Key Moments Friends Play Important Role In Shaping Lives Peers Will Be There To Influence In Good Ways And Bad How Kids Wind Up.
PART VI
If parents are the architects of a child’s life, peers are the construction workers.
Friends are second only to family in their ability to shape children into adults, researchers say.
They influence an adolescent’s chances of earning good grades or detention slips, of building a stable career or a criminal record. They can lift a child’s self-confidence or send it tumbling. They can prompt kids to withdraw or roll out a welcome mat for the world.
Ask kids what they like best about school, and most likely they’ll mention friends. You’d never know the United States was built on rugged individualism by looking in a school cafeteria.
Kids cluster in tribes based on interests, abilities, backgrounds or beliefs. Outsiders may find boundaries invisible or glaringly obvious, marked by blue hair, band instruments or letter jackets — all designed to give kids a sense of belonging and help them find their place in the world.
Not all kids align themselves with a crowd, but most prefer that to venturing out alone, says Stacie Trickler, who graduated from North Central High School in Spokane last month.
“It’s easier, and it’s a safety net. People are afraid of being rejected. They want to be in, go to the parties, hang out with the cool people.”
As early as first grade, having friends affects how a child feels about school. Although groups aren’t as defined in the early years, being rejected by peers can still lead to lower academic scores. By fifth grade, studies show, friendship is powerful enough to lift depression.
Fortunately, elementary school offers ample opportunities for parents to help kids make good choices in friends.
“Parents have more of an impact than they realize in channeling their kids to a particular peer group,” says Bradford Brown, a peer group researcher and educational psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At that age, it’s easier to forbid a child from hanging out with certain peers.
By middle school, groups become more distinct, partly because kids cling together when dropped into a new, bigger school setting. But kids also are embarking on that age-old search for an identity separate from their parents. For the next several years, they’ll accept and reject values, potential career paths and peers on the quest to crystallize their identity. Crowds — whether based on brains, activities, looks, skills, ethnicity or other traits — lend a ready-made, one-size-fits-all identity until kids are mature and confident enough to tailor their own.
Adolescents gaze into peer groups as they would mirrors and may or may not see themselves reflected back. If they don’t catch a glimmer of their beliefs and interests, they likely will move on. Many kids align themselves with different friends and crowds every couple of years as interests and activities change.
But whom they hang out with often isn’t their choice.
“Ultimately, the groups are picking them, whether they let them sit (with the group) or not,” says Donna Eder, an Indiana University researcher who studies middle-school peer groups. At that age, kids often have a tough time finding their place because there are fewer extracurricular activities to guide them.
Alison Olzendam calls middle school “the last best chance for kids.” If parents want to redirect their kids or nurture interests to attract new friends, this could be their last good opportunity, says the Mead Middle School principal.
Many of the lines are drawn by high school, and kids are accepted or rejected pretty quickly by one crowd or another.
Courtney Gorman remembers her first year at Post Falls High School. “You don’t go to a group and say, `Hey, what’s up, guys?’ Usually people aren’t that open. If you’re accepted, you’re accepted. It’s more like people choosing you.”
Gorman, who plays basketball and softball, says she got snubbed by “the snobby jocks” but was accepted by “the average girl jock group.” Now a junior, she’s happily linked with First Priority, a group of students who carry Bibles, listen to Christian rock music and meet for moral support.
Finding her place was confusing, and rejection by popular kids hurt, Gorman admits. “I wanted to be seen with them. If other people saw me, they’d think I was cool. And then they’d probably talk to me, you know.”
Skills closed one door but opened another for Chad McCarty, who’ll be a junior next fall at Rogers High School in Spokane. After losing a series of wrestling matches, he lost his place with the jocks — and, for a while, his self-esteem. But a knack for acting brought back the limelight with lead roles in drama performances.
“It’s the first group I really feel accepted in in my life,” says McCarty. “I feel like I belong.”
Skills and interests are among the biggest sorters of adolescents in high school. Research shows that, fair or not, the most popular kids usually are involved in the most visible and valued school activities, such as football, cheerleading and student government. Few things can elevate a teen’s status like a pep assembly that cuts classes short to honor his team.
But Bill Woods, a counselor at Post Falls High School, says any wholesome activity can keep kids out of trouble and provide the belonging they crave. “They can be involved in church, community service, music, drama, whatever happens to ring their bell. That’s No. 1.”
It is harder for parents to intervene successfully in high-school friendships, but experts agree that parental intervention can be critical at any age.
Friendships featuring negative qualities, such as intense rivalry or struggles for equality, can set patterns that are hard to break, says Thomas Berndt, who heads the department of psychological sciences at Purdue University. Kids can get into a habit of constant bickering or trying to outdo one another, for instance.
