How You Can Help Your Child Make Friends
Learn what you can do to ELIMINATE—not just manage—the anxiety about making friends.
Step 1: Watch this video.
Step 2: Click the button below to begin transforming your life as a Ridiculously Effective Parent.
Do You Have a Child Who Has a Difficult Time Making Friends?
In the video above I taught you:
- The REAL reason your child has a hard time making friends (and it's not what you think).
- Why he or she feels isolated, and you just can't seem to help, no matter what you do.
- What you can do to ELIMINATE—not just manage—the anxiety about making friends. Really.
- How you can replace loneliness and fear with genuine peace and happiness in your child.
Look for these Signs and Learn What They Mean
Do you see the symptoms of social awkwardness in your child? Do you see these behaviors or conditions in your child—the signs of anxiety and stress—on a regular basis?
Fear
Do you see a fear of making decisions? Sometimes awkward children are paralyzed with a fear of making decisions or by a generalized anxiety that they can’t even put their finger on.
Avoid groups
Do they avoid gatherings with other members of the family? Or stay in their room if guests come to your house?
Little contact
Do you see your child playing video games and other isolated activities, without much contact with friends?
Reluctance
Are they sometimes reluctant to go to school—or just plain refuse—for various vague reasons?
Distracted
Do they have a short attention span?
Feelings of guilt
You might see more than usual feelings of guilt or worthlessness—perhaps said in the common phrase, “I can’t do anything right.”
Depressed
Socially awkward children tend to demonstrate a depressed mood, or loss of interest in their usual activities, or decreased energy.
Isolated
Do they live small, limited lives, failing to engage in the world around them?
Worry
Do they worry? This is a big one, so I’ll repeat it: Does your child just have a look of worry and sadness on his or her face much of the time? There might be words, there might not.
Alone
Does your child consistently come home from school alone? And rarely—if ever—does he or she visit with friends in their homes?
No conversations
Have you noticed that they don’t talk about conversations with friends?
Frustrated
Do they get frustrated with doing things and just quit in the middle of jobs or homework or even games?
Loner
Do they mostly spend time by themselves?
Pessimism
You might sense pessimism, that nothing works out for them, accompanied by frowns and a shrugging of their shoulders consistent with futility.
Anxiety
You might hear them talks about how bad things are in the world, or in his or her own life.
If you see any of these signs—or a lot of them—this can be pretty scary. Lacking friends isn’t just a social problem. It’s a personal disaster for those afflicted with this condition.
They become difficult and hard to reach. It’s like your child is slowly disappearing into a dark and lonely world.
You’re worried. What would you give to have a happy child back? What would you give to see your child smiling at a friend?
There IS a Solution—
How to Help a Child who has Difficulty with Finding Friends
I'm here to tell you that there IS a solution, and we’re not talking about falsely encouraging your child or saying things that will make them feel more defective—as we often do.
We’re talking about a real transformation where your child becomes truly happy, fulfilled, responsible, and, well, a human being again.
Welcome to the answers you've been hoping for.
For a long time now, you’ve been looking for ways to help your child be more self-assured and happier. I greatly admire what you’re doing right now. You’re looking for answers — you’re trying to love and help your child — which is way more than most parents do.
And finally, you’re in the right place.
You've Been Desperately Looking for Help with Your Shy Child
It’s like you’ve been paddling around in the middle of the ocean, desperately looking for help, and now—almost unbelievably—it’s here. This is the ship you’ve been looking for.
How could I possibly make such an extravagant promise? Because I KNOW how to teach parents how to help their children be happy—which includes them having friends.
I know how to help children who are depressed. What I teach has been used by uncounted THOUSANDS of parents, and it works CONSISTENTLY.
I’m not trying to sell you something here that we’re GOING to do. You don’t have to wait. The training begins right now. In the next few seconds, I’ll be teaching you things about your children and yourselves that you’ve never known.
I repeat: I’m not here to tell you ABOUT what I’m offering you. I’m beginning now to GIVE you what you need. It’s my gift to you.
What a relief to know that right now you’re exactly where you’ve wanted to be. You can learn what you need to learn. Finally, you can feel encouraged. You can feel hope. You can help your child.
And I’m going to help you do that.
Your Child Can’t Easily Make Friends—and is Not Happy—and You Want to Do Something About It
I know you’ve tried to change things: lots of talking and attempts to reassure them, maybe counseling, certainly lots of ideas from books and programs, encouragement, and a ton of worrying on your part. But your child is still alone and unhappy.
