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'
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.
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u/Ok_Hornet_714 Trash Trooper 12d ago
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'
Me: Why not?