The past fortnight has been a hugely challenging one as we have struggled to replace teachers who have been sick, on leave or have had children unwell at home and have needed to stay home to care for them.  Whilst all are important they do come with challenges when we seek to ensure that the students and their learning are still catered for.  However, I’m sure many of you who run businesses have times when getting staff is a heavy weight on the shoulders of leaders.  

That said, our staff continue to be incredibly committed to the students and on numerous occasions I have needed to convince staff that they actually shouldn’t be at school because they are so unwell.

In addition, whilst it may not be the case in your family, but in many, including mine, mothers tend to be the ones who do the heavy lifting when it comes to running family life.  Our primary schools are predominantly staffed by female teachers and I so often see the tension and challenge this creates for them as they try to be faithful to both the roles of teacher and mum.  This is why I look at our teachers with the greatest admiration as they go about their daily work, which is so demanding and complex yet so life-giving.

I suppose, what I'm really reflecting on, is how complex being a parent is. This also leads into the other observation I have had in the past week. For some of our students I have noticed their friendship issues getting in the way of their happiness.  In some cases it has actually been created by them and it can be challenging to assist them in coming to terms with this. For others, they have been on the receiving end which can also be even more of a challenge to help them make sense of what has happened. Thank goodness we have Mrs Debrincat, who through her work supports the children to understand why things sometimes don’t go well with their friends. This aspect of school life can be so time consuming and most primary schools do not have a dedicated person whose main responsibility is to support student wellbeing.

Research into children’s friendships shows that children who are able to form friendships at school are far happier and also learn better. More significantly, a positive beginning to friendships has long term implications for social and academic success.

Parents often become concerned about an apparent lack of friends that a child has compared to a sibling or friend. One research project indicated that children on average have only two significant friendships at any one time. Generally, when I reflect on my own journey with my children, we did little more than teach our children the appropriate social behaviours such as manners and sharing and provided them with social situations that enabled them to practise and maintain their friendships.

The following four strategies were simple but helpful in supporting my children to create the skills needed to build positive friendships:

• Give them some good conversation starters. Make sure that they don’t just talk about themselves but focus on the interests of others.
• Play games with your children and make sure they learn to be gracious winners and losers.
• Have one friend at a time over to your home so that they form friendships one at a time.
• Show your children how to resolve conflict with others by compromising rather than refusing to give some ground.

Hopefully, as you struggle with this very emotive and challenging part of parenting, the above strategies might work for you and your child like they did for me with my children as they navigated the complexities of friendships at school.

Go gently,

Michael Reardon
Principal