Friendship

What qualities make good friends?

I asked this question to both of my 5th grade classes yesterday and both came up with the same answers:

1. Loyalty
2. Honesty
3. Respect
4. Trustworthiness

When I asked what they meant their answers were:

"Loyalty means sticking up for me when somebody else says mean things about me."
"Loyalty means staying friends even after we have an argument."

"Honesty means telling me the truth - even if the truth makes me feel bad."

"Respect is, um, really complicated."
"Respect means not being mean."
"Respect means treating other people like I want them to treat me."

"Trustworthiness means doing what you say you're going to do."
"Trustworthiness means keeping private conversations private."
"Trustworthiness means not talking about me behind my back."
"Trustworthiness means not saying bad things about me just to stay friends with somebody else."

When we started talking about trust, it seemed like everybody had something to say. Without any prompting from me (though I did try to help clarify things), it was apparent that the kids felt that this was the most important quality for a friend to have. In fact, the the first thing a friendship has to have, they felt, is trust. If you have trust, everything else will follow.

What People Think

I have a friend who has a mental illness called Agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is fear of open places.

She is especially afraid to go to places that are unfamiliar or crowded. She is very reluctant to go anywhere she's never been and refuses to get into an elevator or onto a bus. For 18 years, her agoraphobia was so bad that she could not go more than a block away from her house.

Her therapist told her that there were two causes to her problem:

1. A feeling that she needed to control everything around her in order to feel safe.

2. A deep rooted fear about what other people thought of her.

My friend is a little better now, but the lesson for you is: There are a lot of things in life that you cannot control, especially what other people think of you. If you worry about this too much, it can literally drive you crazy.

Inspiration by Perspiration

Two of my nieces, Haley (left, above) and Kristin (right), are into Rock Band and Guitar Hero (the wii versions).


They were also into "High School Musical" and used to spend hours each day singing the songs from that musical. In fact, they were so excited about that show that they convinced their parents to cut short a vacation in Hawaii just so they could get home in time to see the premier of the show on TV.



Anyway, knowing that they enjoyed such things, I gave them a copy of the 08 Park School dance dvd that we made in PE.

They liked it. Now, instead of singing songs from some Disney Channel thing, they run around singing "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" and "Barbie Girl". It's driving my brother crazy.