Although BFF has entered the lexicon, an article in last week’s New York Times let it be known that some educators and professionals working with children are questioning the overall merits of childhood best friends. In short, despite the benefits of closeness, the downsides include the ways exclusivity can potentially lead to cliques and bullying. It’s also, the article points out, a viewpoint that comes about in an era when educators and parents are increasingly involved in children’s social lives (and, let’s add, increasingly controlling about them).
Free-range friendships, the kind forged by kids roaming a neighborhood? Those might just be things of the past, according to the New York Times, replaced by the scheduled play date.
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Aside: I read this article just a day after reading another in Salon about how curbed playground play is in many schools, fear of hot slides, tag games, pretty much fear of physical play producing children who no longer know how to play, and are—ironically—quite vulnerable to injury. I thought about this playground article at a neighborhood party as I watched my toddler daughter jump from a low stonewall to the ground. She took a big jump up and landed squarely on two feet. It was something that would have made me panic had my firstborn tried it at the same age (these fourth kids, much more free-range than the first, I’m pretty sure that’s just about a universal truth). She jumped from the wall again and again.
Practice breeds comfortableness and confidence. Without getting to try new feats—jumps, climbs, swinging higher—you don’t learn your body’s capabilities and limits. There has to be room to experiment.
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I am—duh—against bullying. I am, however, much more pro-community, as in teaching kids in, say, a school setting how to foster emotional and social growth and build community: I think you can actually teach kids to become more aware of their own feelings and of others’ feelings, that you can teach kids how to care for others in all sorts of ways.
The toddler daughter “diapers” her baby dolls and then hits her friend (yeah, great). The message I try to pass on as we head for the time-out that follows the hitting is not really about apologizing—toddlers might learn to say, “Sorry,” but the meaning is likely elusive—the message is about “hitting hurts your friend and that’s why she’s crying.” How my daughter’s actions affect another person, that’s what I want her to comprehend.
To the extent that I am as anxious and micromanaging as my peers, I want my efforts to go toward awareness of others’ feelings and leading children to become compassionate citizens in their communities.
If, in learning about friendship with framework built in about creating kind communities, closer ties—even “best friends”—come along for my kids, I really don’t want to get in the way. Two closest friends got my eldest through elementary school (and remain in his inner circle) and my seven year-old has been somewhat of a serial monogamist when it comes to “best” friendships (and, I might add, generally not so kindly, as in he’s dropped friends like hot potatoes before often picking them back up). His inner circle is expanding, though and he’s quite well liked by his peers in the social settings of school or neighborhood gatherings. My rising middle school son hasn’t really had a best “best friend” for many years; instead he’s had a small crew and he has been intermittently more and less engaged socially. A steady, really close buddy might feel really great to him.
A photographer friend told me that one of her teachers counseled always to take photographs of people telling secrets because secrets are interesting. Intimacy is compelling and natural and also, learned. It seems to me that experience is necessary to gain one’s facility with real closeness. Like leaning in for the secret, intimacy cannot be forced. I am pretty certain I don’t want to place taboos on it, either.
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Back to that aside: like physical play, there’s a balance between assuring a basic modicum of safety—say, wood chips under the climber or inclusive games on the playground—and micromanaging or sanitizing kids’ lives such that there’s no room for discovery. Easier said than done, but worth it to encourage children’s independence. Because, in the end, we parents and teachers aren’t always going to be there to catch the kids when they fall down, physically or emotionally. So, let the toddler jump from the low wall. Let the friendships be. Applaud the leap and comfort after the fall.
