Психологи и родители советуют школьникам искать друзей по критерию постоянства

As my daughter heads into middle school, I have a lot of advice for her. I want to tell her what I wish someone had told me, what I’ve learned the hard way and what I suspect she is going to have to learn for herself anyway. I know she will roll her eyes. I know she will think she already knows all of this. Still, there is one thing I really want her to remember about friendship: Look for consistency. The most important quality you want in a friend, I tell her, is someone who is the same person with you no matter who else is around. Someone who treats you the same way when it’s just the two of you as she does when you’re sitting at the lunch table, walking through the hallway or standing with the girls she really wants to impress. Middle school is when friendships can start to feel like a performance. There are social hierarchies and group chats and party invitations and a million tiny calculations about who is standing next to whom. Kids are figuring out where they fit, and sometimes they behave differently depending on who is watching. If someone is warm and funny with you when you’re alone but barely acknowledges you around a certain group, that’s worth noticing. If she is your best friend at home but suddenly seems embarrassed to know you at school, notice that, too. Of course, I don’t want my daughter to drop a friend over a few uncomfortable moments. People have bad days. Kids are insecure. Sometimes we all act differently when we’re nervous or trying too hard to fit in. I’m 47 and still catch myself doing this sometimes. Noëlle Santorelli, a licensed clinical psychologist, tells TODAY.com that consistency is an important part of what makes a friendship feel safe and trustworthy, particularly as kids navigate the social uncertainty of middle school. But she cautions against treating every awkward interaction as a reason to end a friendship. “An incident is an incident,” Santorelli says. “But if it starts to be a pattern” — a friend is distant at a football game, then in the lunchroom, then in the hallway — “that’s when you want to start to take note of how consistent is this friendship.” When that happens repeatedly, Santorelli says, kids can start to turn the problem inward, wondering what they did wrong or changing their own behavior to try to win the friend back. Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a family physician and resilience expert, sees another reason for kids to pay attention to how their friends behave in different settings. Friendships, she says, are opportunities for kids to learn about other people, and themselves. “Most friendships that our children experience are for practice, not forever,” Gilboa tells TODAY.com. “When our kids learn to look at their friends as people to learn about as well as have fun with, then they can make some really informed decisions.” That includes noticing how a friend treats you when other people are around. “When you pay attention to how your friends behave towards you in different settings, you get a great indicator of how they talk about you when you’re not there,” Gilboa says. When I look at the people I am closest to now, the ones I trust most aren’t necessarily the people I talk to every day or the people I’ve known the longest. They are the people I know I can count on. They don’t disappear and reappear depending on who else is around. The goal isn’t to find a friend who never disappoints you. That person does not exist. It’s to find people whose behavior, over time, matches what they tell you about themselves. And I want my daughter to be that person, too. When I survey the people I love most in my own life, I think about the ones who stayed. The ones who answered. The ones who called back. The ones who didn’t require me to figure out which version of them I was getting that day. Those are the friendships I want for my daughter. To every kid starting sixth grade: You will meet plenty of people who are exciting and funny and fun to be around. But don’t overlook the ones who make room for you, the ones who make you feel safe to be exactly who you are. Those are the people worth holding on to.