Navigating Friends and Friendship Groups
Podcast Parent Note, Ep. 82
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Navigating Children’s Friendship Groups
In this week’s podcast episode, Paa wants to expand her friend group but wonders how to do that without hurting her best friend.
Here’s the link to the podcast episode, in case you missed it:
Friendship groups can multiply the fun, but they also multiply the complexity of children’s close relationships.
If two preschoolers are playing, and a third child approaches and wants to join them, often the first two will say no. Although it might be hurtful to the third child, the first two are usually not trying to be mean. If they could articulate what’s actually going on in their minds, it might be: “What?!? NO! I’m at the absolute edge of my cognitive ability, coordinating my actions with one other person, and you want me to do more?!?!”
With older kids, friendship groups bring up issues of who’s in and who’s out, who likes whom more, who is more central or peripheral to the group, and how to handle when two group members don’t like each other. Group text chats can be especially fraught because there’s no tone of voice, facial expression, or body language to clarify the intention behind messages, so misunderstandings are rife.
Friendship groups usually consist of three to ten children who choose to be together and see themselves as similar. Children aren’t necessarily friends with every member of their friendship group, but they hang out together.
Although social groups can form as early as preschool, they become increasingly important as children get older. About half of first- and second-graders are part of a friendship group (Witvliet et al. 2010). By fourth grade, almost all children (97 percent) hang around with a group of kids as either a central or a peripheral member (Bagwell et al. 2000). By seventh grade, over three-quarters of children mostly hang out with one or more groups of friends. Less than 15 percent of seventh graders mostly hang out with a single friend, and less than 10 percent mostly hang out with “no one in particular” (Crockett, Losoff, and Peterson 1984).
So, how can we, as parents, support our children in forming healthy friendship groups?