“That spills over to their relationships with other peers and then the child’s a headache in the classroom,” Berndt says. Parents “should not accept the old saying, `Let them work it out — they’ll learn from it.’ They should coach their children in social skills that’ll make that friendship more harmonious.”
In most cases, parents needn’t worry about introverted kids, Berndt says. “The ones you worry about don’t have a lot of friends because they’ve gone shopping, and nobody bought. They’re the rejected kids who can’t even form friendships with other rejected kids.” Those are the youths who carry problems over to adulthood.
Parents should watch for characteristics that court rejection. Bossiness is a big one for girls, as are poor social skills combined with a tendency to withdraw, says John Coie, a Duke University professor who studies peer relations and delinquency. For boys, being overly aggressive can bring rejection.
Kids in lower socio-economic classes may be more at risk if they grow up in neighborhoods where aggression is the norm. Those kids also may lack social skills to keep conventional friendships.
The ensuing rejection can compound problems, making adolescents even more aggressive. Rejected kids tend to fall in with other troubled peers, creating a launch pad for fighting, breaking school rules and finally breaking laws. Research shows that long-term association with delinquent kids is one of the strongest predictors for delinquency.
Ultimately, rejected kids may interpret reactions from mainstream kids as hostile, an attitude that can linger long after diplomas have been handed out. “When things that are negative happen to you, you tend to think people are trying to embarrass you or harm you or make your life miserable,” says Coie.
Parents should be most concerned about their children’s closest friends, who have the most impact. Research has shown that a best friend’s alcohol use is a significant predictor of whether adolescents will drink.
Sometimes alcohol or drugs are the binding force in peer groups. “The only reason we’re together is partying,” a recent North Central High School graduate says of his group. “Smoking weed was the common interest of everyone. It didn’t matter if you didn’t like this person if they like to smoke weed. It really does bring people together.”
Fortunately, peers often provide a positive influence. They can pressure an adolescent into making good grades as well as bad grades. The strongest peer pressure reported by adolescents is to get involved in social activities — and not necessarily negative ones, says Brown, the Wisconsin researcher. The second-strongest pressure is to finish high school.
Ironically, most high school seniors find the crowds and cliques that seemed so important in previous years don’t matter as much. Psychologists call it “the 12th-grade phenomenon,” characterized by a feeling that they’re a group facing the world together.
Sometimes it starts even earlier. Teens who’ve refined their identities no longer feel bound to cliques. Many break off into couples. Close individual friendships may strengthen or evaporate as students prepare to go separate ways.
For a while, classes have the inclusive attitude that kids started school with a decade earlier.
If they’ve learned well, kids graduate to adulthood with a healthy sense of who they are and where they belong.
This sidebar appeared with the story: Helping your child
Parents can play a big role in helping their children form healthy friendships. Here are some ideas:
* Remember that your best chance to steer your child to healthy friendships is before the teenage years, when monitoring an adolescent’s relationships is more difficult.
* If you have concerns about your child’s friends, explain why in detail. Point out the relationship’s strengths and weaknesses. Helping children think through various situations prepares them to make better choices on their own.
* Give your child opportunities to participate in activities that enhance his or her chances of making good friends. That can have lasting effects. Kids involved in extracurricular activities such as 4-H are more likely to be active in the community as adults.
* Encourage schools to include activities that recognize the interests and skills of many students, not just participants in “glory sports” such as football and cheerleading.
* Subtly arrange your child’s social calendar to include activities with friends you approve of. Invite friends to dinner so you can get to know them. When the coed camping trip for 14-year-olds rolls around, schedule a fun family vacation instead.
* Work your parent networks to learn about your child’s new friends. Find out if they’re trustworthy or have a tendency to find trouble.
* Look for friends who will apply positive peer pressure. If your child is in a grade-conscious group, chances are school grades will rise. If your child’s friends do community service in their spare time, your child probably will, too.
* Teach your child to be kind to people who are different from him or her. Talk to your child about what it feels like to be left out and rejected. Talk about loyalty, trustworthiness and other qualities important in friendship.
* If your child has trouble making friends, coach him or her to be less socially awkward or abrasive. Pay special attention to characteristics such as bossiness and overaggression — strong predictors for rejection.
* If your child is picked on, help role-play proper responses. If harassment continues, talk to a teacher or school administrator.
* Remember that “no” isn’t a four-letter word. If you think your child is hanging out with a dangerous crowd, steer him or her toward other friends. Make some groups or friends off-limits and clearly explain why.
* If your child is entrenched in a crowd you believe threatens his or her safety or future, consider switching schools. The odds of breaking negative patterns are good if your child buys in. Otherwise, your child likely will find new friends of the same kind.
* Don’t be too quick to blame friends. Kids usually choose friends with similar values and family backgrounds. Consider the possibility that your child may have been first to light up a cigarette behind the bleachers.