Relationship with Peers

Question 1

Why is relationships with peers important?

Answer 1

• Experience and enchance social-cognitive knowledge and skills + emotional understandings and their skills
• Sources of support during difficult times
• Complement parent-child relationship
  Warm relationshipt - Positive friendship

Question 2

Peer Sociability in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Answer 2

• Showing interests in other people
• Gradual increase
  1. Looking and touching
  2. Smiles and babbles
  3. Form of plays more coordinated - sense of intentions and emotions of others
  4. Verbal communications
• Important with a stimulating environment and starting early

Question 3

Peer Sociability in Preschool Years

Answer 3

• Develops over time
• Different types of play forms between 2-5 years, coexists and emerge in a specific order

Question 4

What are the types of play form preschoolers engage in?

Answer 4

Nonsocial activity
- Observing others or play alone
Parallel play
- Close to other children and play with similar toys
- No interaction
Associative play
- Exchanging toys
- Comment each others behavior, some interaction
Cooperative play
- Advanced type of interaction to establish play goals

Older children engage in more cognitive playing type than younger
- Make-believe play, creation, games with rules

Question 5

Does playing alone influence childrens development?

Answer 5

• Some types are concerning
  1. Repetetive behavior, close to others but no interest. Wander around others alot
• High in social fearfulness, anxiety
  2. Repetetive behavior. Playing alone linked with aggression
• Impulsive, less mature
• Both types linked with peer exclusion, issues controlling emotions
• Mostly not a problem!

Question 6

Peer Sociability - Middle Childhood to Adolescence

Answer 6

• Better at interpret emotions and intentions, good for;
  1. Communication and facilitation of interactions with classmates
  2. Altruism
  3. Engage in more rule-oriented games
• Applying emotional + social knowledge to peer communication
• Beneficial to expose children to alot of different contexts

Question 7

Rough-and-tumble play

Answer 7

• Evolutionary important
  Fighting, escape, dominance, hierarchy
• Children across various cultures engage in orugher type of playing
  Wrestling
  Rolling
  Hitting
  Running
  (smiles on their faces)
• More common among buys
• Decreases in adolescence, physical maturity and differences in strenght
• Continues, linked with aggression

Question 8

Direct parental influences

Answer 8

• Parents arrange informal peer activities
• Be role models, enter playgroups
• Provide new opportunities
• Parental guidance, psychological presence, is useful for future peer interactions with absent of parents

Question 9

Indirect Parental Influence

Answer 9

• Parents behavior on a daily basys influence childs social skills
• Parenting styles
• Parents social network

1. Secure attachment
   - Important for responsive, warm and supportive friendships
2. Parent-child play
   - Effective in promoting social skill, important
   - Quality of interaction linked with social competence
   - Engaging parents, emotionally positive and cooperative play