Why Your Child Makes Friends But Cant Keep Them (And How to Help)

Understanding the Friendship Maintenance Challenge

When children are around five or six years old, theyre going through one of the most AMAZING transitions in their social world. Theyre moving from seeing friends as momentary playmates to understanding that friendships are sustained connections that need ongoing care and attention over time.

Think about it this way. For younger children, friendship is simple and immediate. If someone is playing with them right now, that person is their friend. When playtime ends, so does the friendship, and thats perfectly natural for their developmental stage. But around ages five and six, something shifts. Children begin to understand that friendships can continue even when youre not together, that friends remember each other, think about each other, and maintain connection over time.

This is HUGE! Its like their hearts are learning a whole new language - the language of lasting connection. But heres the thing. Making an initial connection is one skill set. Maintaining that connection over time requires completely different skills. And many children who excel at the first struggle with the second, not because theres anything wrong with them, but because theyre still learning.

The Two Skill Sets of Friendship

Making friends requires skills like approaching others confidently, initiating play, sharing interests, and being fun to be around. These are the skills your child has mastered beautifully. Theyre the social equivalent of planting a seed - exciting, immediate, and relatively straightforward.

Maintaining friendships, however, requires a different set of skills: self-control, emotion regulation, empathy, conflict resolution, and authentic communication. These are the skills of tending a garden - they require patience, ongoing attention, and learning what the relationship needs to flourish. Your child is in the process of developing these skills right now.

What Research Tells Us About Friendship Maintenance

Research consistently shows that friendship maintenance in young children ages 5-6 represents a critical developmental transition. According to the American Psychological Association, children who develop good social skills during this period are more likely to be happy in their future relationships and stay healthy throughout their lives. But heres the beautiful part that I want you to really hear: these skills can be taught.

Research shows that kids who have good social skills are more likely to stay in school, be happy in future relationships, and stay healthy.

— American Psychological Association

Studies indicate that successful friendship maintenance depends heavily on developing three key social-emotional skills: self-control, emotion regulation, and empathy. Lets break down what each of these means in the context of your childs friendships.

Self-Control: The Foundation of Turn-Taking

Self-control means learning to wait for a turn, to share attention, to manage disappointment when a friend cant play, and to resist impulses that might push friends away. When your child wants to play with the same toy their friend is using, self-control is what helps them wait patiently or suggest taking turns instead of grabbing.

Emotion Regulation: Managing Big Feelings in Friendships

Emotion regulation is about recognizing their own feelings and expressing them in ways that dont damage the friendship. When a friend accidentally knocks over their block tower, emotion regulation helps your child express disappointment without lashing out. When they feel left out, it helps them communicate that feeling instead of withdrawing completely.

Recent peer-reviewed research in BMC Psychology demonstrates that authoritative parenting - characterized by warmth combined with clear expectations - significantly supports childrens ability to regulate emotions and maintain peer connections over time.

Empathy: Understanding a Friends Perspective

Empathy is understanding how their actions affect their friends feelings. Its the ability to notice when a friend looks sad, to wonder why, and to care about making things better. Empathy is what transforms a playmate into a true friend.

Why Understanding Isnt the Same as Doing

Heres something that confuses many parents. Your child might be able to explain these concepts perfectly when you talk about them. They can tell you that friends should share, that hitting hurts peoples feelings, that taking turns is important. But then, in the heat of the moment, when emotions are running high and they really want that toy NOW, all that understanding seems to disappear.

This isnt defiance or forgetting. This is brain development in action. Understanding something in your mind and being able to DO it in the moment, especially when emotions are involved, are two very different things. Your childs brain is still developing the connections that make this possible.

The prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain that helps with impulse control, emotional regulation, and considering consequences - is still growing and wont be fully developed until theyre in their twenties! So when your child struggles to maintain friendships despite understanding what they should do, theyre not failing. Theyre learning. And that learning takes time, practice, and patient support from the adults who love them.

Gentle Strategies to Support Friendship Maintenance

Now that we understand what your child is learning and why its challenging, lets talk about what you can do to help. These strategies are backed by research and aligned with gentle parenting principles that honor your childs development while building essential skills.

Strategy 1: Model Authentic Friendship

Children learn SO much from watching us. Let your child see you navigating the ups and downs of your own friendships. Talk about your feelings. Show them how you repair connections when theres a misunderstanding.

You might say something like, I felt sad when my friend forgot our lunch date, so I called her and told her how I felt. She apologized and we made a new plan. This shows your child that friendships have bumps, and those bumps can be smoothed out with honest communication.

Research from the National Association for the Education of Young Children emphasizes that when adults model warm, respectful relationships and intentionally teach friendship skills through demonstration, children develop the capacity to navigate the natural ups and downs of friendships with resilience and growing competence.

Strategy 2: Coach in the Moment

When you see a friendship struggle happening, resist the urge to step in and fix it immediately. Instead, help your child think through it. You might say:

• I noticed your friend looked sad when you said that. What do you think they might be feeling?
• It seems like you and your friend both want to play different games. How could you both feel happy?
• Your friend is waiting for a turn. What could you say to them?

This coaching builds their empathy and conflict resolution skills in real-time, giving them tools they can use independently as they grow.

Strategy 3: Create Opportunities for Sustained Friendships

Instead of lots of different playdates with different children, try having regular playdates with the same one or two friends. This gives your child the chance to practice working through the natural ups and downs that happen in any relationship.

Consistency helps them learn the rhythm of a friendship - the give and take, the conflicts and repairs, the deepening connection that comes from showing up again and again. Its in these sustained relationships that the real learning happens.

Strategy 4: Teach Emotional Vocabulary

Help your child build a rich vocabulary for emotions. Instead of just happy, sad, and mad, introduce words like frustrated, disappointed, excited, worried, proud, and embarrassed. The more precisely they can name their feelings, the better they can communicate them to friends.

You might say, It looks like youre feeling frustrated that your friend wants to play a different game. Can you tell them, I feel frustrated when we dont play what I want to play. Can we take turns choosing?

Strategy 5: Celebrate Repair, Not Perfection

When your child has a conflict with a friend and then works it out, celebrate that! The repair is actually more important than avoiding conflict altogether. You might say, I noticed you and your friend disagreed about the rules, but then you talked about it and figured it out together. That is SO important for friendship!

This teaches your child that conflicts are normal and manageable, not friendship-ending disasters. It builds their confidence in their ability to navigate challenges.