Wednesday February 20, 2013
Helping kids develop quality friendships
Good company: Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to childhood friendships. Helping kids develop quality friendships.
BE careful who your child befriends from small. That six-year-old may be just another child to you today, but, 10 years from now, that same friend may be the most influential person in your child’s life.
Australian child psychologist Dr Louise Porter says friendships are vital to human well-being, at any age.
“Parents need to help their children develop high-quality friendships, although not necessarily a large number of friends, because quality is more important than quantity,” she says.
According to her, young children’s friends are the people they play with most. These children become familiar and predictable. Later, by four years of age, children start to select friends who match their developmental skills, activity levels and temperament. This is the beginning of true reciprocal friendship.
However, at the beginning of middle childhood, the pressures of the group start to dictate children’s choice of friends.
“Now the model is rather like the stock exchange, that is, it is safe to invest in friends who will raise your status within the group, and risky to associate with peers whom the group does not respect.
“This can break the heart of six- and seven-year-olds whose former close friends now abandon them.
“It can even be that the children remain best friends on a playdate or at the weekend – but then that same friend shuns them at school where others are looking,” adds Dr Porter.
The sought-after international speaker shares with ParenThots how parents can help their children develop meaningful friendships.
Book reviews
Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man and Marvel The Invincible Iron Man Vs The Mandarin are good books for young readers who love superheroes. The I Am A Rock and I Am Planet Earth books teach kids about the Earth and rocks.
The Disney School Skills Hands-On Coloring/Folding/Cutting books are great for teaching small children motor skills, while Anna Walker’s I Love series offers light and breezy pictures for early readers. Win a set of blocks
This is the last day to submit entries for the Win A Puzzle promotion. The prize for this month is a 30-piece glow-in-the-dark block set.
Wonder Glow Blocks, distributed by BRAINet, features 11 different shapes and colours that encourage children to use their imagination in constructing play sets and figures. It is for children aged two years and older.
To win this, all you have to do is e-mail parenthots@thestar.com.my on “Using our imagination when playing games” (in 200-700 words).
■ ParenThots is The Star’s parenting portal. For more information, e-mail parenthots@thestar.com.my or surf to www.parenthots.com.
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