Episode description

Today is Part 2 of my conversation with Madeline Casey, Phoebe Cook, Linsey Jensen, & Kristen Ruesch. from Indiana on the topic of friendship. Today's topics cover how to help our children deal with conflict and how to serve each other.

• Food is a major way to serve each other. Make enough dinner to share, or have a potluck. Everyone wins that way!
• Helping care for another person's kids is huge.
• Be willing to be inconvenienced by each other. The friendship is totally worth the sacrifice.
• The more you get to know someone, the more you notice what they need and can feel more comfortable expressing what you need help with.
• The service relationships often start small and grow as times goes on. Do your best to reciprocate service when you can.
• Help your kids understand what they can control in the friend settings. When all the moms and the kids talk through conflicts together, it helped everyone learn how to grow together. Allow the goal to be helping the kids solve the problem for themselves rather than just coming to the quickest solution to keep everyone quiet.
• If you can, get together without your kids!! You can talk without interruptions and develop deeper relationships at an adult level.
• Have a theme for your evening (like a favorite things night or music night) to help guide your conversations.
• Go on a walk - with or without kids. The kids are typically happy in strollers and you also get to talk at an adult level more.
• Treasure the spontaneous moments of friendship that happen. They can mean so much more than the staged/planned ones.