Customer Reviews

Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book deserves many more than five stars for its careful, thoughtful, and detailed look at how children develop their social lives. Like all remarkable books, it will extend your understanding beyond your personal life experiences and provide simple, common sense guidelines for achieving outstanding results. If you only read one book this year about improving the social life of your child, make it this one!

Every book I read about the psychological problems of youngsters focuses on the forms of social exclusion and bullying that typically occur in schools and neighborhoods. Best Friends, Worst Enemies takes that as the starting point, explains what causes the social exclusion and bullying, and details what schools and parents can do to eliminate it.

Social connection between children begins at a younger age than most people believe. The book details videotaped studies of infants watching and connecting with each other. Then, step-by-step, the authors show you how social interaction develops from those early months through to dating. I was particularly impressed by the conceptual description of youngsters being assigned a place versus the in group (in or out, and high or low status in that role). Although I could not articulate it, that certainly captures my recollection of those painful teenage years.

The use of animal studies is persuasive for the ways that humans often behave. I found myself chuckling over the descriptions of Alpha male and Queen Bee female behaviors.

The best part of the book is that it points out that exclusion is bad for those who do it, as well as for those who suffer from it. So all parents and all youngsters should be concerned.

The book avoids being too technical about psychological concepts. Everything described is built around the common human needs for connection, recognition, and power.

The section about how to improve schools was very sensitively done. It pointed out that teachers almost always know what's going on, but don't always know what to do about it. The many ideas for mixing the young people up and giving them all a chance to shine will, I'm sure, make many teachers enjoy their work more and help more students. I especially liked the idea of having a counselor meet with the kids who have trouble reading social clues, and helping them discuss and learn from each other how to connect. The idea of having high-status kids mentor low-status kids over the summer was also appealing.

Parents will have a tougher job to follow the advice here. You need to set a better example, and not be exclusionary in your own life . . . not gossip about others behind their backs . . . and help opens doors for your shy and excluded, or popular and obnoxious youngster. But, it's good advice . . . if you have what it takes to follow the advice.

Ask yourself at least once a day: How can I help someone feel included and appreciated today? Then, act!

This book has been a help in understanding my five-year-old's peer relationships, and is thought-provoking even for non-parents. I found the book well-organized and well-written. It helps make sense of children's behavior in terms of their needs for "connection, recognition, and power." It points out that children balance these three needs. Soon after reading this book, my son provided a stunningly concrete example of this. He and his friend had drawn chalk "tornado spinners" on the driveway. My son said, "My tornado spinner is more powerful than yours, because it's bigger." The other boy quietly said, "I'm not sure if I want to be friends with you any more." My son said, "OK, OK, they're the same power." The need for connection had won over the need for power and recognition.

There are some helpful hints to be gleaned from the book as well. Here's one I related to. Often, if a child has a problem at school with another child one day, the parent will tend to ask the child on the following day, "So, how did it go with Johnny today?" Your child, meanwhile, had forgotten all about the problem, but your comment provokes a "come to think of it..." reaction, causing the child to continue to dredge up negatives.

The book divides children into "accepted," "rejected," and "neglected" types, to describe how their peers treat them. I fell squarely into the "neglected" category, which I think explains my lack of understanding of the "need to belong" that so many people feel -- I wasn't really "in the game."

The authors mention a fascinating psychological experiment dealing with the need to belong. The subject was put into a group of people, and all were supposed to look at several pairs of lines and tell which was the longer line: A or B. The members of the group were told in advance to lie in one case, and say that Line B was longer. Two out of three subjects went along with the group, and also said that Line B was longer! I was truly stunned by this result -- it explains a lot about the dark side of human behavior. One of the authors asked a group of children why they thought the subject went along with the group, and she said, "He wanted to be in the 'B-Line Club'." The authors avoid any moral denunciation of this kind of follow-the-group behavior, apparently feeling it wouldn't be appropriate in a book on psychology.

I highly recommend this book. I found it useful, and also just plain intrinsically interesting.

After watching a feature documentary on the power of social relationships to shape a child's life into adulthood, I was already interested in learning more. This book filled the bill, especially the sections which revealed how children use power (and even bullying) to both include some children and exclude others. I think most of us remember the playground bullies but what this book did was show how parents can help to change bullying behavior, give their children skills to handle bullies and lessen the damaging effects of their behavior.
This book focuses on far more than bullies and those who purchase it will find it filled with rich insights into the social world of children and how they view their friendships and connections with other children.

Alice Miller (author of The Drama of the Gifted Child and Breaking Down the Walls of Silence) has long emphasized that if we are serious about solving society's problems, we must focus on how we treat children --- as individual families and as a cultural. This book is an excellent contribution toward that end.

