From the author: published in the magazine “Kids in the city” December 2009. Friendship is when two friends are connected by bonds of understanding. And such friends can no longer be separated. Nastya, 9 years old Recently I was walking along one of the small streets of a provincial town and observed the following picture: several children of different ages (they were about 6 to 10 years old) were actively playing something. The children were alone, they shouted merrily, laughed, negotiated about the rules and were so carried away by the process that they did not notice anyone around. I thought that I had not seen something like this for a long time. It's rare to see something like this in a big city. The courtyards are mostly empty, children walk with their parents, alone, they are given a lot of lessons, they attend different clubs, play on the computer, but it seems they have no time left for simple communication. And when they do meet, they don’t know what to do together, where to start interacting. And then parents, gathering their children for birthdays, hire animators to amuse them, entertain them, organize them, so that there is no free minute and the company does not get bored. Children leave the holiday full of emotions, but without communicating with each other. What's going on? Maybe modern children have forgotten how to be friends? What is childhood friendship anyway? How is she born? What determines whether a child will be able to establish friendly relationships with peers or will while away the time alone. Should parents influence the choice of friends? Where does friendship begin? - Do you go to kindergarten? - Yes - Do you have friends there? - Yes - What are their names? Thinks for a long time, eventually speaks - I don’t remember Masha is 4 years old From the point of view of psychoanalytic theory, which is based on many years of experience By observing the behavior of children from birth, the child can create relationships with others when he leaves the symbiotic relationship with his mother. The point is that after birth, despite the fact that physical separation has occurred, psychologically the baby and mother remain connected. It’s as if they have one life for two, they do everything together, the mother feels the child’s wishes as her own, and the child feels the mother as part of himself. At this time they don’t need anyone, they feel good together. Over time, the child gradually separates psychologically from his mother, he becomes more and more independent and open to relationships with other people. If everything was normal at this stage, then by about three years the child is ready to establish stable relationships with peers. If some problems arose in the early relationship with the mother, then it will be difficult for the child to establish friendly relations in the future. You are the only one who can be friends with me...I’ll give you an example from practice. The mother of a ten-year-old girl approached me; she said that her daughter felt unhappy, was sad all the time and overreacted to everything that happened to her in life. When I talked to the girl herself, she said that she was worried because she couldn’t find friends. And indeed, every time Maya (not her real name) came to me, she talked about her difficult relationships with other children. The problem was that none of her friends could, as she explained, remain faithful to her. Maya wanted to find a friend who would only communicate with her, play the games she wants, and not interact with anyone else. But there were few people willing to have such a relationship. There were friends, but they did not want to completely devote themselves to Maya. As a result, the girl’s life was always filled with disappointments and losses, as well as anger at those who betrayed her. Over time, it turned out that when Maya was born, her mother had severe postpartum depression and could not pay proper attention to the child. In addition, their family had to move a lot, and their parents had to take care of creating acceptable living conditions. And soon they had a second child, and the mother paid most of her attentionthe youngest girl. Thus, Maya was not able to fully enjoy the merger with her mother in early childhood, and she always wanted to get these sensations with her friends, and the girl also felt extremely jealous of her younger sister, who was close to her mother. She was also jealous of all her friends as soon as someone else appeared next to them. How will this behavior affect the girl’s future and is it possible to help the child make up for lost time in order to normalize relations with peers? The tendency to create such relationships can progress into adulthood life. And then it will be difficult for Maya to create relationships not only with her friends, but also with men. People of this type build interactions with loved ones, using them to their advantage, which, of course, the partner does not like. Psychoanalytic work allows us to break this vicious circle. In therapy, a child can gain the missing experience and take a step to the next step; another thing is that this takes time. Friends are chosen Friends should be made at any age, because friends are always nearby and sometimes they help, you can walk and play with them - it’s nice. Sasha, 9 years old In order to create constructive friendships, where everyone fully expresses themselves, a child must have a close friend psychological characteristics that he acquires throughout his life. This includes a willingness to trust