How to Help Your Children Build Healthier Friendships (and Deal with the Tetchy Ones)

There are times that I have the social skills of a tapeworm – who doesn’t – but for me, they’re usually pre-coffee, mid hunger, or during some sort of cardio exercise that sounded like a decent idea until I started to sweat – around about the two minute mark. What’s important though, is that the skills are there when I need them. It’s the same for our kids.

Being able to form positive relationships is critical to every facet of life – home, school, career. That said, there are plenty of adults (many in leadership or management!) whose lack of social grace is far beyond the simple remedy of coffee, food, or the acceptance that it takes more than a water bottle to turn oneself into an athlete.

What helps children build better friendships?

A recent study has found that children who have a secure attachment to their parents are more likely to develop healthy friendships and adapt to a difficult playmate by asserting his or her needs.

Children who are securely attached:

• become visibly upset when their parent leaves the room and happy again upon reunion;
• will look to their parent or caregiver for comfort in an unfamiliar or frightening situation;
• will use their parent as a base from which to explore their environment, returning now and then for a confidence boost.

The study, published in Developmental Psychology, measured the security of child-mother attachment for 114 children at 33 months of age. Six months later, the same children were randomly paired with another child of the same gender and observed. This was done three times over the course of a month.

Researchers found that children who had a secure attachment to their parents were more responsive to their new playmate at the first meeting, even if that playmate was prone to anger. Securely attached kids continued to respond positively to their playmate on the second and third visits when the playmate displayed low anger, but not high anger.

As explained by researcher Professor Nancy McElwain, ‘Securely attached children are more responsive to suggestions or requests made by a new peer partner. A child who has experienced a secure attachment relationship with caregivers is likely to come into a new peer relationship with positive expectations.’

During play a securely attached child:

• has an expectation that their interactions with other kids will be positive;
• will quickly adjust their response to a difficult playmate who is quick to become frustrated or angry;
• will likely use suggestions and requests rather than demands and intrusive behaviour (such as snatching) when playing with a tetchy playmate;
• will eventually adapt to the controlling assertiveness of an anger-prone playmate by becoming more controlling themselves.

There is a vast and convincing body of research that has demonstrated how a secure attachment between a parent and child not only affects friendships, but also increases a child’s sense of security, self-esteem, self-control, and the capacity to learn and remember in school. These studies have involved observing new mothers with their babies then following those babies into childhood and through to young adulthood.

Forming a Secure Attachment – How?

I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to make us do the most important job we’ll ever do on the least sleep we’ll ever have, but that’s new motherhood for you. I love being a mum – love it – but those first six months, all these years on, continue to be a blur.

That’s a good thing. I’d go so far as to say survival-of-the-species good, because the further away I get from the crazy, exhausting, wonderful ride of new motherhood, the more I convince myself that I got it right on more days than I got it wrong. (Perhaps by the time I’m 90, I’ll remember myself as a new mother so poised and polished as to be fiercely scouted for baby shampoo commercials – but too busy being excellent to say ‘What? Me? Sure. I’ll help you with your commercial. But I just have to harvest my organically home-grown vegies. Oh. And can we schedule it around the little one’s sleeps. Three weeks old and already sleeps so well – you know – easily and often. I think the times tables I sing as he’s falling asleep really help. Pfft – it was nothing like that. Nothing at all.)

Chances are, in those times you feel like you’re getting it right (and sheer exhaustion can make it seem like there are less of those times than there actually are), you’re probably doing exactly what you need to do to develop a secure attachment with your baby.

Secure attachment is not about parents subjugating all of their own needs in favour of their baby’s. The research is important and well established, but of course has to be considered in light of personal circumstances.

Take the research and do with it what you can. Anything you are able to incorporate will add to the tightness of your family bundle.

If you are open to the knowledge and in tune with the needs of your child, you will make it work, even if it doesn’t look exactly as the research says it should. Ultimately, as the parent, you know best, but if you are open to what half a century of research has shown us, you can know even more.

century of research has shown us, you can know even more.

Now for the research. What we know is that a positive relationship between a baby and caregiver influences brain growth. There is a saying in the field, ‘The neurons that fire together, wire together.’ What this means is that through a positive relationship, neural connections in the baby’s brain are made that, in a sense, ‘store security’. Parents of securely attached children play more with their children and are more responsive to the child’s needs than parents of insecurely attached children.

