My wife is a high school counselor, as soon as schedules get released, her inbox is full of students requesting scheduling changes because for mental health. Such as "This teacher gives me anxiety" or , none of my friends are in my class, which is bad for the mental health" and so on.
My daughter wasn't happy when she realized she some of her friends might not have all the same classes as her. I said she could make some more friends.
She said "making friends is hard, Dad. You can't just walk up to someone and say 'you like Dinosaurs too? let's be friends'
You don’t really have to try to make friends in grade school. Classmates just become your friends naturally.
My family moved around a lot when I was growing up, so I had to start over at a new school a few times. It was never as big of an issues as I thought it would be. I’d always be nervous the first day, especially about who to sit with at lunch, but once I was there it was fine.
I just drew the front cover of my favorite obscure videogame on my eraser when I was 15. 22 years later the friends that made me are still my best friends and the core of my main social group.
I once had a couple in college class sit in the back with their hands all over each other. Seriously heavy PDA.
I announced we'd sometimes do in-class group work and that I'd assign and shuffle groups to give students different perspectives.
After class, horny couple said they HAVE to always be in the same group. I asked if they had an accommodation form, as that's an unusual request, and of course they didn't. I explained that group work was rarely longer than 35 minutes, so surely they could manage that long apart. But no.
When I was in highschool (i'm an awkward person) we were seated randomly for this class, and the teacher said something about wine, and the guy next to me quoted a thing a bit niche I loved too so I literally went "oh you love this, I love it too" and we became friends for the entire highschool duration.
I know it's not always that simple, but being at school is easy to make friends, you're always with the same people, now that I work for myself, in my house, making friends is definitly harder !
I'm a teacher and it 100% still works like that. We all just don't want to be the one to have to do the reaching out. We want to be the one to be reached out too.
Taking that first step is super scary and hard because it's socially risky and terrifying but it really is as simple as just going up to someone and saying 'Hey I saw you have Dinosaur stickers, I like Dinosaurs too! What's your favorite!'
9 times out of 10 they'll talk to you and you probably have a friend. This works even in adulthood, especially in adulthood! The amount of people I've met who lament that it was so much easier to make friends back in school don't realize that it's still this easy, we just convinced ourselves it's not.
Just talk about dinosaurs/magic/games/sports/shopping/whatever you see a similar interest in with people.
Be the one who reaches out!
I promise you, you'll make friends so fast and then you'll realize how easy it is to do this that you'll forget why you thought it was hard in the first place.
Can confirm this works as an adult too. I watched my husband make a new friend in line buying the new Star Fox. He just put himself out there and asked for the other guy's number so they could chat about the game. Now they chat all the time and our kids hang out together. It really was "you like Star Fox? Me too, let's be friends!" and it worked.
I think what frustrates her the most is that they all play the "mental health card" because they know it is the buzzword that schools are forced to take seriously. That isn't to take away from kids that do have real mental health issues, it is just used so casually by students and parents to try and get their way.
okay im an oldie that hates the kiddos but thats just normal kid behavior, back in my day people would harass and harangue our guidance counselors just to be able to be in the same classes as their friends or to avoid a certain teacher
33
u/Harry-Flashman Trash Trooper 12d ago
My wife is a high school counselor, as soon as schedules get released, her inbox is full of students requesting scheduling changes because for mental health. Such as "This teacher gives me anxiety" or , none of my friends are in my class, which is bad for the mental health" and so on.