Healthy Peer Relationships Research Articles

“Exiled Life, or Home Away from Home?” Exploring Ghanaian Orphan Narratives of Orphanage Placement

The institutionalization of Ghanaian orphans has surged in recent times, but little is known about orphans’ experiences after placement. Drawing on data from follow-up interviews with twenty orphans aged eight to seventeen years, the present study explores orphans’ experiences subsequent to placement in orphanages. Through thematic analyses, we find that while orphanages provide structure, nurturance, and avenues for positive peer relationships that engender belongingness and emotional well-being, they evoke peer- and caregiver-relationship problems and financial constraints. Implications of the findings include the need for psychotherapeutic containment of orphans’ negative emotions after parental loss, provision of psychosocial interventions aimed at teaching orphanage-placed children skills for forming and sustaining healthy peer relationships, and psychoeducation of caregivers on skills for appropriate care of orphanage-placed children.

A Communication Model of Relational Pathways Into and Out of Adolescent Substance Use Disorder

This theoretical article traces one of the pathways of adolescent substance abuse from its roots in insecure attachment in childhood through ineffective relational mental models, poor communication skills, peer rejection, and the formation of antisocial friendships that lead to delinquency and substance use disorder. The model suggests communication skills training as a mediator and a means to altering this trajectory through changes to internal working models about relationships and the building of healthy peer relationships and recovery capital. This model focuses on communication as central to this complex process.

In This Issue

In This Issue

Children's social/emotional characteristics at entry to school

Children entering school need to build healthy peer relationships; school, however, is the central place for bullying. School nurses have a growing focus on providing care for students with social, emotional and behavioural problems. We examined the relational development of children at school entry in regard to aggression and empathy, showing that teacher-reported aggression decreased between Pre-primary and Year One, while empathy increased between Year One and Year Two classes. No gender difference was found in teacher-reported total, or covert aggression. Understanding how development of empathy can be supported in children at school entry is important, thereby supporting development of pro-social behaviour and decreasing bullying. School nurses must understand the importance of surrounding children with safety in relationships as they begin school.

How to cope with crying

It is natural for children to cry, but when it becomes a regular feature of daily life in the classroom, it can discourage learning and healthy peer relationships. Karen Sullivan investigates.

Welfare babies: poor children's experiences informing healthy peer relationships in Canada

Positive peer relationships among children living in poverty are important for their well-being, resiliency and mental and physical health. This paper explicates the 'felt experience' of children living in poverty, and the implications of these experiences for healthy peer relationships, from a re-analysis of two qualitative research studies in Canada examining children living in food insecure circumstances. Poor children feel deprived, part of the 'poor group', embarrassed, hurt, picked on, inadequate and responsible. Poor children internalize their own lack of social resources in feelings of deprivation. They experience negative feelings relative to their peers-inadequacy, embarrassment and hurt. Children do identify group membership but it is not used as a social resource, as it could be, but rather as a symbol of social segregation. Children also feel responsible for ameliorating some of the effects of their poverty and this seems to strengthen their relationship with their mothers. This could equally be translated into peer-related support, such as standing up to poor bashing, or engaging constructively with higher social class peers. Health promotion strategies that seek to foster positive peer relationships and enhance children's sense of belonging should offer novel social environments in which poor children can engage a variety of peers.

The relations of emotional role taking, affective/moral attributions, and emotional display rule knowledge to low-income school-age children's social competence

Numerous studies have shown that emotional knowledge is positively related to peer competence and prosocial behavior in early childhood. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether emotional understanding continues to impact children's social competence once they reach middle childhood. Thirty-nine low-income third and fourth graders were administered three emotional knowledge tasks: (a) emotional role taking, (b) knowledge of affective attributions, and (c) knowledge of emotional display rules. The children also reported on the quality of their peer relations and teachers provided ratings of the children's prosocial behavior. Results revealed that children's attributions of aggression and denial were positively related to their reports of negative peer interactions. Children's prosocial behavior was positively predicted by emotional role-taking ability and knowledge of prosocial display rules. This study identifies the affective variables that are most relevant for the development of healthy peer relationships and responsible prosocial behavior for school-age children. These findings underscore the importance of emotional knowledge for children's social functioning across early and middle childhood.