To Prevent Loneliness, Start in the Classroom [theatlantic.com]

From my experience, loneliness is not something to avoid, but rather something we need to learn how to embrace to have the grit to walk our true path and avoid settling for inauthentic relationships.  The desperate pain of loneliness obviously stems from early childhood experiences in which the young child struggled with feeling isolated, disconnected, insignificant, even invisible on deep emotional levels.  As we learn how to embrace feelings of loneliness, we can meet the emotional needs within ourselves and find the strength to "follow the road less traveled" and form relationships that support the blossoming of our authenticity.  We teach children how to feel their feelings and self-nurture in this way by forging deeper, more conscious, empathetic connections with them. We can also provide them with direct mindfulness training along this line.  They then cultivate the inner strength to find authentic joy, to trust their intuition, to establish appropriate self-honoring boundaries, and to avoid or reject unhealthy relationships that  the terror of being alone would otherwise drive them toward.  I provide children, parents and teachers - including preschool teachers - with instruction along these lines.