And you’re frustrated and tired.
You’ve been looking for something that works, and here it is: principles that have proven to work hundreds of thousands of times all over the world.
You would not be here unless two things were true:
If parents are thoroughly committed to learning and practicing what I’m going to share with you, predictably I see children lose their social anxiety and learn to find friends. The anxiety just disappears, and instead they become happy—even after everything else has failed.
You become happy too.
It is NOT hopeless.
I’m here to help you, and I’ll be using the insight and experience of counseling with thousands of parents, and from writing 20 books and endless articles on the subject, as well as appearing on 1600 radio and television shows and presenting seminars all around the world—and much more.
You are about to change the world around you, and you don’t have to do it alone, which is miserable and frustrating. You’ve already proven that with your own experience.
What You Will Learn That You Don’t Already Know
So now the question that has to be on your mind: what am I going to say about reducing your child’s social anxiety that you haven’t already read or heard somewhere?
This is going to be revolutionary for you to hear, so slow down your brain and listen with your soul: What does a child NEED more than anything else? After food, water, and air, the answer is SO obvious, and yet we keep missing it—over and over.
To see the answer, let’s start with an infant. When an infant cries—other than from obvious physical pain—what does he want? You already know, because you just pick him up. You’re pretty smart. You already know that every child wants to feel cared for. Every child wants to feel LOVED.
Picking them up and holding them is just a demonstration of that. And if you’re genuine in caring about them, they FEEL it.
But infants are relatively easy to love. They smile and melt your heart, make cute little noises, and laugh in ways we never hear anywhere else. They’re adorable.
But when they get older, they learn to spill things, make messes, ferociously say NO when you tell them what to do, scream in their car seat, fight with their siblings, refuse to listen to you, say ugly and hateful things to you and other people . . .
and sometimes they just give up the fight and feel lonely and anxious. They’re alone. They get a LOT harder to love, and when that happens, we really don’t know what to do. Usually we try to control their behavior—and we might even temporarily succeed—but it doesn’t last, and we end up with kids who are still alone and anxious.
We’re not so happy either.
Loving Your Children Unconditionally
Let me say this another way:
If our children become more difficult to love as their behavior changes, that proves we don’t know how to love them UNCONDITIONALLY.
If we love them unconditionally, we’d love them no matter what.
But if loving them becomes more difficult when they’re difficult when they behave badly, our love is conditional.
Unconditional love or Real Love means caring about another person without wanting anything from then in return, but we DO expect something in return for the “love” we give our children: respect, cooperation, gratitude, and a certain level of reasonable and relatively easy behavior, which does not include the symptoms of depression.
The Real Effect of Anger and Disappointment
Now more about unconditional love: That kind of love would mean that our love would not be affected by what they do. That’s what unconditional love means.
But we really don’t know how to do that. How do I know? We PROVE it every time we become angry, or disappointed, or impatient, or irritated at them. Our anger and disappointment and frustration are undeniable PROOF that our love is not unconditional.
Deep inside, you know that what I’m saying is true, but let me demonstrate further: When other people are angry at YOU, do YOU like it? NO, you don’t. Not ever. Nobody does. When other people are angry at us, or when we’re angry at other people, we’re all saying, “Look at what you did to ME, or failed to do FOR ME.”
In anger, we’re focused on OURSELVES—Me-Me-Me—and in that moment other people—notably our children—hear only four words, “I don’t love you.” When we’re angry, we’re far too occupied with ourselves to unconditionally love another person.
I repeat:
When we are angry at another person, including our child, they hear only, "I don't love you."
I promise you that this is true.
No, we don’t MEAN to say that, but what else COULD people hear while our words, tone, and behavior are screaming ME-ME-ME? “I don’t love you” is what YOU hear and FEEL when people are angry at you—think about it honestly—and it’s what our children hear and feel when we’re angry at them. And then we have an anxious child or anxious teenager.
It’s little wonder that they respond with their own anger.
Again, we do NOT mean to do this. We do not mean to hurt our children.
But it was inevitable, because WE were not loved unconditionally—which means being consistently loved without disappointment or anger. We were not loved freely, without conditions—so how could we possibly have learned how to unconditionally love our own children? IMPOSSIBLE.
