Hi. I’m Faye de Muyshondt here with you from Social Skills to talk about how to maintain friendships and be a good friend. So as you’re getting involved in friendships in your life, you want to make sure that you’re a thoughtful and caring person. And those are some of the key aspects to being a good friend. And you want to make sure that you ask a lot of questions of your friend and show that you really care. So not only are you asking your friend or your friends about their day, for example, or about how their workday was, or how they are on any given day, make sure that you ask questions that specifically pertain to them, that show you’re really thinking about them. So for example, if you know that you’re friend just took a test yesterday, you might want to ask, “How did your test go?”
And explore that question with them. Show that you really care. And as you’re asking questions, be an active listener. And what that means is to really be making eye contact, nodding as you speak, showing that you truly care about your friend. You might want to also ask how their parents are doing, for example, or how his or her dog is doing, very specific questions to that person. Also, you just generally want to be a thoughtful person. So on any given day you can do a thoughtful gesture for someone, which might be picking something up the store that reminds you of the person. Or it could be dropping a note in the mail for that person. Or it could be doing something just a little bit special. Also, you want to make sure that you always respect your friends, and by respect I mean you respect their views.
You respect their time, for example. You want to make sure that you respect someone’s political views, even though they might not be your own political views. You also want to make sure you respect someone’s time. These are just a few aspects of respect, but respect as a whole is an extremely important part of maintaining friendships and being a good friend.