Does your child have a best friend?
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Human beings need relationships; without them we are mentally unhealthy.
Some of you might remember reading about the experiments of Harlow in the 1970s – Harlow and colleagues created wire surrogate “mothers” for rhesus monkeys where these wire dummies were used to “hold” the milk bottles and thus feed the babies but of course, were not responsive in any way at all.
The rhesus monkeys reared in these nurseries were socially inept all their lives and demonstrated a range of psychological disorders.
In a similar manner, the children from the Romanian orphanages of Nicolae Ceauşescu who were deprived of human cuddles and relationships grew up to demonstrate a range of social, emotional and even intellectual disorders.
Now how does this link to your child having a best friend? I come back to the importance of relationships for us all.
When we interact with our friends we feel safe and accepted for who we are.
The neurobiological research suggests that our stress levels are reduced when we are with people in a mutually loving relationship and that impacts on our physiology in ways that help us learn and develop positively.
Children’s first relationships are with their family but as they grow and move out into other settings (early childhood centre, school) they are exposed to other children and learn how to develop peer friendships.
Learning the skills needed to have friends is thus a really important part of young children’s development.
They learn that the kinds of feelings they have inside themselves are felt by others, the first step in developing empathy.
They learn how to respond to the feelings of other children, and ideally, the kinds of things they can do to help others feel better when they are sad or angry.
They learn how to interact with others when they don’t agree.
They learn how to manage feelings when they get into a fight (hopefully not physical) with others.
They learn that they are not the centre of the universe, and that they have to think about how their behaviour impacts on others so that when they make choices they are considerate of others.
All of these very important skills develop through children’s relationships with their friends and the peers around them.
Some children have a wide circle of friends and feel comfortable interacting with one or two or with the whole group together.
Other children feel more secure in the context of relationships with only one or two other children. Where children do not have any clearly identified friendships it is up to us to identify what is going on.
If this is discrimination because the child is different in some way then we have a responsibility to work with all the children to help them learn more socially just behaviours.
If this is because the child has not yet developed the social skills necessary to maintain a friendship then we have a responsibility to create appropriate learning opportunities.
I understand this is the case in the prep school attended by Prince George. I don’t agree with this strategy.
Developing an intimate relationship with another is a very important skill and it is our responsibility to ensure that all those children who would like to have a best friend are given every opportunity to develop the required skills – remembering that not all children will want to limit their friendships to a small circle or one other child.
We don’t address the isolation of one child by refusing to let all other children have friendships; we take responsibility to ensure that all children have the skills and the opportunities to feel safe, loved and part of a warm, nurturing group of people.
