Four short scenarios, three possible answers to each, and a surprisingly honest mirror held up to how a child actually treats their friends, not how they think they do. The Good Friend Test is a short, scored quiz that turns “am I a good friend?” from a vague question into something with an actual answer.
What you need
Paper and a pencil for each child taking the test.
How to play
Read out, or hand out, a short set of scenario questions, each with three possible responses. A few to use or adapt:
A friend loses their pen again. Do you refuse to lend them yours, lend it only if they lend you something in return, or simply share it with them for the day without conditions?
Your best friend gets something new and exciting. Do you feel jealous that they got it and you didn’t, feel indifferent because it doesn’t affect you, or feel genuinely happy for them?
A friend is off sick from school for several days. Do you avoid visiting in case you catch it too, drop by briefly only because it’s on your way home anyway, or bring them schoolwork and stay as long as they’d like?
Two people in your friend group start being unkind to someone for no real reason. Do you join in so they don’t turn on you next, do nothing and stay out of it, or tell them to stop and check on the person being picked on?
Ask your child to write down their answer to each, then look at which response they chose most often. Mostly cautious, self-protective answers suggest room to grow. Mostly conditional answers, help traded only for help in return, suggest friendship is still feeling more like a transaction than it could. Mostly generous, other-focused answers suggest real warmth already in practice, not just in theory.
The conversation that matters more than the score
The actual value here is in the discussion afterward, not the result itself. Ask your child: does this feel like an accurate picture of the kind of friend you are? Why or why not? Was there a question where your honest answer surprised you? Give them five minutes of quiet thinking time before discussing, which tends to produce more honest reflection than jumping straight to talking.
A note on keeping this gentle
This is a reflection tool, not a verdict, and it’s worth saying that plainly before starting. A child who scores poorly on a given day is not a bad friend; they are a child with room to grow, same as every other child who has ever taken this test honestly. Keep the tone curious rather than judgemental, and resist turning a low score into a lecture.
A short quiz like this one rarely changes anything by itself. What it does, reliably, is give a child a few minutes of honest reflection on something they usually never stop to examine directly, and that small pause, repeated occasionally over the years, tends to shape how they actually treat the people around them far more than being told to “be a good friend” ever does on its own.
