Dear Dr. Debbie,
Our eight-year-old made friends with our neighbor’s niece while the child was staying here for the school year. They were in class together and often had dinner at each other’s homes. She’s about to move back to live with her mother again, unfortunately about 2,000 miles across the country. I’m expecting some rocky behavior from our son as he adjusts to school being over and his friend not being around. What could, or should, I do to distract him until day camp starts in a week? Since I don’t know the mother at all, I hesitate to promise that he can Zoom with his friend or expect to have any snail mail correspondence returned.
Shifting Gears
Dear SG,
This situation calls for sensitivity and tentative plans.
Tender Feelings
The loss of a friend through a move, especially one so far away, is a tragedy for a child. An eight-year-old relies on friendships to help him learn who he is, to let him know that he is worthy as a friend, to have a buddy to get into and out of predicaments with, and most of all, to enjoy fun times together. A friend helps you to be a better you.
When that friend lives just down the block, or is a classmate in school, you have daily opportunities to share ups and downs as well as the many mundane moments that made up your existence. Having a friend in your class can even make occasional boredom less intolerable.
Try to provide structure and predictability for the days before camp starts with a schedule that’s loose enough for delays, cancelations and easy alternatives. His big feelings may cause him to lose interest in an activity he’s agreed to or to pitch a fit over something you’ve planned that he’d normally be excited to participate in. This may be the time to be lenient about how much passive screen time he’s allowed to have. Zoning out in front of the tube can be a welcome break from those big feelings.
When he’s ready to hear you, let him know that missing his friend and being angry about her departure are understandable reactions for him to have. Perhaps you could share an anecdote from your own childhood that demonstrates that you, too, have experienced the difficult loss of daily contact with a close friend. Misery loves the company of a kindred crushed spirit.
Hopeful Overtures
For the short-term, reassure your child that true friendship can stay strong despite distance and time. He can hold onto good memories by sharing them with you. Memories can be jogged with photos – offer to print out and frame one of him and his friend. He may have mementos of their times together – a rock from that walk to the creek, the comic book they often read together on the front porch – that remain with him as lasting proof of this friendship.
Your best bet for keeping the connection between friends going may be through your neighbor, the child’s aunt. Ask her opinion about the likelihood of making and keeping a Zoom call date, or the chances of success for a pen pal relationship. She may also be a good gauge for judging when enough time has passed for the friend and her mom to reestablish their groove with one another before having an onscreen reunion between the buddies. Your neighbor may have other suggestions about timing between the time zones.
What are the chances that a long-term long-distance friendship can be sustained? It may take some effort on your part, and has the potential for disappointment, but it’s certainly worth pursuing. While you are testing the waters, enjoy some picture books with your son to keep his hopes up:
Boxes for Katje by Candace Fleming (2003), tells the true story of how a girl in Indiana found a lasting friendship via the international postal service with a girl in Holland through a project of the Children’s Aid Society. There’s some world history and vivid cross-cultural comparisons to add interest to this tale. (The book is not currently in the Anne Arundel County Public Library catalog but can be requested from other Maryland libraries through Marina.)
These books are in the Anne Arundel County Public Library system:
Pen Pals by Alexandra Pichard (2017) involves two pen pals matched up in a school project. Oscar the ant and Bill the octopus learn about each other’s diverse interests but find they have much in common, too. Yours Sincerely, Giraffe by Megumi Iwasa (2011) matches up another unlikely pair of compadres who bridge the lonely distance between them through letters. Arthur’s Pen Pal by Lillian Hoban (1976) may be a bit dated with its premise that Arthur, a chimpanzee, assumes his active and adventurous pen pal is a boy like himself, only to discover that she’s a girl like his little sister. This gives him hope that he has a perfectly acceptable playmate right at home. An eight-year-old could probably read this Beginning Reader book for himself.
There’s a new picture book (available on Marina) that tells of a pen pal relationship between two established friends, but with a twist. A Letter to My Best Friend by Yangsook Choi (2024) adds the element of an uprooted life with the main character having to fulfill a school assignment of writing a letter to his best friend back in Korea. Jihun is better at drawing than he is at writing in English, which is just as well since his friend, a cat, can’t read. The happy ending has Jihun making a new friend at his new school in his new country. In fact, five, counting her four cats.
Once you’ve learned the meaning of friendship with one good friend, it’s easier to recognize the possibility for it in others.
Dr. Debbie
Deborah Wood, Ph.D. is a child development specialist www.drdebbiewood.com and founding director of Chesapeake Children’s Museum www.theccm.org.
The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Summer hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. beginning June 14. Online reservations are available at theccm.org/event-details/purchase-tickets-in-advance or by calling 410-990-1993. Each Thursday, there is a guided nature walk at 10:30 a.m. Art and Story Times with Mrs. Spears and Puppy the Puppet are on Monday mornings at 10:30 a.m.
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