Helping Your Child Navigate Through Their Social Arena

What can parents do?

1. Don't worry so much

2. Recognize the difference between

friendship and popularity

3. Support children's friendships

4. Make your child's friends welcome in your home

5. Be a good friendship model

6. Provide a wide range of friendship and

group opportunities

7. Make friends with the parents of your

child's friends (and enemies)

8. Empathize with your child's social

pains but keep them in perspective

9. Know your child's standing - don't

act like a Middle School student

10. Take the long view

Helping Your Child Navigate Through Their Social Arena

by Chris Robertson

Social

Developmental Milestones

4 -6 Year Old

• Chatty
• Loves working with friends but still enjoys parallel play
• Short attention span
• Likes rules and routines
• Hard time seeing things from other's viewpoint
• Teasing, bossing, tattling are ways sixes try out relationships with authority
• Can be highly competitive

• Frequent friendship shifts
• Likes to work in groups
• Prefers same gender activities
• Friendship groups begin to get larger
• Fairness issues increase
• Likes to negotiate
• Cliques may begin

10 Year Old

7 - 9 Year Old

• Quick to anger and quick to forgive
• Works well in groups
• Likes clubs, activities, and sports
• Developing a mature sense of right vs. wrong
• Developing conflict resolution skills
• Loves being a mentor to younger children and enjoys community service
• Quick tempers can lead to outbursts

11 Year Old

• Moody; sensitive; tests limits
• Impulsive, rude, unaware
• Height of cliques; seeks to belong

12 Year Old

• Adult personality begins to emerge
• Empathetic
• Peers more important than teachers

13 Year Old

Teasing

and

Name-Calling

• Likes to be alone at home
• Mean = scared
• Feelings easily hurt and can easily hurt others
• Touchy
• Closed friendships are more important for girls
• Boys hang in groups
• Electronic diversions are a major factor
• Music becomes a preoccupation
• Peer pressure increases regarding dress,
• language, being "cool"
• Humor highlighted by growth in sarcasm
• Practical jokes are high (for boys)

14 Year Old

• Can give into peer pressure easier
• Loud
• "Know it all" stage

• Testing verbal muscles
• Identifies one's level in the group
• Self-protection
• Enforce the rules of the group
• Most children tease and are teased and develop resiliency

"Children are in conflict much of the time - particularly in their social lives."

Self-regulation

and

Self- control

Trios

Neediness

and

Greediness

• Pair serves as a magnet
• Pair seeks to share their fun
• Pair may want an audience
• Late arrival will eventually want full status
• Pair may find a new alliance

Swimming

Fraser Woods Montessori

Parent Association Coffee

September 28, 2016

What every child wants?

The Laws of the Group

Power

Law #2:

You must belong

to a group

• Succeed in some arena
• Desire to achieve is a wellspring for motivation
• What does the group value?

• Boys - challenge a powerful male
• Girls-Hurt others to feel dominance
• Seek situations where they feel power

Recognition

Law #1:

Be like your peers

Close Connection

Law #4:

Find a place in the social hierarchy

• Most friendships are the continuation of the mother-child sociability
• "Someone you can really trust"
• "Someone who likes you for you"
• "Someone who doesn't care if your cool"
• "Someone who is easy to be with"

Law #3:

Be in - or be out

Law #5:

You must play a role