How do children's friendships work?

For Pooh the Bear, «a day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey in it.» Most children and young people would agree with him. Can you still remember your first friendship? Is it perhaps still there? Who did you have the greatest adventures with? With whom did you share the little and big secrets?

In this dossier, we would like to show why friendships are so important for children and young people and their development, the conditions under which boys and girls can sometimes find it difficult to make friends, and the tasks that arise for us adults as a result.

Two factors are particularly important for childhood friendships: the frequency with which you see each other and joint activities.

Children form their first concept of friendship at a very early age and often begin to call other children friends as early as toddlerhood. Two factors play a role here that remain significant throughout life: the frequency with which you see each other and shared activities.

With increasing age, other aspects such as shared interests, mutual support and personal exchange become more important. However, playing together remains the defining element for a long time. Nine-year-old Meo and ten-year-old Thyme agree: «For someone to become a friend, you have to play with them.»

Friendship means belonging

In a friendship, children not only gain a playmate, but also a person with whom they have a special relationship. It is exciting and wonderful to experience how the bond with another person becomes stronger, how you become more important to each other and gain access to each other's world.

For 14-year-old Kaja, a good friend is «someone with whom I can be who I am». She says of her close friend Giulia: «I can rely on her and she always understands me - she's someone you can «steal horses» with.»

Nicknames, friendship bracelets, greeting rituals: children make it clear very early on who belongs. And who doesn't.

As parents, we can support our children's friendships by making sure that our children's friends feel welcome in our homes and have a place in our lives. We remember the many little privileges we had with our friends' parents: There's something special about being allowed to stay for dinner or overnight for the first time, even being invited to a family outing or family party.

Friendship means setting boundaries

One aspect of friendships emerges very early on that causes many parents a stomach ache: Children make it clear who doesn't belong. Friendship bracelets, greeting rituals, nicknames that only the closest friends are allowed to use or secret languages strengthen the sense of togetherness and at the same time delimit the friendship to the outside world. Similarities are also particularly emphasised. For example, Lou-Anne, 10, particularly appreciates the fact that her best friends are «just as crazy as she is».

While boys tend to have cliquey friendships with fluid boundaries, girls often place a much higher value on exclusivity and unconditional loyalty. Girls can usually name very clearly who their BFF, best friend forever, is - a designation that makes this claim clear.

Even in kindergarten, children can use surprisingly subtle and sometimes very mean ways to make it clear who is where in the relationship hierarchy. A kindergarten teacher told us about three girls who were sitting together at the table and stringing bead necklaces. Suddenly, one girl said to her friend: «We're sitting opposite each other!» The third girl at the table, who was looking for a connection, tried to join in with a «I'm sitting at the table with you too». With a disdainful look, the first girl replied: «Yes, but we're sitting opposite each other and you're just sitting next to us.»

What to do if your own child is excluded?

You may wonder what you have done wrong if your own child excludes others, or feel it is a blatant injustice that your own child is not allowed to play. In such situations, it is helpful if we as parents realise that it is a natural need for children to increase the attractiveness of their friendship by setting clear boundaries from the outside world. At the same time, it is our responsibility to ensure that this tendency does not degenerate into bullying and that fairness and mutual respect are observed.

Friendship means getting involved with each other

«You always have to decide everything. I'm not playing with you anymore!» As painful as such feedback is: They are important experiences for children. In our survey on children's friendships, almost all primary school-aged children emphasised how important it is to «not be annoying» if they want to make friends. By annoying, the children meant, for example, calling in and talking too much, annoying others, simply playing along without asking and not stopping even though someone says «stop».

Some parents need time to digest the fact that they are no longer the most important carer for teenagers at the moment.

Children need feedback from other children in order to learn to socialise safely. Gradually, they develop the ability to empathise with other children , to empathise, to share, to wait, to join in a game, to take the lead from time to time, only to leave it to another child again.

Friendships with younger children are often very short-lived. The focus is on playing together. Gradually, the relationship itself takes centre stage. It becomes more important for children to discuss differences, make up after an argument and negotiate compromises.

Develop social skills by playing with others

If adults structure leisure time, dictate activities and always intervene immediately when conflicts arise, it becomes almost impossible for children to develop these skills. In order to feel confident and behave competently in social situations later on, they need to have spent thousands of hours with other children.

