Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

318 Pages·2001·4.52 MB·English

by  Michael Thompson

Best Friends,
Worst Enemies

Best Friends,
Worst Enemies
UNDERSTANDING THE
SOCIAL LIVES OF CHILDREN
Michael Thompson, PhD.
and
Catherine 0 'Neill Grace
with Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D.
BALLANTINE BOOKS
NEW YORK
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright© 2001 Michael Thompson, Ph.D., Catherine O'Neill Grace,
and Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
The names of many of the children in this book have been changed to protect
their privacy. The real names of some children have been used with their
families' permission.
Ballantine is a registered trademark and the Ballantine colophon is a trademark of
Random House, Inc.
www .ballantinebooks .com
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for this title is available from the
Library of Congress.
ISBN 0-345-43809-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: September 2001
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
For my children, Joanna and Will, and their wonderful friends.
-Michael
For my husband, Don Grace, and for irreplaceable women friends.
You know who you are!
-Catherine
For my wife, Anne Fabiny, our daughter, Emma,
and my first friend, Dave.
-Larry

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xvii
1. An Invitation to a Birthday Party 3
2. Family Matters: Secure Attachment in the First Friendship 13
3. Children and Friendship: A Developmental Tour 31
4. When Kids Have Best Friends 59
5. In the Jungle: The Power of the Group in Children's Lives 77
6. Worst Enemies: Social Cruelty in the Lives of Children 100
7. Still Standing: How Kids Manage Conflict, Betrayal, and
Reconciliation 137
8. The Rules of the Gender Game: Biology and Friendship 159
9. From Cooties to Dating 180
10. Crossing the Lines of Difference 200
11. What Schools Can Do 212
12. What Parents Can Do 234
Notes 267
Bibliography 275
Index 289
vii

Preface
S
ome years ago, when my children were twelve and eight years old,
our family returned from a two-week vacation-a good and fun
trip. We had barely made it through the kitchen door before my son, Will,
headed for the phone to call his friend Mitchell and my daughter, Joanna,
disappeared into my wife's home office to grab the other phone line so
that she could call her friend Miranda. I remember that Theresa and I
looked at each other and one of us said, "Well, the family vacation is
over." Our children were desperate to be in touch with their friends.
This is a book about the importance of children's social lives, the
inevitable tendency of kids to torment and reject their peers, and the re
demptive power of friendship. Every teacher and every parent watches
children's relationships played out in front of them every day. We see
the isolated child standing off to the side; we hear our own children gos
sip viciously in the car; we see how much our children miss their friends.
We are able to call up memories, both joyful and excruciatingly painful,
from our own childhood relationships. But our memories are not always
a good guide to what we should be doing for our own children. Indeed,
our social scars from middle school often lead us to worry when we
shouldn't, hesitate when we should intervene, and fixate on our chil
dren's painful reports when they are, in fact, growing, coping, and adapt
ing in the best possible way.
Very few grown-ups fully understand what is actually going on when
ix