Dear Moms, Dads, Relatives, Educators and Business Owners!

I am fortunate to still be in close contact with all my High School friends (nickname - the Get-along-Gang) even though they are scattered around the world. I know where each one is and how many children they have and what they are up to. We have a well oiled grapevine. We remember each others birthdays every year, even if we forget to send our best wishes we still think of each other on our birthdays. (I put that in for the ones I forgot to send best wishes this year in case they read this). We manage to get together when there is a wedding or when some of them come back to South Africa to visit their families still living here. We pick up where we left off, talk about school days, chat about our lives and families now and compare our patches of grey hair. I can relax and be myself in their company. We do communicate through email and Skype but there is nothing better than getting together and being in each others company and feeling like a teenager again.

When I think back to my school days, I remember how nasty some children can be to each other and how it can effect those children for the rest of their lives. I guess it is all part of life lessons and growing up and moulding personalities. My two close friends from my Senior Primary School decided to dump me at the end of standard 5. At the time I thought it was the end of the world and I had to start High School with no friends. However, now I realise that if they had not dumped me I would not have made friends with the high school friends I am still in contact with today.

I hope one day my children will also develop good, solid friendships that will help them through their teenage years and last them a lifetime. Right now their current friendship experiences are as follows:

My son had a girl friend he talked about and played with for two years (when he was 2 and 3 years old) but they seem to have grown apart. He is going through the "I have no friends phase now". I am sure other parent's of a 4 year old child will be familiar with the words: "Jack didn't want to be my friend today" or "Nobody would play with me today". I get this quite often from my son and after speaking to his teacher I find out that he plays well with all the other kids and I have nothing to worry about. My son is obviously just seeking attention in hopes I will say: "Never mind darling mummy will play with you." Instead I tell him, "I am sorry your friend did not play with you, but that is human nature. One day your friend will love you as if you are the one and only true friend on the playground and the next day he won't want to know you. When this happens, find someone else to play with, it is nice to have more than one friend."

My daughter has friends in her class that she attended pre-school with and she still plays with them. She misses a few of her other pre-school friends who now attend other schools and still talks about one or two of them She has made some new friends, both with girls and boys. She often talks about a 6 year old boy in her class who misbehaves quite a bit and is rather rough and unruly with the other children. She tells me that no one wants to play with him and he forces his friendship on the other children. At first I told her to stay away from him and not play with him. Then I remembered a school friend whose behaviour I found quite challenging at times. A few of my other friends were really good to her and put up with what I thought was irritating behaviour. I found out in recent years that she had a really difficult family life and now I wish I had taken the time to find out the cause of her behaviour and to help her through the bad times, just as my other friends had. Isn't that what a true friend would do? So now I tell my daughter to be tolerant of his disruptive behaviour and explain to her that there could be problems at home causing it and she should try to help him to learn acceptable friendship behaviours. If all the children refuse to play with him and he has no friends, this will encourage further anti social behaviour. She may be too young to understand or deal with this situation at the moment but perhaps one day she will (hopefully she won’t take as long as I did!)

I was inspired to write the above after reading Melanie Hartgill's article on "Childhood Friendships". If you have any friendship stories you would like to share please email us.

We have another exciting mix of new listings again this month, plus some more safety tips from Sugar and Spice. We have lots of news, some specials and an article on School Readiness. If you are in Durban this weekend, don't forget to visit The Baby Expo.

Until next week.

Take care
Cara