people, the belief that they can give something good; and the willingness to share something valuable to oneself, the willingness to receive and accept self-care, for example; and the ability to show and accept aggression: in relationships, and even friendly ones, one has to inevitably face it; self-confidence and much more. These are skills that cannot be learned, say, in etiquette classes. All this is acquired through experience of interaction - first in the family, and then in other relationships. Therefore, who he chooses as friends largely depends on the child’s psychological portrait. Tell me who your friend is and I will tell you who you are. This saying is partly true when it comes to childhood friendships. If adults often make friends with people similar to themselves, who have similar interests, then the opposite is often true for children. Yes, children, just like adults, choose friends similar to themselves, similar in interests and hobbies. This choice is clear to everyone and rarely bothers parents. It’s another matter when a child chooses a friend based on the principle of complementarity. He looks for traits and skills in others that he himself lacks; often the most attractive for creating close relationships are comrades who have the opposite set of qualities. For example, Liza is from a prosperous family, sincere, caring, exemplary in all respects, she is drawn to Masha, whose life is far from so prosperous, she has to be cunning all the time to get what she wants, she is active, assertive, and more practical. Or another example, Nastya, who finds it difficult to look after herself and be collected, chooses a very neat, consistent girl as her friend. And there are many such options. As a rule, the parents of at least one of the parties do not approve of the choice. But attempts to interfere in children's friendships usually do not lead to anything good. Even if the parents are right in their fears, the child will never believe it, because the relationship is valuable to him at the moment. They perform a very important function in his life, complement it, make it more holistic. For example, it wouldn’t hurt for Lisa, who is positive in everything, to learn to show aggression and be more practical like Masha. Whereas Masha just lacks the “airiness” and correctness that Lisa has. But Nastya needs a source of stability nearby, and her friend fulfills this role for her. In turn, the friend needs the feeling of freedom that she experiences next to Nastya. And in this case, if the parents insist on ending the relationship between friends, mutual trust and understanding will be violated in the family, the son or daughter will begin to protest in all ways. Or if adultsThey will put a lot of pressure on them, the child may obey them, but will be offended, unhappy, will lose some of the important experience in his life, and only his relatives will be to blame for this in the future. If the child adopts negative habits from a friend that can seriously harm him in the future. Parents, of course, need to fight this; they should explain to their son or daughter why such behavior seems unacceptable, why it bothers them. At the same time, it is not the person who needs to be evaluated, but the actions. It is important to say not: “Petya is bad, don’t be friends with him,” but “You and Petya are doing bad things.” Children, in fact, can understand a lot if this is explained to them; the words of their parents will be especially convincing if they talk about their feelings. In addition, it is important to understand the child’s motives, why he does it, what it gives him. Show the child another, more acceptable way to achieve what he wants. When creating friendships, it is often important that the partners match their level of development. What is meant here is not so much intellectual development, although this is also important, but for relationships, emotional development has more weight.. Seryozha, who is twelve, chose Nikita, who is eight, as his friend. They had a lot of common interests: toys, books about Harry Potter, they often fantasized together and made collections. For Nikita, these classes are just age-appropriate for the development of an eight-year-old child, all this matters. And Seryozha, in his development, lags a little behind his peers; they are now interested in completely different activities. Of course, he has serious reasons for this. The boy suffered a serious physical illness at an early age and spent a lot of time in hospitals, which created limitations for psychological growth. Therefore, Seryozha is calmer with the younger ones, they respect him, but he has to compete with his peers, this is very difficult for him, it causes a lot of negative emotions. Over time, Seryozha will catch up with his peers in development, communication with the younger ones now helps to make up for lost time. In these relationships, he maintains his self-esteem quite high and feels his strength. If he is forced to communicate only with peers, then he will be in a constant stressful situation and will not be able to grow. It is desirable that the transition to “friends” occur naturally in due time. Or another example, when a child prefers interaction with peers, communication with adults. For example, Katya easily finds a common language with her mother’s friends, but she has no friends at school. For her, adult women are parental figures, and she is not yet capable of equal relationships with children. At the same time, in her heart, of course, she wants to communicate with