The types of friends we keep

Every night at dinner, I ask my son about his favorite part of the day. Sometimes he will tell me about a class; usually he will tell me about lunch or recess. When I ask him who he played with, I've noticed that the names of who he counts as his "best friend" varies from week to week.

These cats are all besties.

I went to a very small school and there were not a lot of children in our class. So, we were all friends. Sure there were times when we didn't get along and fought, but we all had to work through that because there were limited options of who else we could play with.

All of the varying "best friends" my son has, made me start thinking about the types of friendships that I continue to have today. I recently stumbled on this research positing that we only make three types of friendships:

• tight-knitters (you have one group of friends who all know each other well)
• compartmentalizer (you have separate groups of friends divided by function)
• sampler (you have one-on-one friends who probably don't know each other)

It's hard to tell if this research all pans out yet. And, I know that it is far too early to tell what type of friendships my son will tend to make throughout his lifetime, but it is something that I'd like to keep in the back of my head. (Mostly, so I don't create issues when scheduling birthday parties.) For now, I want him to focus on making all sorts of friends.

What type of friendships does your child tend to make? Leave a note in the comments.