Friends or Frenemies? Help Your Teen Spot Healthy Friends and Walk Away From Toxic Ones

Dear Parent,

When you’re parenting a child or teen from difficult beginnings—early trauma, adoption, abuse—you’re not just helping them heal in their relationship with you. You’re also helping them build the relational skills they’ll carry for life. Not too much pressure, right?

One of the most powerful ways you can shape your teen’s future? Help them learn how to choose and sustain healthy friendships.

Children with trauma histories often struggle to recognize safe vs unsafe people. They may cling to toxic friends, tolerate cruelty, or repeat patterns of rejection they’ve known too well.

But when they have even one safe, secure friendship—and when they maintain a solid relationship with you—it can transform their mental health, self-esteem, and resilience. Strong relationships literally rewire the brain.

So, how can you guide your child toward healthy friendships? Here are six key questions you  can engage them with.  Or just slyly slide a copy of this list across the dinner table.

      1. Do I Feel Safe With This Friend?

Let’s start here because it’s the biggest one. If you don’t feel emotionally safe, it’s not a friendship. Period.

Ask yourself:

• Can I trust this person with my feelings?
• Do they lift me up or tear me down?
• When I walk away from hanging out, do I feel okay in my body—or anxious and tense?

🚩 Watch out for:

• Put-downs disguised as compliments. If your friend says stuff like “You’re pretty good at that… for someone like you,” they’re not helping you shine. As Dr. Brené Brown says, “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” Friends who use shame to control or belittle are not safe.
• Conditional friendship—when you have to act a certain way to be “allowed” to stay in the group. Hard no.
• Gossip—if they talk about others behind their backs, trust me, they’re doing it to you too. Also, if they gossip with you, they’ll gossip about you.

👉 Bottom line: you should never have to play small to stay friends with someone.

      2. Is This About Connection or Competition?

Ask yourself: do I feel like I’m in a constant competition with this person?

• Do they always have to one-up me?
• Do they get weird, cold, mean or rejecting when something good happens to me?
• Do they ghost me when it is my time to shine?
• Am I secretly hoping they don’t succeed because they won’t let me succeed?

👎 Not it.
👍 Real friends celebrate each other’s wins. They want to see you happy, not stressed out because someone else has more likes on a post.

As author L.R. Knost reminds us: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”  Comparison is a form of judgmentalism and that never feels like “joy.”

And here’s the truth: if a friend needs you to be smaller so they can feel bigger, that’s not friendship. That’s an ego problem.

      3. Do I Feel Better or Worse After Hanging Out?

Here’s your gut check: after you’ve been with this person, do you feel lighter… or heavier?

Some people leave you buzzing in a good way. Others leave you second-guessing yourself, drained, or anxious. Pay attention.

Even if you’re someone who loves alone time (hello, fellow introverts), it should be about needing to recharge—not recovering from emotional damage.

If a friend regularly leaves you feeling like crap about yourself—well, you have permission to move on. No drama needed. Just shift your energy elsewhere.

      4. Can I Be Myself With This Friend?

This one’s huge: can you actually be YOU around them?

If you’re always performing, pretending, or holding your breath around a friend, that’s not healthy. That’s acting. Good friendships let you drop the mask. You can be goofy, sad, awkward, brilliant, uncool, messy—and still be accepted.

A cool and interesting guy, Dr. Gabor Maté, says it best: “Authenticity [being yourself} is the root of well-being.”

Ask yourself:

• Am I free to say what I really think?
• Can I admit I’m struggling sometimes?
• Do I feel seen and valued when I’m not at my “best”?

👉 If not? That’s not friendship—that’s conditional approval. You deserve way better.

      5. Are They Cool With Me Having Other Friends?

This is where a lot of teens get stuck: possessiveness ≠ love.

If your friend freaks out every time you hang out with someone else or demands to be your “only” bestie—it’s not cute. It’s controlling.

Healthy friends want you to have a big, full life. They’re happy when you have fun with others. And they trust that your connection is solid enough not to be threatened.

👉 You are allowed to have different friends for different parts of your life—and so is everyone else. No one friend can (or should) be your everything.

      6. Can We Get Through Hard Stuff Together?

Even the best friendships hit rough spots sometimes. That’s normal. The key is whether you can talk about it and repair the connection.

A famous relationship therapist, Dr. Julie Gottman, says “Repair is the heartbeat of all strong relationships.” But it takes two willing hearts.

Here’s how to know:

• Can you both admit when you’ve messed up?
• Can you both apologize without blaming or making it about the other person?
• Does the friendship get stronger when you face hard things, or does it just crack?

Sometimes the healthiest thing is knowing when to repair… and when to let go. You don’t have to stay loyal to someone who’s shown you they aren’t safe or trustworthy anymore.

👉 But when two people both want to do the work to repair and grow? That’s gold. Those are the friendships worth keeping.

Back to you, dear parent. Here’s your reminder: even if your teen doesn’t show it, these conversations matter.

Yep there will be eye rolling.. And, “Yeah, yeah, I know.” They might not respond at all. But trust me—when you engage with acceptance, curiosity, and a little humor, they hear you.

Think of parenting a teen like tending an unruly garden.  You can throw the seeds out there and sooner or later most of them sprout and bloom.  Some don’t. You can’t win ‘em all.

Because no matter how stormy the teen years feel, you are still the safe place they desperately need—and the one they’ll look for, even if they take the long way back.

So stay hopeful. Stay connected. And keep building that bridge of trust, one plank (and one conversation) at a time.

You’ve got this. And your teen? Well, you are just the right parent for them, even when they don’t know it yet.

Love Matters,

️Ce

Creator of the Love+ Parenting Model found only in the Love Matters Parenting Society Therapeutic Parent Program.

Want to overcome your child's destructive behavior? Follow this link to find out how you can join the Love Matters Parenting Society today: http://start.lovemattersparenting.com/guide