A friend is for life - and strife

AGONIES OVER friendships, for girls at least, begin in the playground. "How's Anna?" you may idly ask your senior infant, to be greeted with an out burst that leaves you with no doubt that last week's best friend is history.

"Do you know what she said? She said I was a baby `cos I wanted to play with Aoife. I hate her!" And so it goes, for most of primary school - though eventually one or two real best friends are likely to emerge.

However, even though many children today start to socialise from a very early age from creche and playschool onwards - friendships don't really become all important until secondary school. And at that point, especially in the early teenage years, they mean everything.

"Friendships are crucial," says Breeda Coyle, a member of the executive of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors. "It's more apparent in junior school, where the loss of a friend, or being excluded by a group, can have a devastating effect."

All of the teen behaviours that sometimes upset parents - wanting to hang out with friends instead of doing things with the family, wearing friend approved clothes that you might hate, spending expensive hours on the phone to the circle of friends are an important, and necessary, part of "getting a life".

This is just as true for boys as for girls, although the quality of their friendships are different: girls will reveal their most intimate thoughts and feelings to friends, but society discourages boys from doing this, says Marie Murray, principal clinical psychologist with St Joseph's Adolescent Service in Fairview, Dublin.

Boys tend to have more competitive relationships, based on assertiveness and achievement. But both boys and girls need friends to help them through the messy, if exciting, business of growing up. And perhaps it's no surprise that their relationship with you may determine how successful those friendships are.

"Having very secure family relationships is the basis for entry into and success at peer relationships," Murray says. "Children will have learned social skills, how to share, how to conform, and will also have the confidence to know they can cope with a peer group and can also come home safely to discuss things with parents."

Equally, "having a close and stable best friend is closely associated with self esteem. Indeed, to cope with friends, you need a core of self esteem and value, and children get that from us." She cannot stress enough, Murray says, how important it is to constantly praise and encourage adolescents, even the child who's driving you crazy.

Teenagers need friends, she explains, as a source of information and comparison about the world outside the home; to get feedback about their abilities, and compare themselves to other people the same age; to get involved in co operative and competitive behaviour amongst equals.

Friendships also help them to test out ideas and rehearse roles. Having friends, in short, is vital for social development.

FOR A WHILE, especially in early teenage years, it might seem as if anything you, the parent, thinks or feels is less important to your child than what their friends think. But studies show that conformity to anti social behaviour decreases as children reach about sixth year, and struggles over issues of identity lessen, Murray says.

It also seems that there is likely to be a better fit between your family values and your child's friends' values if your child has a good relationship with the family. One study, however, suggests that friends will have a greater influence on a teenager's sexual attitudes and behaviour than family, while family will have a greater influence on political attitudes - not a finding designed to reassure the average parents, who aren't all that pushed about how their children will vote.

On the whole, parents don't worry much about their children's friends, unless they're "a bad influence" - or because they don't have any.

It's not without reason that parents worry about "bad influence", because we're told often enough that whether or not your teen is going to drink or do drugs, will depend to a large degree on what their friends do. Indeed, some parents have gone to the extreme of moving schools to get their child away from undesirable friends.

It is a tough problem to handle, Murray says. Her own criterion, she says, is safety - whether or not a teenagers' friends are leading them into activities that aren't safe. "You shouldn't worry about clothes, or accent, or grammar. And if their friends are `sale', then encourage them to invite them over."

It is important, she says, not to criticise friends; to do so is the same as criticising your child. However, you should send a clear message that the only thing that does worry you is their safety.

Some parents will worry less about the quiet, isolated child who has few or no friends: after all, you know where they are at night. But both Breeda Coyle and Marie Murray confirm that the isolated child needs help, and is often the child who comes to their attention. A child who is isolated from the group in teenage years can develop problems such as depression in later life.

You can't, of course, live their lives for them, or force children into social activity, but you should encourage them. You might find an activity, such as tennis or art, to involve them in.

Schools today do take an active interest in students' emotional as well as academic welfare, Coyle says. Most classes have a form tutor; it might be a good idea, Murray suggests, to have a chat with him or her, to see if your child is being excluded, bullied, or just wandering around the school on her own. Discuss the situation sensitively with your child.

For the parent of a shy child, there is nothing more satisfying than to see them become part of a circle of good friends: as teenagers grow up, it is touching to see how much they really care for, and will help, each other.

And if you begin to feel left out, because your son or daughter wants to spend more time with their friends than with you, join the club. You are still important, but no longer the centre of the world, as they take the first steps on the branch that leads away from the nest.