Teaching your children healthy relationships through their friendships

Healthy relationships and what they look and feel like was NOT a topic of discussion when I was growing up. Like most people, my experiences with romantic relationships were through watching my parent’s relationships and how they interacted together.

As you can imagine, with a family of emotion supressing, substance users, those relationships weren’t always the healthiest and when I started dating, I started doing the exact same things I saw my parents do.

Thank the heavens I had a partner who was not as reactive nor triggered as I was because I cringe to think what kind of relationship I could have had, if I had a less patient boyfriend and husband.

When my daughter came along, I started questioning the relationships around me and the roles in which I had inadvertently taken on with the people in my life. Eventually when I became a police officer, I saw a much different perspective about what is ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’, especially when I started responding to domestic violence incidents and assaults.

It was through this policing experience that I started seeing those same behaviours in some of my daughter’s childhood friendships. I could see the same types of control and manipulation behaviours being used in children as young as 8 years old (some younger) and decided to start educating my daughter on healthy relationships.

The behaviours I was observing weren’t overtly malicious, it was just children learning how to get what they wanted. Sadly, the child with the strongest will usually wins. These behaviours can be like a virus and children who aren’t overly bossy or pushy, see it work in their friends and peers and learn that they can also get what they want and do what they want if they boss and bully others. It has a flow on effect if not nipped in the bud early.

It was so obvious to me that if I could help her identify those behaviours, encourage her to be confident in her own decision making and not succumb to the manipulation or peer pressure, she would be less likely to be manipulated or controlled as an adult by a partner. 

I can’t say it was an obvious or conscious decision, more a protective parenting tactic. I knew my daughter had a high chance of being in a domestic violence relationship and that most teenagers have at least one relationship where they will be abused in some way, so ensuring she had the education, confidence and tools, was a no brainer.

How did I start teaching about Healthy Relationships?

1. One of the things I did was point out that ‘everyone’ has the right to make their own choices and decisions and that no one else gets to choose for us and vice versa. I continually re-iterated that to her in multiple situations and moments.

2. I also taught her that not EVERYONE has to like us and we don’t have to like everyone either. That it’s ok if we don’t like people and it’s ok if they don’t like us.

3. If she was making a decision about something, I gave her space to make her choices on her own. If she was asking for my advice or input, I would ensure she knew that she had ultimate control of her decisions before giving her an opinion or the options available.

4. I respected her decisions and choices from an early age. I tried hard to not influence them unless my opinion was requested or her safety was an issue. If safety was the deciding factor, I would explain the reasons. 

5. I encouraged her to voice her opinions, upset, disappointment and hurt to the person who had upset or hurt her. Quite often I would act as intermediary and facilitate the conversation through asking if she could share how she was feeling with them. I would usually preface this with ‘is it ok if Charlotte shares with you how she’s feeling and then she will listen to your side of the situation?’. I did this with her father, grandparents, school teachers, other children and their parents, coaches and as she’s now working, bosses.

6. I often acknowledged that we are all human and that as humans we aren’t always aware of the underlying emotions and feelings behind behaviour. Just because someone acts horribly, doesn’t mean they are a horrible person etc.

7. If I observed any ‘unhealthy’ behaviours displayed by my own daughter, I called her out on it privately and explained them to her.

8. When I observed or my daughter told me about difficult interactions with friends, I would point out ‘unhealthy’ behaviours in her friendships and name them to her.

These often looked like:

• Trying to control my daughter’s choices or decisions
• Not giving her a choice as to what she wanted to do or play
• Pushing her to change her mind if she didn’t agree with them or pushing her to do something she didn’t feel comfortable doing
• Excluding her from activities because they didn’t agree on something unrelated
• Humiliating her when she made a mistake
• Negative comments about her
• Talking down to her
• Jealousy over friendships or things ie. new phone, social media app/game, clothes etc.
• Pressuring her not to be friends with certain people because they didn’t like them even though my daughter liked the child or person
• Telling her who she can talk with or punishing her if she talked to someone, they didn’t want her to.

Friendships are the first relationships children have outside of our familial bonds and as I shared above, they can have a huge impact on a child’s confidence and resilience.

If our children are being manipulated, pushed, coerced or bullied at school or by their peer groups, they can learn that this behaviour is acceptable and when they get into a romantic relationship this behaviour can be seen as ‘normal’.

Therefore, educating around this should be something we identify and teach from a young age in our child’s interactions with their friends, family and eventual relationships.

In my book Operation KidSafe – a detective’s guide to child abuse prevention, I list the following lessons in regards to teaching and empowering our children about ‘healthy’ relationships.

Knowing these things and modelling them to our children help not only in empowering them but provide them a frame work to understand when someone isn’t being respectful and encourages them to not take on the feelings of others.

• You are responsible for your own actions and no one else’s,
• You have the right to say no (and the other person should respect it),
• You can and should walk away from someone or a situation if they don’t respect you or when you don’t feel safe,
• You are not responsible for anyone else’s happiness,
• You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do… ever,
• You are not responsible for how anyone else feels, even when they are upset with you and don’t like your choices,
• Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and you should be respectful of other people’s opinions, as well as they should respect your opinions if they are different,
• You are allowed to feel however you feel, always.

Talking and teaching about ‘Healthy Relationships’ is an important life skill we should be encouraging and talking about with our children from a young age. As I mentioned, I started observing manipulative and coercive behaviours in my daughter’s friends from around 8 years old and although I know these children weren’t malicious in their intent, they were behaviours that could evolve to be.

All friendships and relationships have their ups and downs but no-one should ever be made to feel unsafe or disrespected.

Knowing what Healthy Relationships are, knowing what they look like and how they should feel as well as knowing the warning signs, is just another one of those important tools that could make a world of difference in your child’s life. It will certainly make it a whole lot safer, happier and better!

For more information about Healthy Relationships check out the 1800respect website – https://www.1800respect.org.au/healthy-relationships

Or grab a copy of my book here: www.cape-au.com/book

Kristi x