Classroom Interpreters - Interpreters and Children - Fostering Social Interaction
The Importance of Authentic Friendships
Being popular and having friends is not the same thing. It is possible for a popular child not to have any special friends. And children who are not popular often have at least a few friends. Throughout the sections on cognitive development, the importance of friendships at each stage was emphasized.
Friendships play a number of important roles in the lives of children and adolescents. These include:
- Friendships provide a human connectedness that is essential for humans and that contributes to our quality of life. Children report that they enjoy events more when friends are present. They engage in more active interaction with friends than with non-friends.
- Friendships provide the context for acquiring social communication and cooperation. There are many “rules” for social interaction and children learn these through practice. These skills provide a foundation for both personal and work-related interactions in adulthood.
- Friendships provide children with information about who they are and how people differ in their beliefs and values – we learn a lot about people and ourselves through our friendships.
- Friendships provide children and adolescents with emotional and psychological support in the face of stress and life problems. Especially during adolescence, friends provide ‘counseling’ and ‘guidance’ that help students become better problem-solvers and more resilient.
- Friendships are the first steps towards later adult relationships – romantic, collegial, professional, and parental - provide experience in handling interpersonal relationships and intimacy that serve as a foundation for later adult relationships.
- Friendships provide practice at negotiation and conflict resolution with an individual who is a peer.
- Friendships are a rich context for learning. Friends contribute substantially to each other’s intellectual development. Friends are capable of playing a very real role as an instructor and tutor. Friends who work together collaboratively produce better and more complex products than when non-friends work together. They negotiate more and provide more detailed explanations of their positions if working with friends.
Peers play an important role in academic achievement during adolescence in the support or lack of support they provide regarding high achievement. Friends can help motivate each other to work hard, or they can convince peers that schoolwork does not pay off in the future