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During the preschool years, play provides positive social encounters and increasing amounts of cooperative activity, which are the foundations of friendship. Aggressive behavior increases between ages 2 and 4 but then declines. Rules and social roles become increasingly important, and sex differences in social activities become more obvious. The stability of friendships also increases as children approach school age, and girls seem to develop more intense relationships with a few other children than do boys, who scatter their affection across a larger number of youngsters.

During his second year your toddler will develop a very specific image of his social world, friends and acquaintances. He is at its center, and while you may be close at hand, he is most concerned about where things are in relation to himself. He knows that other people exist, and they vaguely interest him, but he has no idea how they think or what they feel. As far as he's concerned, everyone thinks as he does.

His view of the world (technically, some experts call it egocentric or self-centered) often makes it difficult for him to play with other children in a truly social sense. He'll play alongside and compete for toys, but he doesn't easily play cooperative games. He'll enjoy watching and being around other children, especially if they're slightly older. He may imitate them or treat them the way he does dolls - for example, trying to brush their hair - but he's usually surprised and resists when they try to do the same thing to him. He may offer them toys or things to eat, but may get upset if they respond by taking what he's offered them.

At age 3, your child will be much less selfish than he was at 2. Now he'll actually play with other children, interacting instead of just playing side by side. In the process, he'll recognize that not everyone thinks exactly as he does, and that each of his playmates has many unique qualities, some attractive and some not. You'll also find him drifting toward certain children and starting to develop friendships with them. As he creates these friendships, he'll discover that he, too, has special qualities that make him likable - a revelation that will give a vital boost to his self-esteem.

Middle Childhood Friendships

Between the ages of 5 and 12, making friends is one of the most important missions of middle childhood - a social skill that will endure throughout their lives. Developmentally, school-age children are ready to form more complex relationships. They become increasingly able to communicate both their feelings and their ideas, and they can better understand concepts of time- - past, present, and future. At this age they are no longer so bound to the family or so concerned mostly about themselves but begin relying on peers for companionship, spending more time with friends than they did during the preschool years. Day by day they share with one another the pleasures and frustrations of childhood.

In the early elementary school years, friends are almost always of the same sex. During the latter years of middle childhood, however, girls and boys begin to spend a little more time together. Girls may gossip with their girlfriends - and boys with their boyfriends - about whom they like and who is cute; even so, at this age there is no real dating, even though kids may talk of "going together." Sometime during adolescence they will finally begin to pair off in a more serious way.

The natural tendency toward gender-segregated friendships in the middle years has an unfortunate consequence. It limits the opportunities for girls and boys to get to know and appreciate one another before the sexual attraction of puberty places them together. Ideally, girls need boys as friends (and vice versa) if they are to have good relationships as teenagers and good marriages as adults. You should encourage and provide opportunities for your school-age daughter to play with boys. However, you are likely to meet with some resistance. Girls of this age simply prefer to play with girls, and boys with boys.

Late in the middle years, peer influence is very evident. Friendships often evolve into highly exclusive cliques in which children strongly influence one another. At most schools there are a variety of cliques, each with its own hierarchy of members. Youngsters' attraction to particular friends may be based on anything from personality to extracurricular interests, from athletic ability to appearance. In these preadolescent years, youngsters in tightly knit inner circles may feel quite secure with one another, creating their own group identity by looking and talking alike, perhaps creating a secret handshake, and feeling much more "with it" than those on the outside looking in. These youngsters often feel a strong pressure to dress and talk in a particular way, listen to certain music, and wear their hair in a specific style. This peer pressure begins to compete (and sometimes clash) with the influence of parents and their values.

Pre-adolescents also tend to be quite judgmental, labeling others and at the same time becoming increasingly concerned about what their friends think of them. If a peer is even just a little different, they may conclude, "He's terrible; I just hate him."