First Friendships

Can you recall your first friendship?  Was it a neighbor kid, a schoolmate, or someone from swim lessons or a class like Kindermusik?  Was your friend a boy or a girl?  The same age, older or younger?  Do you still keep in touch?

Research shows that children begin to develop their first important peer relationships during the preschool years.  First, their self-concept must develop.  Before relating to others, they must perceive themselves as distinct from others.  Speech acquisition allows them to communicate. Eventually, they develop empathy, which enables them to actually understand another person’s point of view.  I vividly recall my excitement when my 2 ½ year-old son comforted a crying friend during Sunday school–his first demonstration of peer empathy. 

Once the social skills awaken, relationships with others become more interesting to a child.  Soon after,  preschoolers begin spending less and less time in nonsocial activity and parallel play, and about half their time engaging in associative and cooperative play.

1) Nonsocial–unoccupied, onlooker, solitary
2)  Parallel—playing alone but alongside of other children
3) Associative –separate play, but with interaction by exchanging toys and talk
4) Cooperative—playing together in a collaborative manner such as make believe or working a puzzle together.

Mildred Parte, a researcher form the 1930’s, observed that play forms emerge in a specific order in preschoolers, but subsequently children engage in all four of the above forms of play simultaneously.  Up until six year of age, nonsocial and parallel play occupy up to half of the average child’s playtime. What does change with maturity is the “type “ of nonsocial play.  As their brains mature, kids develop more sophisticated patterns of solitary play.  They negotiate complex interaction such as who will be the mom, the dad, T-Rex, or Luke Skywalker.

Somewhere in the social development process, children form a first friendship.  Research shows that preschoolers know that a friend is someone “who likes you” and with whom you spend a lot of time. But such friendships are in an immature form, mostly based on time together such as in a class or if the parent are good friends and the kids see each other a lot. Kids are not loyal and can quickly reject a friend if provoked. But at an early age, they show extra attention to those they identify as friends, setting the relationship apart from others.

Jimmy Rief was my first BFF in preschool. He lived around the corner. He gave me a set of plastic cowboys and Indians for my birthday.  Because I only had sisters, perhaps he was also a novelty.  Our friendship lasted until second grade. Some unmemorable conflict occurred and Jimmy punched me in the stomach and I scratched him back. That is my last memory of my friend Jimmy, other than that his father, who was a doctor, was convicted of drug possession some years later.  

Just for fun, take some time in the next couple days to do two things:  Reminisce about your childhood friends and observe your children at play.  I don’t know what obscure memories you’ll come up with, but you should be able to observe the four kinds of play rather easily.

Note: Laura Beck, author of Development through the Lifespan, notes that parents need not worry about whether a child that likes to spend lots of time playing alone is developmentally normal.  Only certain types of nonsocial activity are of concern; “aimless wandering, hovering near peers, functional play involving repetitive motor actions.”

-posted by Donna Detweiler who would like to apologize to Jimmy Reif for lying about scratching his hand when the teacher asked if she had done it.