It is normal to have disagreements and misunderstandings with friends. We call these Friendship Fires®.
We teach kids Friendship Fact #1: No friendship or relationship is perfect. This means it’s normal to sometimes experience conflict in our friendships.
Just like with real fires, there are things that you can to do to extinguish or smother a Friendship Fire®, or things that fuel the Fire and make it bigger! Sometimes kids do things to ignite the Friendship Fire or even fan the flames (that means blowing oxygen into the fire to make the flames bigger).
When our emotions overwhelm us, sometimes we forget to make the best decisions. If we don’t make thoughtful choices when we are in the midst of a Friendship Fire®, it can grow bigger, get out of control and spread a long way – sometimes damaging lots of relationships before it eventually burns out, just like a raging bushfire or forest fire.
We know that the most successful way to shrink and put out a Friendship Fire® is to follow URSTRONG’s steps to put out a Friendship Fire®, moving through the stages of the Friend-o-cycle. If we do it quickly, as soon as we feel or see a fire starting to spark, rather than letting the fire smoke, we have a much better chance of putting the fire all the way out!
