A Best Friend? You Must Be Kidding is a really interesting article. I haven’t heard anything about educators and other professionals trying to dissuade kids from having best friends until I came upon this article. Growing up from preschool onward I always had a best friend. We were as close as friends could be and I loved the connection that we shared. When we were younger we would hang out at recess, and as we got older we played on the same sports teams and we were always at each other’s house. I really enjoyed knowing that there was one person there that I could count on and would listen when I was having problems. I definitely believe that learning how to have a close relationship like that early in life has helped me develop more of those relationships later in life. So after saying that at first glance I thought I was going to completely disagree with the reasoning presented in this article. The main reasoning educators give for the move away from best friends is they are doing so to try to prevent exclusion and bullying (Stout, 2010). They believe that more bullying is likely to take place if two people have a close bond because it will lead to cliques and there will always be someone that is left out and therefore picked on. They want to encourage children to be friends with everyone but not to be really good friends with anyone. I can see this point of view but I don’t complete agree with it. I don’t think having a best friend necessarily leads to more bullying and exclusion. I believe the benefits of having a close friend greatly outweigh the disadvantages mentioned in this article. I agree with the psychologists reasoning in the article which states this type of encouragement can lead to superficial friendships which will greatly hinder the relationships children and tweens will develop later in life (Stout, 2010). Close relationships have been shown to increase self esteem and confidence and also help develop relationship building skills later in life and this is exactly the type of things we want our children to have. I think schools should encourage close relationships because of all the benefits that they bring. Children can have these types of relationships without excluding or bullying others.
No comments:
Post a Comment