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At preschool age, other children of the same age are firmly and forever included in the life of a child. A complex and sometimes dramatic picture of relationships unfolds between preschoolers. They make friends, quarrel, reconcile, get offended, jealous, help each other, and sometimes do small “dirty things”. All these relationships are acutely experienced and carry a lot of different emotions. Emotional tension and conflict in the sphere of children’s relations is much higher than in the sphere of communication with an adult. Parents are sometimes unaware of the wide range of feelings and relationships that their children experience, and, of course, do not attach much importance to children’s friendship, quarrels, and insults.
Meanwhile, the experience of the first relationships with peers is the foundation on which the further development of the child’s personality is built. This first experience largely determines the nature of a person’s relationship to himself, to others, to the world as a whole. It doesn’t always work out well. In many children already at preschool age, a negative attitude towards others is formed and consolidated, which can have very sad long-term consequences. It is the most important task of parents to identify the problematic forms of the child’s relationship to peers in time and help to overcome them. To do this, it is necessary to know the age characteristics of children’s communication, the normal course of development of communication with peers.
How babies communicate
Communication of younger preschoolers is completely different from their communication with adults. They talk differently, look at each other, behave differently.
Features of communication of preschoolers with peers
- Vibrant emotional intensity
- Non-standard and unregulated
- The predominance of initiative actions over response
The first thing that catches your eye is extremely bright emotional richness of children’s communication. They literally cannot talk calmly — they scream, squeal, laugh, rush about, scare each other and at the same time choke with delight. Increased emotionality and looseness significantly distinguishes children’s contacts from their interaction with adults. In the communication of peers, there are about 10 times more vivid expressive-mimic manifestations expressing a variety of emotional states: from furious indignation to violent joy, from tenderness and sympathy to a fight.
Another important feature of children’s contacts is their non-standard behavior and the absence of any rules and decency. If in communication with an adult, even the smallest children adhere to certain norms of behavior, then when interacting with their peers, babies use the most unexpected and unpredictable sounds and movements. They jump, take bizarre poses, make faces, mimic each other, crackle, croak and bark, invent unimaginable sounds, words, fables, etc. Such eccentricities bring them unbridled gaiety — and the more wonderful, the merrier. Naturally, such manifestations irritate adults — and I want to stop this outrage as soon as possible. It seems that such senseless fuss only disturbs the peace, of course, has no benefit and has nothing to do with the development of the child. But if all children of preschool age, at the first opportunity, make faces and mimic each other again and again, does it mean that they need it for something?
What gives preschoolers such strange communication?
Such freedom, unregulated communication of preschoolers allows the child to show his initiative and originality, his original beginning. It is very important that other children quickly and with pleasure pick up the child’s initiative, multiply it and return it in a transformed form. For example, one shouted, the other shouted and jumped — and both laughed. Identical and unusual actions bring kids self-confidence and bright, joyful emotions. In such contacts, young children experience an incomparable sense of their similarity with others. After all, they jump and croak in the same way and at the same time experience a common immediate joy. Through this community, recognizing and multiplying themselves in their peers, children try and assert themselves. If an adult carries culturally normalized patterns of behavior for a child, then a peer creates conditions for individual, non-standardized, free manifestations. Naturally, with age, children’s contacts are more and more subject to generally accepted rules of conduct. However, special looseness, the use of unpredictable and non-standard means, remains a hallmark of children’s communication until the end of preschool age, and perhaps even later.
At a younger preschool age, the child expects complicity from his peers in his amusements and craves self-expression. It is necessary and sufficient for him that a peer joins his pranks and, acting together or alternately with him, supports and enhances the general fun. Each participant in such communication is primarily concerned with attracting attention to himself and getting an emotional response from his partner. Communication between toddlers depends entirely on the specific environment in which the interaction takes place, and on what the other child is doing and what he has in his hands.
