What is Friendship?

What is Friendship?

Here at True Balance Karate in Downers Grove, Illinois, we have a social emotional learning program called True Character. I’m Master H, owner and chief instructor here at the studio, and I have two master’s degrees in education. And we’ve developed this curriculum to meet the needs of our youngest students, who are three or four, and our oldest student who is 85.

Introducing Friendship

And this month, we are talking about friendship. I always like to start the month off by introducing the topic. How would we describe it? What would we say to teach it to kids? What might it look like as adults? And so this month, like I said, we’re talking about friendship, which is showing respect, showing trust in each other. Friends are people that you know really well, that you respect, that you trust, that you could bring a problem or situation to, and they would help you solve it.

As adults, we may have a very small number of friends, or we may have a large group of friends. It’s a matter of each of us individually and how those relationships form. For our youth, for our young kids, friends to them are people that they share with, they’re people that they hang out with. Especially when they’re school age, they might be the kids of their parents’ friends.

I remember growing up, my mom was really good friends with this one woman, and her daughter and I were the same age, so we became friends because moms were hanging out, so we were hanging out. And so understanding how some of these early friendships form, early relationships form between people is important to explaining and teaching kids what friendship looks like, right?

Understanding Differences

A lot of times, somebody will say, “Well, they’re not my friend anymore because they won’t share with me.” Well, your friend made a mistake. How are they really towards you? Do they help you? Do they like to hang out with you? Do you have a common interest? Do you share the same ideas? The same likes? The same dislikes? Because then they might still be your friend even though they’ve made a different choice than you.

And it’s teaching them that some of these differences actually improve our friendships rather than make us not want to be friends along the way. And then as we get into junior high and high school, you run into kids who think that they have friends and they trusted them with something, and trust is broken. And it’s a life lesson that they have to learn along the way. And for us as adults, some of our friends might be our colleagues at work, some of our friends might be friends that we had in high school and college, some of our friends might be people that we share a common hobby with.

Doing martial arts, we all have friends on the mat at the same time. So friends come from different areas of our lives over time, and it’s helping our young kids understand what that looks like. And then as adults, remembering how that happens and how that forms. And so, when we’re talking about friendship, we want to remember that we have trust and respect in each other, maybe some commonalities between each other.

Making New Friends

And it all starts with how we make friends, which could be small talk on the bus, and it could be a simple handshake and an introduction. It could be the fact that it’s a new hire in the office, and the two of you find that you have something in common. It starts with making connections, having conversations, introducing yourself.

For my young kids, do you want to come and play soccer with me? For my older students, let’s talk about this situation at work, and then it morphs into a conversation about family. And we realize we have more things in common than we knew. So having those friendly moments, those trusting moments, those respectful moments is how we wind up making friends and making those connections.

Further Discussions

So, as we go along in the month, we are going to talk about how we resolve conflict with friends, we’re going to talk about showing loyalty with friends, we’re going to talk about what friendship really looks like in different situations that we wind up dealing with as we have these fabulous, awesome relationships with our friends.

Thanks, and I’ll see you on the mat!

True Balance Karate was founded in 2012 by Master Sue and Paul Helsdon.

We offer kids karate lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up. These lessons are designed to develop the critical building blocks kids need — specialized for their age group — for school excellence and later success in life.

Our adult martial arts training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay) in shape, or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 630-663-2000. You can also contact us here. True Balance Karate is at 406 Ogden Ave Downers Grove Illinois, 60515 (next to CVS) Check out our Facebook!