Healthy Attachment Helps Children Make Friends
Parent Child Relationship Affects Peer Interaction and Social Skills
The ability for children to make friends and learn social skills starts with the first year of life. Study after study report a high correlation between a child’s friend making skills and the healthy attachment that comes from a strong and trusting parent-child relationship.
One study published in Child Development by the University of Illinois links a secure and healthy attachment to the development of positive friendship skills and a higher quality of peer interactions. "In a secure, emotionally open mother-child relationship, children develop a more positive, less biased understanding of others, which then promotes more positive friendships during the early school years," said Nancy McElwain, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development and lead author of the study,” reports in the February 17, 2009 Science Daily article, "How Do Secure Mother-child Attachments Predict Good Friendships?"
How Children Form Healthy Attachments
Babies aren’t born with social skills. The parent-child relationship teaches a baby’s brain about the safety of emotional interactions with others. If babies and toddlers experience a trusting bond in the parent-child relationship, a healthy attachment forms.
Young children develop healthy attachments when parents and caregivers respond quickly and consistently to a baby’s physical and emotional needs. Babies and toddlers need comforting human touch, a nurturing feeding environment, loving eye contact, calming sounds and pleasant facial expressions as a part of forming a trusting parent-child relationship.
How Healthy Attachment Affects Peer Interactions
Children learn skills, especially social skills best through personal relationships. The parent-child relationship is usually the first and closest personal bond that children experience. Parent strategies that build a healthy attachment also serve as a relationship model for young children.
Children are masters at copying behavior. When a parent models social qualities such as empathy, care, self-control and kindness, children actually see what it looks like to respect others and think of others, social skills that transfer well to later years when children make friends. Gentle discipline techniques that consider age appropriate behavior can be especially effective in helping children continue to feel bonded to parents and learn a foundation for friendship skills.
“Having close ties with parents means that preschoolers are better able to control their own behavior by showing patience, deliberation, restraint, and even maturity,” reports theFebruary 7, 2008 Science Daily article, "Close Ties Between Parents and Babies Yield Benefits for Preschoolers". So when children are able to use a higher level of social skills, they are more likely to have positive peer interactions resulting in a better likelihood of making friends and keep friends.
Continued Healthy Attachment Supports Friendship Skills
Attachment isn’t something that happens only in the early years of life. A healthy attachment starts at birth and continues for the duration of the parent-child relationship although attachment ties adapt as children mature and go through appropriate developmental stages, especially during the teen years and adulthood.
Parents can support friendship skills by modeling empathy, patience, sharing techniques, forgiveness, apologetic gestures and other social skills when children are at any age and stage. Children are more likely to emulate parent actions when children have a strong personal bond with parents. When parents model social skills, they build the parent-child relationship as well as model respectful ways to interact with peers.
Teaching friendship skills to children starts with a healthy attachment and a strong parent-child relationship. As parents model social skills to form strong bonds with children, they also indirectly teach children about respectful, caring peer interactions and the qualities needed to help children make friends.
References:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2009, February 17). "How Do Secure Mother-child Attachments Predict Good Friendships?" ScienceDaily.
Society for Research in Child Development (2008, February 7). "Close Ties Between Parents And Babies Yield Benefits For Preschoolers". ScienceDaily.
Gordon and Williams-Browne. Beginnings & Beyond. Fourth Edition. NY: Delmar Publishers, 1995.
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