From thought-provoking observations to practical suggestions about solutions, Best Friends, Worst Enemies is an effective education about social problems that begin in childhood, but do not end in childhood. One point the authors make that interests me greatly is that when one child is being bullied by others, the majority of children witnessing the abuse will either do nothing to intervene or they will join in with the bullying. If you think that is not a reflection of the society in which we live, think again.

As a psychotherapist and author (Embracing Fear, HarperSanFrancisco) who emphasizes personal responsibility and facing fears head on, I hope that more than just parents and educators will read this book. I think there is something here for us all to think about --- no, to do something about.

There are few things more disheartening than tales of bullying or watching your child be emotionally hurt by other children. The thoughtless teacher who allows other children to choose their team mates in activities can emotionally devestate a child who is chosen last. The child who is continually being physically threatened and tormented can leave a child in absolute terror of going to school. A birthday party that is eagerly anticipated by your child only to find that one, if anyone, actually shows up for the event is heartbreaking. As children, most of us have experienced at least one of these horrific experiences, but when it happens to your own child, it can be equally as traumatic for the parent as the child. The hurt and devestation can magnify if the child is low on self-confidence and self-esteem in the first place.

As a counsellor, I found this book gave an insightful outlook and delivers support to parents whose child is a victim of vicious, reandom acts of physical and emotional cruelty by their peers. Families today come is all structures and sizes, but regardless of whether it is a one parent or two parent family, one of the best actions a parent can take is to ensure there child is raised in a loving, nurturing, understanding, encouraging family environment. This helps boost self-esteem, confidence and emotional strength. For any parent who feels their child is the victim of random acts of cruelty by others, this book will provide a clearer understanding of the ways this situation can be handled. It is an excellent book and highly recommended reading.

Michael Thompson, Ph.D. is the author of the bestseller "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. His latest, written with compassion, humor, and practicality, is an insightful look into the sometimes mysterious world of child development.

As a special education teacher, and soon to be school counselor, I have long held that those who have children, and work with children need a keener understanding on why children do the things they do, if we are to care for them, and serve them better. This book will go along way in fostering this understanding among parents, teachers, and practioners because it helps us understand how a child views her world.

Written in conjuction with journalist Catherine O'Neill Grace and Lawrence Cohen, Ph.D. "Best Friends, Worst Enemies..." provides such a keen insight into the social lives of children, it is almost as if it was written by a child, because they have such an excellent perspective.

For parents with a desire to learn more about the psychological development of their child and the profound impact of peer pressure, this book contains some valuable information. The book deals with various aspects of development such as rejection, neglect and acceptance. The book helps the reader to understand how those elements can have a psychological influence on the child and their social interaction with others.

An extremely important section of the book deals with the school system itself and how changes need to be made to better adapt the learning environment to a childs emotional needs if the child is to development in a positive and socially acceptable manner. The book has been well researched and would be of particular interest not only to parents, but anyone invovled with the care and education of children.

Outatanding book! It has valuable information for adults concerning what our kids social lives are like and how to help them when there is a problem. Children can be so cruel. The book sheds light on a world we as adults don't really understand. This book is well written and easy to read. I highly recommend it!

This book could have used an editor, or a better one. I found it much too wordy: he says in 4 paragraphs what was already clear in the first paragraph. I felt that he was explaining issues to about a 6th grade level person.

I was less interested in the theory in the abstract and would have appreciated more suggestions for parental action (or inaction) in each chapter. Instead, the "What parents can do" chapter was stuck onto the end of the book like an afterthought, and read like an article in O..."10 things you can do". The one part of the book that was brief, and it was the part I had hoped to be in-depth.

Finally, I thought the author put a lot of weight on the parents' impact on a child's personality. Obviously there is a huge influence, but there was little mention of temperament. It was just: "Johnny's quiet, and when you meet his Dad, he's quiet, too." And some examples were more accusatory: the mother is not socially skilled, so no wonder the child isn't. There are lots of kids struggling who are just that way. I don't care if he blames me as a mother, but why I think this misses the boat is that it portrays only the weak side of the child's personality and poses it as a problem...no mention that this can be the way the child is wired and that there are associated strengths. I think that knowledge affects a parent's ability to accept a child who is "different" and support him/her in their strengths and help them offset their weaknesses to minimize the negative impact of the weakness on their life.

I was looking forward to reading this book, and found it very disappointing.

Michael Thompson's, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children is the best book there is about the psycho-social development of children. It's readable for everyone, though it was a developmental psychologist who recommended it to me initially. I've since sent it to every mother I know and they've all done the same for their friends who have children. Dr. Thompson spoke at our local school, a lab school on the UCLA campus, and the kids, from 5 years to 11 years, and teachers alike were mesmerized. Dr. Thompson was born to do what he does. I used his book as a guide in the emotional growth of my own son.