I’m sure many of us can all recall a point in our childhood where we found ourselves disagreeing with our play friend on what to play and who was going to be first. Here is one example in which I’m sure many individuals can relate to – playing “house” and deciding on who was going to be the “Mom” first (seriously, who really wanted to be the “baby” or the “daughter”), or what about playing superheroes and deciding who was going to be Batman first (again, who really wanted to be Robin). Nevertheless, despite these problematic encounters with our play partner, we always managed to communicate a fair way (many times this fair way consisted of tossing a coin, or playing “paper-scissors-rock”); regardless how it was determined fair everyone had the opportunity to play what they wanted, and be who they wanted to be. This successful problem-solving occurred because both play partners verbally expressed their ideas in a regulated state and were able to process their options. But what about those play experiences where we were forced to play a game that we didn’t want to play because our play partner started to cry, say mean comments, or physically hurt us. No matter how fair the decisions were made they were still viewed as being “unfair”. We immediately found ourselves shutting down, and playing with whatever our new friend wanted to play in order to prevent a meltdown from occurring at any second. This then became more of an inconvenience instead of something that should be seen as fun.
So, why are peer relationships so important to a child’s developmental process? Positive peer relationships are a critical component to a child’s developmental process because they come to learn how to socially communicate in appropriate ways, and they also learn how to initiate and maintain social relationships. As children are exposed to a wider range of interactions they learn to build stable and foundational friendships, in which they come to feel safe resolving social conflicts by being able to communicate, comprise and negotiate with their peers. As children develop stronger relationships over time they are often observed demonstrating greater flexibility within play themes, display increasing sensory awareness, beginning to initiate the ability to self-regulate, and establish an improvement in their social-language skills around peers. They learn to become independent thinkers, learners, and explorers of their environment.
