Middle Childhood

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."

Excerpted from "Caring for Your School-Age Child: Ages 5-12" Bantam 1999
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