They gain the most important experiences in free play and in the unobserved moments in the clique. Only there do the children have to develop their own ideas and convince others of them, set rules and make sure they are followed, find their place in the group and resolve conflicts independently.

The more time children spend in institutions such as crèches, all-day schools or extracurricular childcare centres, the more important it becomes for these institutions to recognise the value of free play and unstructured interaction. Fortunately, awareness of this has grown in recent years.

The guidelines of the Bern Department of Education even explicitly state that children in day schools should have «time and space (...) for doing nothing». As parents, we can actively contribute to this development by demanding appropriate programmes and expressing our appreciation and support to institutions that implement them.

Friendship means being able to trust each other with secrets

«I have to tell you something ... but you mustn't tell anyone!» Girls in particular expect to be able to talk about everything with close friends and rely on the other person's discretion. There should be room for topics that they can't or don't want to discuss within the family. For most young people, their peers become their most important carers.

Friends are advisors, critics and mirror our behaviour. Friendships teach us a lot.

For some parents, this means having to accept that they will no longer be consulted on many issues. Parents in particular, who have previously cultivated a very friendly and close relationship with their child, sometimes feel rudely put in their place. It is not uncommon for feelings of jealousy to arise. Sometimes parents need a little time to digest the fact that they may no longer be the most important carer in their child's life at the moment.

Friendship means discovering and developing yourself

In order to get to know ourselves and find our identity, we need other people. Friends play an important role in this. They are often advisors, loving critics and mirrors for our own behaviour. Friendships teach us a lot about ourselves.

Various social psychologists believe that one of the reasons friendships are so valuable is that they allow us to expand our selves. Friendships bring us into contact with new interests and activities, but above all they confront us with different personality traits, opinions and values.

Parents should only intervene if their child is visibly suffering from a friendship or their development is at risk.

Because parents are increasingly aware of how formative friendships are, they have developed into a further area of optimisation in recent years: In the FRANZ study by Prof. Margrit Stamm, 61 per cent of parents stated that they specifically encourage contact with children who they believe would make good friends for their own child through their leisure activities.

Accordingly, many parents ask themselves how they should proceed if they are not satisfied with their child's friendship. This is another area where we as parents would do well to take a step back. We can intervene if it really is a toxic relationship that our child is visibly suffering from or that is harming their development. However, it is often the little things that cause us discomfort as parents.

What makes this friendship so attractive to our child?

One mum was very annoyed that her rather reserved and shy daughter had to make friends with the loudest, wildest, most dominant child in the class. The mum said that «the two don't go together at all» and was annoyed that her daughter was «constantly being bossed around by her».

In such situations, it helps if we ask ourselves: «What makes this friendship so attractive to our child? What could they learn from this relationship?» It is probably fascinating for the daughter to see how self-confident her friend is, how vehemently she expresses her opinion and how dominantly she asserts her claim to leadership.

Not every child attaches the same importance to friendships. Parents must learn to accept this.

This friend can be both a model and a source of friction. On the one hand, a shy child can learn from a brash friend how to stand up for themselves, win others over and make decisions. On the other hand, such relationships can teach them to maintain their own boundaries and defend themselves when others make decisions over their heads.

Lovingly accompanying the child

Such a friendship brings with it tensions, conflicts and perhaps also emotional ups and downs. However, if the parents manage to see it as an enrichment and lovingly accompany the child through it, the child can grow.

You could, for example, repeatedly discuss how you can set yourself apart: «Corinne really has a thick head, so it's not easy to say no - but I know that your friendship can withstand that.» At the same time, you could point out positive aspects of your friend: «Corinne was brave to defend you against the boys.»

Having to talk about such topics over and over again can be exhausting for parents. But where else can an over-conformist child learn to assert themselves if not in a relationship with a dominant child they like? Can the long-term solution be to ban all somewhat brash and dominant people from his environment?

Friendship means being able to experience a happy childhood

Not every child attaches the same importance to friendships. Some need a whole group of children around them in order to feel comfortable and at ease, while others only need a familiar soul. Some children prefer to spend every minute with friends, others are happy to spend a few hours a week with them.

For most children and young people, friendships are inextricably linked to a happy life. They provide our children with so many wonderful moments, shared experiences and marvellous memories that we adults should do everything we can to create a good breeding ground for them.

As we have seen, we don't have to do much - we just have to take a step back at the right time, keep the leisure calendar lean and trust that our children will find what they need for their development.