How to Help Your Daughter Build Healthy Friendships

Posted on Sep 29, 2020 Topic : Men's Christian Living, Women's Christian Living

At any stage of life, having good friends is a big deal, but more so for young girls trying to build their self-esteem and find their place in the world. Use this excerpt from A Girl's Guide to Best Friends and Mean Girls to start some meaningful talks about godly friendships with your tween daughter today.

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“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend” (Proverbs 27:17).

Do you choose your own friends? You’d better believe it! Oh, Mom and Dad have some input now, and its right that they do. You need that kind of wisdom. What they are really doing is training you for the future when you will be 100 percent on your own in making new friends. They aren’t trying to butt in—they are showing you the most excellent way to do friendship.

You get to choose your own team when it comes to friends. No one else can do it for you. And Jesus gave us a great lesson in friend selection by choosing us. He didn’t pick the most popular or powerful people to make him look better. No, Jesus chose his friends carefully.

Friends are supposed to make us better people. There are two famous authors you likely know of who did just that for one another. The setting was an English college town called Oxford, and the two young professors both taught English. After some time, J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Hobbit) had shared enough of his faith that C.S. Lewis (author of the Chronicles of Narnia) placed his trust in Jesus too. Tolkien saw his writing as a pure hobby. He did it just for fun. But C.S. Lewis knew his friend was weaving great biblical truths into his stories, and he encouraged him to get them published. If it weren’t for C.S. Lewis, the world might have never known the wonderful world of The Hobbit! But if it weren’t for J.R.R.Tolkien, C.S. Lewis might have never known Jesus, his Savior.

We should be purposeful about our friend choices. Some people simply are not good for us.

If I have to act like someone else to be around her, she is not a safe choice.
If she wants me to gossip about others, she is not a good choice.
If she pulls me away from things I love to do and people I love to be with, she is not the right friend.
If I am growing more bad fruit than good because of her, she is not a good choice.

Every choice in life impacts us, not just our friendships. For instance, when I go to a restaurant, I get to choose what I order, right? (Well, unless Mom and Dad are paying the bill. Then that big

old steak may not be an option!) If I order something I’m allergic to, there will be a consequence. It will change the status of my health. If my eyes are bigger than my tummy, food goes to waste.

It’s never good to waste food. Not every decision we make is life-altering. But it’s good to be aware of the truth.

Friends will change you, mold you, impact you, and either help or hinder you along the way.