Peer relations and friendship in childhood

WOS: 000253704900002Background: Peer relations help children to gain knowledge and skills for interpersonal relationships to solve problems and to cope with difficulties by supporting children in a cooperative and sharing environment. Peer relations improve in different stages along with physical, cognitive, moral, social, and emotional developmental areas of children. However, it should be stated that every child has an unique development in peer relations. In order to understand the relationships of children with their peers, features of social behaviors, differences, family problems and social status should be taken into account. Besides educators both parents and other adults who have significant roles in children's lives have important duties to help children in coping with diffuculties and finding alternative solutions to the problems that children have encountered in their daily lives. Purpose: To review developmental stages of peer relations are effective on social development of children, to imply the importance of these kinds of relationships, and to discuss how to guide children by describing the factors that lead to problems to improve these kinds of relationships. Sources of Evidence: It has been emphasized that specifically in early childhood period, the relationships formed with parents plays an important role as a model for children in healthy interpersonal interactions. Additionally, via the interactions with other significant adults and peers, children should have some specific thought and behavior styles which improve their social skills. Based on this issue, a child who cannot solve interpersonal problems efficiently, the possibility of responsiveness in social environment would be expected to decrease. Main argument: It is suggested that social skills training would be helpfull to solve the problems of children. According to the main idea under these kinds of training programs, individuals who could not be able to form positive relationships with others could not understand how to organize their behaviors for an appropriate interaction. Therefore, in these kinds of training programs individuals could be able to realize alternative choices and learn different behavior styles to solve their interpersonal problems. Additionally, it is emphasized that appropriate opportunities should be provided for children to share different social experiences with their peers. Conclusions: Specifically, different types of educational settings create various oppotunities for children to improve their social relationships. Educators also have some other responsibilities to contribute social development of children as well as parents and other significant adults. It is important for adults being a model for children in order to help them to organize their relationships with peers. It is suggested that adults should be protective, kind, clear, consistent and logical in their relationships with their children