Peer Relations

Young children’s natural interest in each other blossoms into real friendships during the preschool years when they really begin playing interactively. Early childhood friendships are important to development since they offer social and emotional support to children (Vaughn, Colvin, Azrea, Caya, & Krzysic, 2001).

• Preschoolers cite sharing toys and pleasurable play when defining friendship, while older children and adults describe friendships as enduring relationships based on mutual trust (Selman, 1980).
• First friendships are based on proximity (such as being neighbors or attending the same preschool) and ease of engagement. So “best friends” usually see each other regularly and usually play together easily.
• Sympathy can be defined as feelings of concern for another. Sympathetic actions are intended to reduce or relieve the other’s sorrow or discomfort.
• Empathy is the ability to understand another’s emotions as if they were your own. Three- to five-year-olds are now developmentally capable of true empathy. It is the capability of perspective taking that enables preschoolers to emphasize with others. This new emotional capacity inspires children to act prosocially.
• Prosocial behaviors are altruistic actions that benefit someone else without reward. Once children are capable of sympathy and empathy, they usually show more prosocial behaviors, especially if reinforced by adults. Examples are helping, sharing, cooperating, and caring for others.
• Antisocial behaviors are behaviors that are hostile, harmful, disruptive, or that violate social rules. Examples range from unfriendliness, rudeness, defiance, belligerence, aggression, and criminal behavior. Positive guidance techniques, included in the upcoming discipline section, can reduce antisocial behavior and increase prosocial skills.
• Research shows that friendly kindergarteners with good prosocial and emotional self-regulatory skills are best at making friendships. In particular, popular children are good at noticing, interpreting, and responding to social cues. This remains true into adolescence and adulthood.
• Preschoolers who do not get along well with their peers are usually poor at reading social cues and/or likely to misinterpret them as hostile (Rose & Asher, 1999). Children with few friends often dislike school and develop negative feelings about academic learning (Birch & Ladd, 1998). Social skills training, such as acting out conflicts with puppets, seem to make long-lasting improvements for children (Shure, 2001).
• Social problem-solving is the process of resolving social conflict by generating and using strategies agreeable to all involved. All children will experience conflicts with one another and enhance social skills through learning to resolve them. Most children’s abilities to negotiate and solve problems are well developed enough by kindergarten that compromise and persuasion are used rather than aggression (Chen, et al., 2001). Some children seem naturally skilled at problem-solving while others struggle with reading cues and creating constructive solutions. The process follows the following circular sequence (adapted from Crick and Dodge, 1994):
1. Notice and interpret social cues
2. Formulate social goals and identify problem
3. Generate and evaluate solutions and strategies to resolve problem
4. Choose strategy and enact; back to #1 (read social cues)
• Peer acceptance, or “likeability,” differs from early friendships because it describes how classmates view a child’s social standing. Research on young schoolagers has shown most children fall into one of four categories when nominated by their peers (Cillessen & Bukowski, 2000):
1. Popular--most positive votes (friendly, socially skilled, academically able)
2. Rejected--most negative votes (socially awkward, can be aggressive or withdrawn, most likely to be bullied)
3. Neglected--few positive or negative votes (most are socially competent and well-adjusted but prefer playing alone; most likely to “fall through the cracks”)
4. Controversial--many positive and negative votes (a mix of both prosocial and antisocial behaviors; most often “wild” boys who are athletic and defy authority, may become bullies)
• Imaginary friends are make-believe or fantasized friendships that many preschoolers invent (25-45%). These pretend relationships are not cause for concern but rather actually increase preschoolers social abilities, such as perspective-taking (Gleason, 2002).

Vignette:
When I was about four years old and my mother was in graduate school, her major professor came over for dinner for the first time. My mother was mortified when the professor tried to sit down and I stopped him, shrieking, “You’re sitting on my friend Betsy!” My mother was worried that he would think I was maladjusted (common thinking at the time) and would doubt her ability to be a competent child psychologist. Luckily, Betsy and I didn’t hurt my mother’s career aspirations.