yikes! That could also end up ruining your friendship! If you frequently scold your friend, that would make it hard for your friend to enjoy your company.

So we need to find a middle ground between always and never expressing negative feelings to friends, and do it in kind and helpful ways. Here are some ideas to keep in mind:

First, if there’s a problem with your friend, talk directly to her about it, rather than involving others. It might be tempting to try to get people on your side, but audience participation is generally not helpful in resolving friendship problems. It just makes the problem bigger.

Second, decide if it’s something that needs expressing. If your feelings are mild or the event is not something that’s likely to happen again, you may decide just to accept or forgive your friend and move on. That can be a generous thing to do.

Third, if you decide to express your negative feelings, try to do it in a way that makes it easy for your friend to hear you. If you yell at your friend, she’s not going to want to listen. If you say things like “You always” or “You never,” your friend will likely argue with you. If you call your friend names or tell her she’s a bad person, she might try to defend herself by doing the same to you. If you sulk, act grumpy, or refuse to talk to your friend, she’ll have no idea what the problem is, and she might think you’re just mean. Ugh.

Your goal in showing negative feelings is not to get even with your friend or make her suffer! It’s to help your friend understand how you feel and what you want so you can improve your friendship.

You might want to use the formula, “I feel…when you… because… Please…” Let me say that again: “I feel…when you… because… Please…” For example, you could say, “I feel uncomfortable when you ask to copy my answers because that’s against the rules. Please do your own work or, if you need help, ask me to explain how to do it.” Or maybe, you could say “I feel hurt when you whisper with Sophie while I’m around because then I’m left out. Please either include me in the conversation or wait until I’m not around if you have something private to discuss with her.”

Think about what response you want from your friend. That will guide you toward how to communicate your feelings.

This has been Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic. You can learn even more about friendship through my funny and practical books for kids: Growing Friendships: A Kids’ Guide to Making and Keeping Friends and Growing Feelings: A Kids’ Guide to Dealing with Emotions About Friends and Other Kids. They’re available through your library or wherever you buy books.