Questions about friendships and social skills come up often in my work with children, teens, and their parents. Sometimes parents are noticing patterns that worry them. Other times a child or teen is the one describing how hard social situations can feel.
Parents may notice their child reacting strongly to small conflicts with friends, worrying that others are upset with them, or feeling unsure how to join conversations. Some children want friends but become anxious in social situations. Others have friendships but struggle with misunderstandings, hurt feelings, or repeated conflict.
Sometimes kids talk about feeling left out or unsure how to approach peers. Teens may describe wanting connection but feeling increasingly hesitant to engage socially.
Watching these patterns develop can be difficult for parents, especially when it is unclear what might help. For some parents, these experiences bring up deeper worries about whether social situations will continue to feel difficult for their child over time.
One of the things I often explain to parents is that social interaction is made up of many different skills that develop over time. These include managing emotions in the moment, noticing and interpreting social cues, understanding another person’s perspective, and knowing how to enter and maintain a conversation. When one or more of these skills is still developing, social situations can feel much harder for a child or teen to navigate.
What I often see in these situations is that social struggles are rarely about a lack of interest in other people. In fact, many of the children and teens I work with care deeply about relationships. For many of them, social situations simply feel harder to figure out and navigate. Sometimes kids are able to talk about this directly with me or with their parents. Other times it may feel too confusing or too sensitive to put into words. In those cases, the work often begins with building enough connection and trust for those conversations to gradually emerge.
From the outside it can sometimes look like a child is being difficult, disinterested, or unable or unwilling to engage socially. Often what is actually happening is that they are trying to navigate social situations that feel more complicated than they appear.
It is important to remember that these skills can grow with support. Helping children build these skills often begins with making sense of their social experiences together. This might involve slowing down a situation that happened with a friend, reflecting on what they were feeling in the moment, and considering how another person may have experienced the interaction. Over time, children can begin to notice patterns, understand their own reactions, and experiment with different ways of responding.
It helps to create space where a child or teen feels safe talking about their experiences and feelings. Sometimes a child or teen is not ready for advice or collaboration. They may simply need space to talk about what happened and feel heard. In those moments, the most helpful thing a parent can do is listen and keep the door open for future conversations.
If a pattern begins to emerge that is interfering with a child’s social experiences or overall functioning, a parent may need to share what they are noticing more directly. Framing those observations with curiosity and an invitation to reflect together can make it easier to think about possible ways forward.
When children feel understood and supported as they work through these experiences, they are much more likely to stay open to learning and growth. Social struggles are often less about a lack of interest or capacity for relationships and more about developing the skills needed to navigate them over time, even in children who may seem very avoidant or anxious.