This week (Week 3) is all about helping your young person find a reliable source of healthy, positive friends. Your child will need your support and guidance for this.

(Note: we are not trying to conjure up friends out of nowhere… We are simply looking for a source of people who can potentially become friends in the future)

This week's skills...

TASK 1. Finding appropriate friendship sources:

There are a variety of ways we can go about looking to develop new friendships. There are 2 main ways to find good potential friends…

1. Social Groups (Scouts/School choir/School Bookclub): See attachment and start brainstorming with your Young Adult that may suit their needs (details in Table 4.1)
2. Social Activities (soccer/swimming/dance): Discuss the possibility of joining a social activity like etc. 

Look for a social group that has a good chance of working out:

• Based on things of interest to your young person, 
• Meets at least fortnightly
• Accepts peers of similar ages
• Includes unstructured time to interact with others
• Activity can be accessed within the next couple of weeks

Common Interests     

Here are some CLUES for our Young Adults that help identify if there is a common interest:

• Appearance - e.g clothing, hair colour and style.
• Interests - e.g what do they like to talk about?
• What they do in their free time?
• Who they currently hang out with?
• Where they like to hang out?
• Social activities they already belong to.

TASK 2. Assessing Peer Acceptance or Rejection:

As your young adult begins to identify which social groups they might fit in with, it will be important to practice identifying how you can tell if they are accepted or not by people within these groups.

Table 4.3 (attached) is a chart that you can use to help your Young Adult identify the differences between acceptance or lack of acceptance. Ask your Young Adult include:

• How can you tell if you're ACCEPTED by someone?
• How can you tell if you're NOT ACCEPTED by someone?

No one likes to feel rejected and this is again where the wonderful support of our PEERS parents and Coaches is vital. Letting our PEERS know that they will need to be potentially prepared that not everyone wants to be friends with us, as friendship is a choice.

Remember, we don't get to be friends with everybody, just like not everybody gets to be friends with us.

TASK 3: Call or Video Chat (1-2 times a week)

Parents and Coaches are to assist their Young Adult to engage in a conversation with another young adult via phone or video call. 

Before calling go over 'Trading Information' skills from the first two PEERS sessions:

· Don't brag

· Don't police 

· Use good body boundaries

· Use good volume control

· Use good eye contact (if you are feeling brave)

· Don't be argumentative   

· Listen to your friend

· Ask open-ended questions

· Don't be repetitive     

After the call ask your Young Adult:

1. What was the common interest?
2. What could we do with that information if we wanted to hang out?

TASK 4. Choose a personal item to PEERS to trade information in Session 4

PARENTS/MENTORS - Be Your Young Person's Biggest Encourager:

Our PEERS respond well to:

·  Praise e.g 'Nice job trading information and common interests'.

·  Offering suggestions/constructive feedback e.g 'How about next time we also ask more follow-up questions'

·  Focusing on strengths e.g 'I like how you showed your friend you were listening during that conversation. That was a great follow-up question'

We all respond well to:

·  Praise e.g 'Nice job trading information and identifying common interests.

·  Offering suggestions/constructive feedback e.g 'How about we do some research into what activities are available locally?'

·  Focusing on strengths e.g 'I like how you are willing to consider trying new activities.'

Remember, you're brave, you've got great people in your life to support you and you CAN do this. :)