Nobody is to blame. Our ignorance of Real Love simply perpetuated over generations. We don’t know how to love unconditionally because we’ve never seen it or felt it with any consistency.
Childhood and Teenage Social Anxiety is a Reaction to Not Being Loved Unconditionally
For emphasis, I’m going to say all this in a slightly different way:
When children or teenagers are afraid to make friends, it is almost always a reaction to them not feeling loved unconditionally—loved with no disappointment, irritation, frustration, or anger.
This could sound discouraging, even bleak. In some ways it IS bleak. Look at the world—at the utter obsession with things that are distractions from our pain, from our not feeling loved: like endless entertainment, addiction to electronics, anger, controlling people, drugs, alcohol, sex, and on and on.
THERE is the proof—in our addiction to all those behaviors—that overall we do not know how to love people unconditionally. If we did, and I speak here with vast experience, these behaviors would not exist.
Children and Teenagers Who are Loved Unconditionally Don't Find It Difficult to Make Friends
I’ve been teaching unconditional love now for so many years to so many parents that I can tell you this with complete certainty: When a child truly feels loved unconditionally, he or she DOES NOT get anxious around other people and doesn’t not have difficulty with socializing, with very rare exceptions.
Instead they’re HAPPY—and responsible, and have all those qualities you wish they had.
With sufficient love, there is simply no NEED to feel sad, low, discouraged, or depressed. Happy people don’t behave badly—like being depressed, for example. Period. Full stop. It seems almost like this statement is too broad, too much. It’s not.
Why You're Not succeeding in Helping Your Children Make Friends
How many times have you wondered why a child isn’t hearing what you’re saying? There’s an answer, and here it is: Because when you’re irritated, your child hears only “I don’t love you,” and that is so devastating, that he or she hears none of the rest of the content of what you say.
So THAT is what I'll be teaching you:
How to LOVE your children unconditionally,
which then gives them a REASON to LISTEN to you.
If you love them unconditionally, they can HEAR you —what you’re really saying—because they’re not distracted by their fear, not blinded and deafened by the “I don’t love you” message. Then it becomes possible for you to teach them anything—like how to be loving and responsible themselves.
And if they have that powerful trifecta—they feel loved, and they are loving and responsible—they are guaranteed to be happy, which is the ultimate goal for any parent, or, frankly, any person.
Your Children Can Learn to Be Happy
Your children can learn that being happy feels way better than simply numbing out with isolation, and they will consistently choose happiness.
Take my hand, and we’ll talk about what you can do—and how I will support you. It will almost be like starting over in parenting. You’re going to LEARN how to be a real parent, and your child will learn the lessons of life that will benefit him or her for the rest of their lives.
If you implement what you learn here, and if you do it consistently, you simply will not believe the differences you’ll see in your child, and in you, and in your family.
Imagine it:
no more fear
no more worrying,
no more anxiety,
no more feeling alone,
no more complaining about being alone,
no more withdrawal from the family,
no more loss of interest in everything,
no more having to constantly encourage and reaffirm,
no more tension in the family.
It’s astonishing to see and to feel.
Our children are not bad. We’re not bad.
We just have not known how to love and teach them.
Loving and Teaching Eliminates Anxiety in Children
What we’re doing with our kids with their anxiety and loneliness IS NOT WORKING.
Loving and teaching them does.
Rarely is it too late to change whatever unproductive behaviors you’re dealing with, not if you’re really willing to learn and to apply these principles to the interactions with your child. I can promise you, learning how to be a parent is WORTH IT.
You’re about to learn how to ELIMINATE the anxiety, stress, lack of worth and other conditions in your children that are hurting them and making you crazy. Really.
I make you another promise:
Learning to be a loving, effective parent is EASIER than everything else you’ve done as a parent.
Transforming, Not Managing Your Children
We’re really going to get into this. This is not a casual effort. We’re not looking to make your children more manageable. That’s not even close to being enough.
Our mission is to help you to become a powerful and effective parent, and to help your child feel loved, and to be loving, responsible, and genuinely happy. It’s a transformation.
If you ARE truly committed to learning how to parent, I’M fully committed to teach you, and I will bring resources to the table you never thought about. The rewards are spectacular—as we have seen in uncounted thousands of families.
There is not a single thing you’ll ever do that will ring through the ages more powerfully than being a loving and effective parent.
You can do this, so let's get started.
Click the button below—it’s free—to begin transforming your life as a Ridiculously Effective Parent.
