Children’s friendship

Recently, I heard how two five-year-old girls agreed very seriously on the playground: after returning home, at a certain moment, both in a loud whisper should pronounce each other’s names as a sign of mutual fidelity and sincere love … There is no doubt: friendly feelings can be strong even in such a young age.

Adults, remembering their childhood, usually believe that making friends was easy and simple for them. It is enough to go out into the yard – and a suitable company was sure to be found. But when we observe how our children communicate, how complex the world of their friendships is, we understand that childhood friendships are never really completely cloudless.

Love yourself through the eyes of another

“Friendship is associated for us with warm, pleasant feelings,” says existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. “That’s the good side of life, and that’s what makes it valuable. Often, the positive experiences that we have in childhood friendships form the basis of our ability to withstand life’s difficulties. Those of us who didn’t have friends as children are more likely to be lonely, feel dissatisfied with our lives, lack the fundamental feeling that “life is good.”

For friendship to arise, it is necessary that the child has the opportunity to play freely with peers: without this condition, without joint free play, friendship simply has nowhere to come from. The dream of a friend may first appear at the age of 4–5, but such relationships become especially important by the age of 7–8: friends are able to evaluate the child more objectively than parents. “At this age, a friend is needed as an external “mirror,” explains Svetlana Krivtsova. – A mirror, thanks to which the child can better understand himself: “what am I?”, “Do others like me?”.

“Technology” of relations

Modern urban life largely determines the difficulties that children face. Children’s yard companies have almost disappeared, which thirty years ago were a kind of “school of friendship” and where you could master all the subtleties and all types of friendly and friendly relations.

There are not many places left where friendship naturally arises: kindergarten, where children ideally play freely, “extension” at school, various hobby activities, where, under the supervision of adults, in a safe space, you can do something good and useful together. And of course, the dacha where the child comes every summer.

Some parents, realizing that strong friendships will help their children be more successful in life, worry too much when they think something is going wrong. Trying to help, they find themselves too involved in childish relationships. However, friendship between children occurs according to the rules that they set themselves. Adults can influence them, but only indirectly.

“Children unconsciously imitate their parents,” recalls Svetlana Krivtsova. “Therefore, the best way to teach friendship is to be a good friend to someone yourself. From relationships in the family, the child adopts ways to resolve conflicts, the ability to negotiate, to compromise. All these skills are formed in friendship, and then turn out to be no less in demand in love and work relationships.

Adults can clearly show the advantages of “partner attitudes”: we go towards each other, give way to a partner in order to do much more together than alone.

Friendship can be broken down into individual skills and taught purposefully^*. These include the ability to get acquainted, start and end a conversation; the ability to ask for help and offer it, to share, to take care of another, to thank and accept gratitude, and even the ability to remain alone is necessary so that the child does not feel dependent on friendship.

“Do not forget that along with pleasant experiences in friendship, there are always conflicts associated with discontent, disappointment, jealousy, breakup,” says the psychotherapist. – No matter how much parents want to save their children from negative experiences, the spiritual experience of ennobling suffering (of course, in reasonable, “homeopathic” doses) is necessary for their psychological development. And it will be better if this experience is obtained in friendly relations and in a relatively calm, pre-adolescent age. Because only in this way will children be able to feel the border between the desire to maintain a relationship with a friend and self-esteem, learn what loss is, and understand that life does not end there … “

Policy of non-intervention

“I don’t like my son’s friends. More precisely, one friend, 43-year-old Yulia admits. – All the time on the street, impudent, lazy, for the second year he remained in the fourth grade. Parents, it seems, do not deal with him at all, but mine is simply drawn to him like a magnet … “

Is it okay to intervene in a child’s relationship if it seems to us that the child is friends with “inappropriate” children or “not in the right way”? After all, already at preschool age, children tend to choose their own playmates. They are drawn to those whom they perceive as equals, with whom they share common interests.

And this is the universal quality of all friendships throughout our lives. Therefore, it is better for parents to step aside and let young children decide for themselves who they should be friends with. Often we underestimate the abilities of our own child or we do not have the patience to wait until he copes with the difficulties on his own.

“The most important thing that is required of parents is to behave in such a way that the child, if he wants, could talk with them about any, including negative, relationship experience,” says Svetlana Krivtsova.

Eight-year-old Zhenya was very shy. “I tried to introduce my son to other boys, but he only became more withdrawn,” says 32-year-old Olga. “And of course, he found his best friend without my help. We were in the park, but the son did not pay attention to anyone, he drew a huge ship with chalk on the pavement. The new boy, Igor, sat next to him and watched him. I really wanted to intervene and advise Zhenya to try to make friends with him, but still I restrained myself. Igor was very interested in drawing, and they started talking. Twenty minutes later they were already climbing the hill together. After Zhenya himself became friends with Igor, he changed a lot, laughs more – it seems that he began to respect himself more, as if this boy helped him realize his own significance.

How can we help

Our own childhood experience can hinder or, conversely, help our children. Psychologist Cynthia Eardley found that mothers who were shy as children usually go to great lengths to find friends for their children.^**. They create many opportunities for communication and help children if they have difficulties.

Conversely, self-confident parents often think, “It was easy for me, so it will be easy for my child.”

Meanwhile, there are children who find it difficult to make friends or with whom it is difficult to be friends: for them, the natural rules of friendship are not obvious, so they need help and support.

For example, if a child is shy, help him get to know other people by telling a story that he can tell other children, or give him a small toy that he can show when he plays with them.

Aggressive behavior often hides self-doubt and the inability to adequately express their feelings. Parents can help such children by showing them how to respond in conflict situations and by strengthening their self-confidence.

^* A series of books “Life Skills. Psychology Lessons, Ed. S. Krivtsova (Genesis, 2002).

^** Co-author of The Role of Friendship in Psychological Adjustment, Jossey-Bass, 2001.