Provided by David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D.
Surgeon General of the United States of America
Chapter 3: Children and Mental Health
Social and Language Development
Relationships With Other Children
To be healthy, children must form relationships not only with
their parents, but also with siblings and with peers. Peer relationships change
over time. In the toddler period, children’s social skills are very limited;
they spend most of their time playing side by side rather than with each other
in a give-and-take fashion.
As children grow, their abilities to form close relationships become highly
dependent on their social skills. These include an ability to interpret and
understand other children’s nonverbal cues, such as body language and pitch of
voice. Children whose social skills develop optimally respond to what other
children say, use eye contact, often mention the other child’s name, and may use
touch to get attention. If they want to do something that other children oppose,
they can articulate the reasons why their plan is a good one. They can suppress
their own wishes and desires to reach a compromise with other children and may
be willing to change—at least in the presence of another child—a stated belief
or wish. When they are with a group of children they do not know, they are quiet
but observant until they have a feeling for the structure and dynamics of the
group (Coie & Kuperschmidt, 1983; Dodge, 1983; Putallaz, 1983; Dodge & Feldman,
1990; Kagan et al., 1998).
In contrast, children who lack such skills tend to be rejected by other
children. Commonly, they are withdrawn, do not listen well, and offer few if any
reasons for their wishes; they rarely praise others and find it difficult to
join in cooperative activities (Dodge, 1983). They often exhibit features of
oppositional defiant or conduct disorder, such as regular fighting, dominating
and pushing others around, or being spiteful (Dodge et al., 1990). Social skills
improve with opportunities to mix with others (Bridgeman, 1981). In recent
years, knowledge of the importance of children’s acquisition of social skills
has led to the development and integration of social skills training components
into a number of successful therapeutic interventions.
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