Issue 2.4: Peer interactions and group relations.

In this last topic of the second block we are going to talk about friendship. To describe those concepts first of all we are going to answer three questions:

Which are the main characteristics of the friendship?

Characteristic	Explanation
Based on reciprocity	The friendship is a relation based on done and receive, no one will be friend of somebody that treats him or her in a bad way, and at the same time we have to take care of our friends to make sure they are happy with us.
Voluntary and not obliged	Nobody is forced to become friend of another person but we do it based on a certain characteristics (we will see it in question 2). If a friendship relation is done by imposition then it doesn't work at all.
Based on the joy of being together	Those two people that become friends, did it because they find good things in the time that they spend together, they like each other and they can share things and experiences among them.
The balance cost-benefit uses to be positive	With all we have said before we can conclude that the relation causes good emotions and feelings to both kids that share it.
4-5 three out of four has a thigh relation with another child, and 3 out of 10 has more than one friend.	The capacity to relate between us is one of the basic skills we develop in order to communicate, that's why all the small kids seem to be all friends between them.

Who become friends? On what criteria?

There are three theories of selection criteria:

1. Thesis of the active selection: children select those than perceive as similar to them in the attributes important for each age fringe, for example toys preference, interests, etc. In this thesis children will chose the kid which whom he or she have more things in common, so for example in an early stage of life, the girls that tent to play with the kitchen, may end up being friends, because they have some things that link them together.

2. Thesis of the reciprocal socialization: here, the similarities are accentuated as a consequence of the reiterated interaction between them and they become more susceptibility to the mutual influence, this is the case of two kids that create a very strong attachment among them, if we separate them any time they seem like dying, and if once one of them criticizes the other, it can be seen like a catastrophe, because they are so linked together.

3. Thesis of the complementarily between both: in this thesis the relations are created, first by similarity criteria that promote personal attraction, and then, once friendship is more or less established, we find the process of reciprocal socialization that accentuate the similarities, so although the kids become friends in the same way, the strong or weak that this relation will be depend on the similarities they then find among them.

How is the interaction between friends?

The interactions are positive social interchanges, which means that the kids pay more attention to each other, they have an affective attachment, and they worry about the other, they also tent to cooperate more with their friends, because as they appreciate each other it gets easier to worry more about the group than just for oneself. In a friendship the people share help, comfort and more intense and emotional comprehension, because as they love each other, all this actions become easy suddenly. 

Finally they also has more strategies to solve the conflicts that they can create, although this conflicts will always be very small and silly ones.

Another similar concept is the peer group relation, which characteristics are: the regular interaction, meaning by that the well being between all the kids and the good communication among them. They also share behaviors, attitudes and values and has a pertinence feelings of being part of a group, all this elements create the feeling of friendship in a group, is a certain numbers of people with whom you can be who you are and you know they will still love you.

To sum up this chapter I think there is a sentence from C.S. Lewis that resume all the things that we have said about the friendship: "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself..."". Based on this we can understand how important is for a child the relations he or she creates during their childhood, in a friend at this age, this kids may find comfort and wellness, but even even most important, they will feel like part of something, and this feeling in really important for them not to feel alone and left behind. That's why the relations are a basic fact that we have to care about, a child being alone in an early age may have lots of problems with socialization processes later on, so we need to find the way for this situation not to happen.

I had read this article, and I find interesting to put it here because it basically talks about how friendship is needed to be a bidirectional relation, and how if you give to somebody, when he or she gives to you back, the reward can be unbelievable nice. I felt really identified with a sentence that says Bonnie Le, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Toronto and lead researcher on the study: "Being a helpful person feels good and contributes to better relationships and greater satisfaction and self-worth".

The Friendship Bank: How and Why Even the Most Giving Friend Expects Payback (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304713704579093141120660698)

And finally, the video we were asked to watch in class, which I found interesting and really funny, and remains me of when I was a child too: http://www.tv3.cat/videos/206039.