It is characteristic that the introduction of an attractive object into the situation of children’s communication can destroy their interaction: they switch their attention from their peers to the object or fight over it. Everyone knows the «showdown» in the sandbox, when two kids cling to one car and drag it screaming in their own direction. And mothers at the same time convince the kids not to quarrel and play together, together. But the trouble is that kids still don’t know how to play toys together. Their communication is not yet connected with objects and with the game. A new interesting toy for a baby is a more attractive item than his peers. Therefore, the object, as it were, covers another child, the baby’s attention is attracted to the toy, and the peer is perceived as a hindrance. It is a completely different matter when there are no such distracting objects, when there is “pure communication” between the kids — here they are united in general fun and enjoy the company of a peer.
Although children perceive their peers in a very peculiar way. Most younger preschoolers are characterized by an indifferent attitude towards another child. Three-year-old children, as a rule, are indifferent to the success of their peers and to their assessment by an adult. The support and recognition of an adult is much more important to them than another child. The kid, as it were, does not notice the actions and states of his peer. He does not remember his name and even appearance. In principle, he doesn’t care who he messes with and rushes about, it is important that he (the partner) be the same, act and experience the same. Thus, the peer does not yet play a significant role in the life of younger preschoolers.
At the same time, its presence increases the overall emotionality and activity of the child. This is expressed primarily in the joy and even delight with which the baby imitates the movements and sounds of his peers, in his desire to be close to them. The ease with which three-year-olds become infected with shared emotional states is indicative of the special commonality that develops between young children. They feel their similarity, their belonging to a common genus. “You and I are of the same blood,” as they say to each other with their antics and jumps. This commonality is also expressed in the fact that they willingly look for and enthusiastically discover similarities in each other: identical tights, identical mittens, identical sounds and words, etc. Such feelings of community, connection with others are very important for the normal development of communication and self-awareness of the child. They form the foundation of the child’s relationship with other people, create a sense of belonging to others, which further relieves from the painful experiences of loneliness. In addition, such communication with others helps the little person to better identify and realize himself. By repeating the same movements and sounds, children reflect each other, become a kind of mirror in which you can see yourself. The child, «looking at a peer,» as it were, singles out specific actions and qualities in himself.
It turns out that, despite its «unruly» and, it would seem, senselessness, such emotional communication is very useful. Of course, if such fun and pranks prevail in the communication of 5-6-year-old children, this is already abnormal. But at 2-4 years old, one cannot deprive a child of the joy of direct emotional interaction with peers.
However, for parents of this kind of children’s pleasures are very tiring, especially in an apartment where there is nowhere to hide and where children’s running around threatens both property and the children themselves. To avoid tensions, it is possible to give children’s communication a calmer and more cultural form, without violating its psychological essence. For such communication all games in which children act in the same way and at the same time are suitable. These are numerous round dance games (“Bunny”, “Carousels”, “Bubble”, “Loaf”, etc.), as well as games of any animals — frogs, birds, bunnies, where kids jump together, croak, chirp, etc. Such amusements are usually enthusiastically accepted by children and, in addition to pure childish joy, carry with them an organizing and developing principle.
At the age of 3-4, communication with peers brings mostly joyful emotions. But later, more complex and not always rosy relationships arise.
Development of communication with peers in preschool age
During preschool age, children’s communication with each other changes significantly. Three qualitatively unique stages (or forms of communication) between preschoolers and their peers can be distinguished in these changes.
The first one is emotional-practical (second — fourth years of life). At a younger preschool age, the child expects complicity from his peers in his amusements and craves self-expression. It is necessary and sufficient for him that a peer joins his pranks and, acting together or alternately with him, supports and enhances the general fun. Each participant in such communication is primarily concerned with drawing attention to himself and getting an emotional response from his partner. Emotional-practical communication is extremely situational, both in terms of its content and means of implementation. It entirely depends on the specific environment in which the interaction takes place, and on the practical actions of the partner. It is characteristic that introducing an attractive object into a situation can disrupt children’s interaction: they switch attention from their peers to the subject or fight over it. At this stage communication of children is not yet connected with objects or actions and is separated from them. See →