It turns out there is a recipe for popularity — and you can teach your kids these skills

Imagine there was an elixir you could buy to make kids popular. Wouldn’t parents around the world line up in droves to buy it? Doesn’t every parent want their kids to be popular and well-liked, with lots of friends?

Even in schools that prioritize academic achievement, most parents would prefer their children have friends than excel in math or English. Most parents just want their kids to be happy.

But how can you make a child popular? Isn’t the ability to attract friends an inborn characteristic, the birthright of a select charmed few?

Actually — it isn’t! Turns out there is a recipe for popularity, and you can teach its skills to your child, helping them learn to thrive socially.

The ingredients in popularity were identified by Rick Lavoie, an award-winning expert on children with learning disabilities. In his work, Lavoie noticed that some children lacked certain social skills, causing them to communicate abruptly or ungraciously with their peers, making it harder for them to form friendships — a source of pain for these children. “Every child wants to be accepted socially. No one makes social mistakes on purpose,” he says.

Lavoie decided to focus on looking at what makes children popular. Drawing on research from a range of experts who looked to see what popular kids were doing right so they could teach these skills to less popular kids, as well as his own experiences as an educator, he distilled his findings into seven key skills that could be applied to regular kids, too. Now clearly defined and listed, these skills could be taught just like a curriculum subject. “If they do these seven things consistently, they automatically become popular kids, because these are the things that kids like about other kids,” Lavoie says.