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There are a number of emotional, cognitive and behavioural skills developed in the first two years of life that help promote positive peer relations. These include managing joint attention, regulating emotions, inhibiting impulses, imitating another child’s actions, understanding cause-and-effect relationships, and developing language skills. Some external factors, such as children’s relationships with family members and their cultural or socioeconomic background, and individual factors, such as physical, intellectual, developmental or behavioural disabilities, may also influence young children’s peer experiences.
Origins of peer relationship difficulties
Children with disabilities, who are often impaired in several of the above-mentioned basic skills, tend to perform less well socially than their typically developing peers. In particular, children with very limited or no communication skills, limited social skills and/or limited motor skills tend to have inadequate (e.g. aggressive) behaviours, to interact less with peers, and as a result to be less well accepted by their peers.
Even in children who display no disabilities, one of the chief factors associated with peer relationship difficulties is behaviour. Children who are aggressive, hyperactive or withdrawn often face greater peer rejection.
The relationship between aggressive behaviour and the experience of peer rejection may vary according to gender, developmental period and peer group. For example, the aggression-rejection association is more marked in preschool or early school years than later in childhood. Aggressive children may also be more popular when they belong to a group of children who are supportive or neutral towards aggressive behaviours, and may not appear to have difficulties making friends among similarly aggressive friends.
Still, the absence of prosocial behaviour, rather than the presence of aggression, may promote peer rejection. Shy and withdrawn children also experience peer relationship difficulties, although these are more likely to occur later than the preschool years.
Impact of peer relationship difficulties
Over the short and medium term, problematic peer relations are associated with educational underachievement and low academic performance. Among other things, peer conflict and rejection can suppress children’s motivation for classroom activities. Children who have friends in the classroom and who are accepted by their peers are generally more motivated to participate.
Over the long term, early peer relationship difficulties are correlated with a variety of adjustment problems in adolescence and young adulthood, such as school dropout, delinquency and emotional problems, such as loneliness, depression and anxiety. Yet the evidence for long-term consequences of peer difficulties experienced in the preschool years is limited, as other potential causes (e.g. personal or environmental factors) have not been ruled out. However, risks of maladjustment in children with early behavioural and emotional problems appear to be exacerbated by peer rejection. Conversely, early friendships and positive relations with the peer group appear to protect at-risk children against later psychological problems.
Sibling relationships are a special kind of peer relationship, more intimate and likely to last longer than any other relationship in one’s lifetime. They provide an important context for the development of children’s understanding of others’ worlds, emotions, thoughts, intentions and beliefs. Frequent sibling conflicts during childhood are associated with poor adjustment later in life, including violent tendencies.
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