her peers, this is the normal desire of every child. But her psychological characteristics do not allow her to create close relationships with children, since she needs to share, give in, compete, prove she is right, and much more, which causes Katya great anxiety. She is comfortable with adults who are inferior to her in many ways and forgive a lot as a child. What if the child is simply not interested in peers and wants to communicate only with adults? Does this have any effect? ​​Therefore, she can declare that children are not interesting to her, this is a kind of defense. With normal, full emotional development, a child always strives to communicate with peers. Sometimes children like to play with babies from the position of an adult - caring for them, providing them with help and support. Those who have successfully overcome the early stages of development are able to do this; they can take care of others in the same way that adults once took care of them. And this gives them additional positive emotions and increases their sense of self-worth. Ideally, a child should be able to create relationships both with peers and with children of other ages, as well as with adults. The choice of a mate also often depends on the formation of gender identity. You can trace a certain line along which relationships between boys and girls are mainly built. When children are small, gender is not a factor when choosing a friend.obstacle, in the sandbox boys and girls play together. They even have a certain interest in beings of a different gender. At school age, children are clearly divided by gender, girls have their own games and secrets, boys have theirs. Everything falls into place in adolescence, interest returns. But there are other options. For example, a girl plays with cars from early childhood, is interested in technology, grows up active, and goes to football with her dad. She has short hair, prefers to wear trousers and communicates exclusively with boys; she is not interested in girly dolls and dresses. Subsequently, it turns out that her parents dreamed of a son, relationships in the family were built in a certain way, which is why her development took this path. Or, on the contrary, an anxious, insecure boy prefers to communicate with girls, plays daughter-mother with them, he feels calmer with them. The peculiarities of his family are his mother, who is always worried about his health, and his overly tough father, whom he is afraid of. It is always difficult to predict the future; there are so many circumstances in life that influence the course of human development. If these lines persist, people will choose appropriate professions and marriage partners. For example, a girl will take on male functions throughout her life, will be more rational, dominant, and perhaps she will continue to choose men as her friends. But there may be problems with a married partner; she may constantly compete with her husband; not every man can afford this. But still, it depends on the individual person and on many circumstances of his life. Beneficial friendship Do children make prudently useful friends, as adults sometimes do? In childhood, as in adult life, there are often relationships where one of the partners uses the other . For example, parents buy one child a lot of bright toys and sweets, and the other is next to him because he has the opportunity to use all this “wealth.” At the same time, it is not yet known who is using whom; for both children, this relationship can be a trap. On the one hand, the one who “makes friends” uses his partner for material benefits. On the other hand, the second “buys” the attention of the first. He does not know how to win the favor of children differently; he was not “taught” this in the family. (Parents who overwhelm their children with toys often try to replace the lack of emotional contact with this.) And as long as this is beneficial to both parties, the union will exist. Should adults intervene if they see their child being “used”? In my opinion, it is better for parents to interfere as little as possible in their children’s relationships. The child will probably understand what's what over time. When he learns what a real relationship is, he will stop participating in the manipulations of others and his own. If parents want to do something for their child, it is better to pay attention to their own contact with him. True parental love and support is what they can guarantee. But different things happen in the social world, and it is impossible to protect a child from everything. To summarize, we can say that children do not need to be taught to be friends. In order for a child to be able to create full-fledged close relationships, parents need to try to treat him attentively from the first days of his life. The baby absorbs the experience of building relationships with mother’s milk, books that are read to him, cartoons that he watches, in kindergarten, in the sandbox, communicating with brothers and sisters, and takes note of the interaction of parents. Create as many situations as possible for your child to communicate with other people, let him gain this experience from the earliest years of his life, then gradually he will learn to build good friendships. Do not try to push your child to communicate with suitable friends; maybe the one with whom he is currently friends plays an irreplaceable role for him. Let your son or daughter gain their own experience and make their own mistakes. If a child has serious communication problems, you can always