Welcome back! It’s been awhile! After a summer sabbatical, we are back into the swing of things, and this week we are talking about “common.” There are a lot of ways to interpret “common,” but for this week, in the time we are living in now, I think it makes the most sense to focus on what we have in common. 

Commonality can be viewed negatively; people want to stand out and be individuals. We are living in a time where personal branding is top of mind, and people, specifically young people, feel pressure to add qualifiers and distinguishers to their personalities to prove individuality. While it is great for kids, teens and young adults to understand their identities and what makes them unique, this differentiation causes a separation that makes it harder to relate to their peers.

Think about the scenarios in which friendships blossom. Maybe you met your best friend at a flag football tournament, or in choir, or maybe through mutual friends. All of these scenarios involve commonality bringing people together. This is the time of their lives for your kids to make friends and develop skills with interpersonal relationships. It’s so important to encourage them to find like-minded individuals with which to learn and grow.

The constant segmentation and over-definition of personalities is a great way for your child to understand who he is, but he must also find interests that he has in common with his peers to build relationships upon. Think about the people you know that characterize themselves with a laundry list of descriptive adjectives and identities. Are those people surrounded by healthy, mutually-beneficial relationships? For me, these people in my life have a few like-minded relationships, but they largely avoid a lot of potentially great encounters based off of a list of qualifiers and standards for their interpersonal relationships.

I 100% encourage you to give your children room to discover themselves and their unique values and traits that make up their personalities. At the same time, remind them that people are not always going to fit our expectations and perfect preferences; however, opening oneself up to a variety of types of people with different personalities and backgrounds will ultimately help them grow as people.

As we embark on a new school year, your children will come into contact with new faces. Remind them to be accepting and open to friendships with people they wouldn’t normally describe as their ideal friends. Also remember to keep an open mind about the people your children invite into their lives. This is the time for them to learn, grow, experience conflict, and learn to bond and connect with people outside of their family. Give them room to grow and enjoy the commonality with their fellow students.

                                                                                                           Bria