The Importance Of Close Friendship In Child Development

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Friendship plays a crucial role in children’s development (Estell, Jones, Pearl & Van Acker, 2009; Poulin & Chan, 2010) that includes, cognitive, emotional (Scharf, 2013), psychosocial (Betts & Stiller, 2014; McDougall & Hymel, 2007), well-being (Asbjørnslett, Engelsrud & Helseth, 2012), and health (Einberg, Svedberg, Enskär & Nygren, 2015). It is defined as an exchanged and voluntary relationship among two or more children who display attachment and liking towards one another, constantly showing closeness and engaged in shared activities, positive affect and sign of happiness (Hollingsworth & Buysse, 2009). Also, part of the categorization for friendship even for young children are endearment, companionship and mutual liking (Klima & Repetti, …show more content…

Besides looking at the influence that close friendship has on the cognitive development in childhood, another factor that was focused upon is the emotion component. Past research has shown that having friends help to buffer negative repercussion from peer rejections as it provides a positive emotional function (Estell, et al., 2009). The importance of close friendship in childhood is illustrated by a finding of 18 years of longitudinal study, which reported people who had no close friends during childhood are prone to have psychological predicament where they demonstrate symptoms of internalizing or externalizing (Sakyi, Surkan, Fombonne, Chollet & Melchior, 2015). In close friendship, there are differences between gender. This can be seen in a research that indicated that among close friendship between girls and boys, girls have the tendency to be more affectionate in sharing their personal details as compared to boys who are more prone engaging in physical activities (Beazidou & Botsoglou, 2016). This is supported by the information that girls are more inclined to show affinity while boys are more prone to show power (Rabaglietti, Vacirca, Zucchetti & Ciairano,

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