Parental Support of Friendship Development in Children

Making friends is an important human need and a crucial social skill. Friendship development implies effort and time and children need to be able to initiate, develop and maintain friendship ties with peers or adults. The aim of the present research is to review the existing literature on friendship development in children and to high lighten parents’ role in supporting it. Making friends is generally considered a learned skill and parents have the most important role, especially in the earlier years in a child’s life, owing to the durable and close parent-child relationship. Empirical literature indicates that parents can teach skills by modeling, or direct involvement, they can become emotionally available, and manage child disclosure calmly and rewardingly for children, or they can use family arrangements strategies to set up the stage for meetings between children. The article also treats the subject of counterproductive parental practices which estrange parents from children and blocks communication and friendship development