Decades of research on attachment have given us a very clear idea of what leads to a secure attachment:

For Babies

1. Have one regular, consistent caregiver for the first six months of the baby’s life.  A baby learns to trust and thrives best, now and in the future, when somebody is there to provide consistent care and affection. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a mother, father,  grandparent or adopted parent, the point is that one primary person in the first six months is more likely to produce a securely attached child than a series of people working together to fill in the gaps. That’s not to say that other people aren’t important – they absolutely are, not the least of which is to look after the primary carer of the baby for whom the first six months can be a completely exhausting, sometimes thankless, time. What’s important is that one person, rather than a stream of several, is there consistently for the baby.
2. Establish a routine for eating, sleeping and play. Having a routine allows the baby to develop the security and comfort that comes with predictability. The baby knows who and what to expect and when to expect it.
3. Be affectionate. Smile, touch, cuddle. Nothing is more important. In a famous experiment in the 1950s baby monkeys chose a cuddly soft mother surrogate over a wire mother figure, even thought the wire one offered food.
4. Respond to your baby’s cues for comfort. Responding to a baby’s distress or cues for comfort and attention with warmth and confidence will help them to develop trust and a feeling of security. When a baby cries, smiles or reaches out with their arms and a parent or caregiver responds warmly and sensitively, the baby learns that they can count on their caregiver to be their for them and a secure attachment is built. But – and this is a very important ‘but’ – smother them and they’ll become less securely attached. Babies need to be given the opportunity to develop confidence in their own ability to soothe themselves. Responding to every noise, whimper, cry and gurgle will undermine their independence. That said, the experts generally agree that a young baby shouldn’t be left to cry for more than a few minutes, but that doesn’t mean that the baby needs to be rushed over to and picked up every time he or she makes a noise. Research has shown that when a baby’s cries have been responded to consistently and sensitively, they will cry less by the end of their first year and will be more independent and co-operative when they are older.
   
5. Follow your baby’s lead. By going along with your baby when they initiate a game or interaction, you’re teaching them that they are able to influence their environment and the people in it. This is a critical part of forming friendships.

For Children

1. Be reliable and responsive. Even people who abuse their children claim to love them. What they don’t do is tune in to their child’s signals and respond to their needs.
2. Spend real time together. Spending time together – without electronics – will help establish reward circuits in the brain for empathy and connecting.
3. Enforce boundaries. It’s part of their growth and development to test the limits. Part of making them secure is letting them know where the boundaries are. It’s like double checking that you’ve locked the door – you’re sure its locked but checking again makes you feel more secure.
   
4. Listen to everything – even the crazy nonsense. Listening to everything lets them know you’ll be there to listen when it’s important too. If you pick and choose when to listen, they’ll pick and choose when and what to tell you – and you don’t want that.
5. Have fun. Be silly. Be open to your kids and the funny things they do. They can be pretty hilarious at times. Laugh with them at the world and at yourself and you’ll be giving them something awesome.

For Adolescents

1. Respond to their needs. Sometimes this will mean staying away and giving them space, sometimes this will mean bringing them a hot chocolate while they sweat over books well into the night, sometimes this will mean just giving them a hug and saying nothing at all.
2. Listen. Listen. Listen. Be careful offering them too much advice. You’ll have them at the listening. For most teens, you’ll lose them just as quickly if you preach.
3. Communicate love, appreciation and support. This means sometimes putting a lid on the anxiety you might be feeling around their performance or their risky behaviour. They need to know that you trust them and respect them. And that you’ll be there to dust them off – not an ‘I told you so’ in sight – when things don’t look exactly as it did in their adolescent , adventurous mind.
4. Praise them verbally. They might act like it doesn’t matter, but it does.
5. Have fun with their sense of humour. Your adolescent will be developing a very grown up sense of humour. Go with it. Laugh at it. Cherish it. It will mean the world to them.

Just because one of your kiddos might be difficult, that does not mean they are insecurely attached. A small child might be fussy or demanding but if parents respond sensitively, a strong parent-child bond can be established. There’s no reason that child won’t go on to have strong, close relationships with their peers.

Genes are genes, not destiny. Ditto with early life. It’s a clue, not a prescription. The brain is always open to changing – the word is plasticity. What this means is that at any point in the life span, people can have experiences that initiate neural growth towards more positive behaviours.

Children develop social skills over time. If yours is the one who believes, with all of her two year old heart, that sharing is for gumbies, and tries with admirable effort and voice to convince others of her leadership potential, there’s no need for concern.

Stay tuned in and keep responding sensitively and sooner or later, they’ll be thankful.