Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck. I teach parenting and family communication through the lens
of self-government. I was recently asked, "Nicholeen, should I limit friend time? What are
the best family rules for this?" Well, that's what we're going to be talking about in this video.
So, what do you think? Do you think limiting friend times helps a child or not?
Many people might be thinking, "Well, but it depends on the child. Depends on what their needs
are." And the answer is, yes, that's true. But are there rules of thumb that we can follow when
it comes to friend time versus family time and all the other ways that we spend our time. The
answer is yes. And in this video, that's what we're going to be talking about. I have to admit
right at the very beginning, I did limit friend time for my children. And I did that by design.
It was on purpose. I deliberately decided what type of a family culture that we wanted to have
for our family. And then I didn't let other things get in the way of that family culture. So, it is
super important that you establish priorities for your family and for yourself. So, in our family,
family and God are like the top two priorities. But what I recognized at one point was that we
were spending a whole lot of time in a car, going to different lessons, and we were worrying about
friend time and playdates. And I thought, "This is robbing us of really important family time
that we could have together." And so, I decided, "You know what? There's no way it's just
going to accidentally happen. I cannot be passive when it comes to things with my family." I work
too hard and so many other aspects of the family to just let this one thing maybe work out. So, I
decided that i would prioritize. Put first things first. So, it was God and then family. And friends
were a little bit down the list because school and some of those other things personal development,
developing hobbies. Those things even came above the friend time. Even though some friend time is
important. Now, I know some people are thinking, "Oh, my word. Her children might have turned out
to be like social derelicts." On the contrary. In fact, my children are incredibly social.
They are more social than your run-of-the-mill child. People tell me that all the time. "Wow,
your children have no problem talking to adults or to anybody. They're not shy, they don't close
off. Yep, that's right. And that's actually because the family is the first social unit of
society. And if a person thrives in their family, they'll thrive everywhere else. And by the way,
that first social group unit of society, that's not my language. That's actually in the Beijing
document that's part of the United Nations. That's an agreed-upon piece of language. All
of the countries in the world that are part of the United Nations came together and said,
"We agree that the family is the most fundamental and first social group unit (something like that)
of society." I might have like transposed a couple of words. But you get the point. They are
saying family is top priority. In fact, they went on from that. And said, "The family deserves our
protection and support." That's how important family is. So, what in the world are friends for
then? Well, friends are actually for practice. Friends are for practice. So, if we're learning
our social skills in our home and with our family, then all that time at school and with friends is
actually when we're practicing our social skills. Do we need to practice our social skills? Yes,
we should so that we make sure that we know what we stand for whether we're with friends or family
or all by ourselves. We can stay true to our values and our principles. And so, it's good
practice time. But it is not the most important time that a child has. Sometimes I think that
parents think well my child's at school all day. Then when they come home, they need some release
time with friends. Don't forget who's also at school all day. Those friends. They're there.
They have breaks between classes or recesses and times where they can talk with each other.
So, they actually are in a social environment all day with their classmates even if they
didn't exactly get to do what they wanted to. So, that means, their number one need once they get
home from school is actually bonding with family, not increased bonding with friends or with media.
So, did I limit media? The answer is yes. But that's a video for another day.
We're going to talk more about limiting time with friends and what that looks like. But don't
limit your time on this channel. There are so many videos here. Be sure to click the subscribe button
and don't forget to click that notification bell too so that you are notified whenever I have new
things that come out but that might be helpful to your family. So, many parents have a concern when
their child asks for friends again and again. So, I had a great friend named Janet. We were
talking about friends we were talking about media and how children ask for these things
over and over. And she said to me, "It's so funny that when a child asks for candy again and again,
the parent immediately knows, my child has had too many sweets, too much candy. So, I know they
need fruits and vegetables and healthy food in their diet. But when a child asks for friends,
there's a soft spot in us where we don't recognize the child could be asking for friends because
they've been with friends the whole day." And what they really need is an attachment to other people
and other activities. The same thing goes for media too. I do believe in putting family first,
making sure that I prioritize. I took that a step further than just creating priorities though. So,
I examined all of the hours that we have in a day and in a week. And I determined how much
friend time does my child need in a week. What I determined was that when a child was very little,
they needed to have their foundation built by their attachment to family,
especially mom and dad. So, that child should stay close to mom. Meaning,
not a lot of friend time unless mom might be there. But even then, keeping it to a minimum. So,
the children when they are between the ages of zero and four are not going to be doing lots of
playdates and stuff. They're going to be with mom and they're going to be learning to mature.
So that when they get with people they don't start hitting and biting which is what oftentimes
children do when they don't know how to be social with older people. They think that that's the way
to communicate when you're frustrated because you don't know how to communicate with another
small person, right? I'm going to train them alongside me. They're going to follow me along
in my day. Then once they hit about age five or six and up until about age maybe
eight or nine, they're going to have some minimal exposure to friends. So, maybe
once maybe twice a week, they might get together with a friend for an hour or two. And that's going
to be good enough for them. So, then once they hit about ages eight until around age 12 or so,
that's a time frame when really they have the most social time in our family. Because this is when
they're really practicing their skills, they're fine-tuning some of that social development. And
they seem to have a little bit more of a desire to learn from a variety of sources. At that point,
then I'm going to say, "Alright, maybe they'll have maybe 2, maybe 3 playdates a week. And
they're going to be for maybe a little bit longer period of time." So usually, we did Thursday
afternoons and Saturday mornings in our family. And there might be a couple of hours, two or three
hours where they would play with someone. Or maybe they would even spend a whole day with a cousin
occasionally and have some fun cousin time or something like that. So, then when they get older,
12 and up, then they start becoming more studious and they start preparing for adulthood.
So, then actually what happens is usually their social time decreases a little bit. That doesn't
mean they're not going to have social time. They definitely will. But they're going to also be
doing other things like once they get to be age 15, 16, they might get a job. They're going to be
engaged in theatrical things at the school; sports at the school. Those types of different clubs that
now are bringing in even more social involvement. So, probably they're just going to be seeing their
friends on maybe Friday nights or Saturday nights or something like that. It's not going to be all
the time. I have a son who's 17 years old, he's my last one at home. Just getting ready to leave
the nest. And he usually spends one of the two weekend nights with mom and dad. And the other
night going out and doing things with friends. So, that's a very normal thing for him. Now does
he talk to some of them and text some of them? Yes. But let's be very careful to not consider
text friend time. It is but it's not good friend time. It's not the best kind they really need to
have face-to-face contact. So, if you're trying to get your social for your child through text,
it's never fully going to be adequate for them. They're never as honest in their relationships
when they have a screen to hide behind with all of their communications and they can plan out
their words so carefully. It's important that they have real genuine conversations with you
and with friends. If these rules about friends and social interest you, I'm pretty sure you'll
enjoy my next video which is 5 Rules Every Family Should Have. In that video, I'll be talking about
5 key rules that you can use to help your child learn self-government and also make
your lives go a lot smoother. So, click on that link to that video now and I'll see you there.