Learning About Friendship

Making friends can be a challenge for all children, but those with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) can struggle more than most. This collection of ten fully-illustrated stories explores friendship issues encountered by children with ASD aged four to eight and looks at how they can be overcome successfully. Key problem areas are addressed, including sharing, taking turns, being a tattletale, obsessions, winning and losing, jealousy, personal space, tact and diplomacy, and defining friendship. The lively and entertaining stories depersonalize issues, allowing children to see situations from the perspective of others and enabling them to recognize themselves in the characters. This opens the door to discussion, which in turn leads to useful insight and strategies they can practise and implement in the future. Each story has a separate introduction for adults which explains the main strategies within it. This book will be a valuable resource for all parents and teachers of children with ASD, along with their friends and families, and anybody else looking to help children on the spectrum to understand, make and maintain friendships.

Presents forty activities designed to help children build better social skills, make friends, learn to adapt to changing relationships, cope with rejection and disappointment, and find deep and lasting friendships.

Focuses on and teaches positive peer interaction by using motivational readers to teach children the importance of character-building values, while promoting beginning reading skills and strategies.

Gerald is careful. Piggie is not. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can. Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to. Gerald and Piggie are best friends. In My New Friend Is So Fun!, Piggie has found a new friend! But is Gerald ready to share?

Do you remember your first friend? Your friends always find a way to double your joys and halve your sorrows. This fun, rhyming book helps children understand the value of having friends and of being a friend to others.

Learning to Be a Good Friend allows adults to show kids how to cultivate friendship. It discusses behaviors that foster friendships, as well as those that drive friends away. It illustrates the pitfalls of peer pressure, and what to do when you can’t find a friend or have lost your best friend.

For so many of us, our friends are like family members--we lean on them through our highest highs and our lowest lows--but sometimes those friendships don't turn out quite as we hoped. Bible teacher Kelly Needham debunks our world's constricted, narrow view of friendship and casts a richer, more life-giving, biblical vision for friendship. In Friend-ish, Kelly Needham reminds us that we were called to more than halfhearted friendships and lukewarm connections. We need something more stable, secure, and sacred. We were designed for real friendship--but the difficult truth is that too many of us are settling for less. Kelly deconstructs what Scripture says about the gift of friendship and takes a closer look at the distorted view that most of us have instead. As she shares the lessons she's learned from experience, Kelly paints her own glorious vision of what Christian friendship could look like. With hard-fought wisdom, a clear view of Scripture, and a been-there perspective, Friend-ish teaches us how to: Recognize symptoms of idolatry and toxic dependency Boldly ask for what we need from our community of friends Understand and address the problems that arise in friendship--from neediness to discord Recognize when it's time to end an unhealthy friendship Reorient toward the purposeful, loving relationships we all crave that ultimately bring us closer to God Find the friends you need and start to become that friend for others Join Kelly as she challenges you to view your chosen family in a new light, gain a vision of friendship according to Jesus, and finally enjoy friendships as God intended.

From psychologist and children's friendships expert Eileen Kennedy-Moore and parenting and health writer Christine McLaughlin comes a social development primer that gives kids the answers they need to make and keep friends. Friendship is complicated for kids. Almost every child struggles socially at some time, in some way. Having an argument with a friend, getting teased, or even trying to find a buddy in a new classroom...although these are typical problems, they can be very painful. And friendships are never about just one thing. With research-based practical solutions and plenty of true-to-life examples--presented in more than 200 lighthearted cartoons--Growing Friendships is a toolkit for both girls and boys as they make sense of the social order around them. Children everywhere want to fit in with a group, resist peer pressure, and be good sports--but even the most socially adept children struggle at times. But after reading this highly illustrated guide on their own or with a caring adult, kids everywhere will be well equipped to face any friendship challenges that come their way.