As the school year starts, most families are scrambling to deal with registrations, supplies, schedules, and adjustments. Some kids look forward to the school year. Others feel dread as September approaches. There are lots of things to learn, but academics are only half of the challenge.

Friendships can either make learning attractive or derail a child’s motivation altogether. Friendships are where a child learns how to relate to others and works at practicing patience, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion. Most parents talk to their kids about grades. I’m convinced we need to talk to them at least as much about relationships.

Here are four conversations I think parents and children need to have.

1. Work on friendships not popularity

Social media has applied metrics to our relationships for the first time in history. Now, we have a number that tells us how many “friends” we have. Because there’s no number for the quality of our relationships only the quantity of them, it silently reinforces the idea that more is better, and superficiality doesn’t matter. The Bible says the opposite.

Proverbs 18:25, for example, warns, “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Your kids will feel the pressure to seek popularity, but they need their parents to teach them that a few, committed friendships are far more important than a large number of shallow ones.

Ecclesiastes 4:10 puts it this way, “Woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” Children don’t need to get everyone to like them. Adults don’t need to either. But they do need to work at the kind of friendships where there will be someone who’s there for them when they need a hand up.

2. Focus on being friendly, and let the friendships come

We can’t force friendships, even if our need for relationships tempts us to try. It would be easier if there was an application form to sign or a course to take. But Jesus told us where to focus. In Luke 6:31, He said, “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” The application for kids is obvious: be the friend you want others to be to you.

And that needs to be done with no strings attached. We don’t do something kind to a person and then wait for them to do it back to us, or else it’s just a bribe. But when we show kindness, generosity, and patience toward others, we attract the same from them.

If you begin to see school and church not just as places to gain information, but where your child can practice putting others first (Philippians 2:3), being an encourager (1 Thessalonians 5:11), and showing kindness when it’s hard to do so (Proverbs 17:17), you realize how crucial this time is to develop your child’s relational skills. Talk to them about how they’re growing in friendliness and celebrate the wins when they come.

3. Know the difference between people you can learn from and people you can help

As children head out into the world, it doesn’t take long before they’re confronted by people whose values and behaviour are different than what they’ve learned. Children need the wisdom to know how to treat everyone with compassion but give time and trust to those whose character they respect.

Proverbs 13:20 warns, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm,” and 1 Corinthians 15:33 adds, “Bad company ruins good morals.” Proverbs 22:24-25 is even more specific in warning us to “Make no friendship with a man given to anger … lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.” We become like the people we spend the most time with, so it’s important that children learn to think about how to pursue healthy friendships.

4. Friendship in this world prepares us for friendship with God

Friendships are often hard. Other people are difficult, and even when they’re not, we can be the problem. The reassurance, encouragement, counsel, perspective, and support that we can experience in a friendship, though, whet our appetite for what’s possible in a relationship with God.

James 2:23 tells us, “‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’—and he was called a friend of God.” At school, children are thinking about friendships, looking for friendships, and working at friendships. This is the time to talk to them about the friendship that’s possible with God through faith in Jesus. And how our friendship with Him teaches us how to be better friends to those around us (Colossians 3:13).

Kids, today, have a lot of challenges, and parents do, too. But having a healthy framework for approaching friendships makes everything easier. Be the coach in their corner as they navigate the relationships before them.

In awe of Him,

Paul