Peer Relationships and Friendship in Adolescence

Jeong Jin Yu, MS, University of Arizona
Karen Hoffman Tepper, Ph.D., University of Arizona
Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D., University of Arizona

What are peer relationships and friendship?

Peer acceptance represents social status or popularity within a large group, whereas friendships represent relationships based on mutual respect, appreciation, and liking. Early adolescence is a time characterized by friendships that share more common feelings and are more supportive than when children are younger (Buhrmester & Furman, 1987). At the same time, youth who have more mutual friends (i.e., individuals with a similar degree of affection for one another) are more likely to be accepted by their larger peer group (George & Hartmann, 1996; Parker & Asher, 1993).

Peer acceptance and friendships are distinct constructs and contribute to youth development. Peer acceptance has been shown to be associated with greater feelings of belonging (Brown & Lohr, 1987) and fewer behavioral problems in youth (Coie, Terry, Lenox, Lochman, & Hyman, 1995), whereas, friendships have been shown to directly influence feelings of loneliness (Bukowski, Hoza, & Boivin, 1993). However, both peer acceptance and friendships similarly provide youth with self-esteem and improved psychological adjustment (Parker & Asher, 1993).

Why are peer relationships and friendship important?

Peer relationships and friendships become more important as children grow into early adolescents. Research indicates that older youth interact with peers more frequently and longer than do younger youth, both within school and out of school (Larson & Richards, 1991). Developing high quality peer relationships and friendships are important because young people who have difficulties in developing or maintaining friendships are more likely to—

• Engage in aggressive behavior (Newcomb, Bukowski, & Pattee, 1993).
• Report low academic achievement and high unemployment later in life (Woodward & Fergusson, 1999).
• Exhibit higher degrees of loneliness and depression (Parker, Rubin, Price, & de Rosier, 1995).

Youth friendships —

• Are associated with self-esteem and contribute to forming self-image (Azmitia, 2002)
• Are related to social competence (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995) and enhanced leadership skills (Berndt, Hawkins, & Jiao, 1999).
• Can buffer youth from the negative impact of family troubles (Gauze, Bukowski, Aquan-Assee, & Sippola, 1996; Bolger, Patterson, & Kupersmidt, 1998).
• Lesson the likelihood of experiencing peer victimization (Hodges, Boivin, Vitaro, & Bukowski, 1999).
• Influence academic achievement (Fleming, Cook, & Stone, 2002; Wentzel, Barry, & Caldwell, 2004).

How can I promote the development of peer relationships and friendship?

Some concrete ways to promote a high quality of peer relationships/friendships in youth include—

• Nurturing social skills including anger management, fairness, and sensitivity.
• Allowing youth to develop companionship skills through literature, sports, games, and music (Lawhon, 1997).
• Letting youth know and practice how to express their thoughts and emotions in socially acceptable ways.
• Encourage young people to take the perspective of others.
• Teaching youth the importance of self-disclosure and responsive listening skills.
• Giving opportunities for youths to develop empathy.
• Helping youth develop the skills to resolve conflict and disagreements effectively.
• Providing youth with opportunities for peer tutoring.
• Being prepared to talk with youth about their peers/friends whenever they have trouble with their peers/friends.

Adolescent love

By GREGORY K. MOFFATT, PH. D

Love is an emotion interwoven with a web of confounding components that is very difficult to unravel. Infatuation is shallow love that is based on appearance, sexual arousal, or selfish desire. True love is based on commitment, empathy, and compassion - components that give rise to physical arousal rather than following it.

Prior to adolescence, a child is capable of loving another person, but that love is based on the need for comfort and attention. A child can fall in "love" with a teacher, classmate, or neighbor but his love is based on the person's appearance (she is pretty or he is handsome), an undefined raw emotion from within, and the attention that the child gets from the person.

Children think about marriage, but their ideas of marriage are shallow and egocentric. Even though they are capable of doing nice things for the object of their devotion, their love is largely based on what they receive.

Adolescent love is the beginning of real hopes of marriage, sex, and commitment. Theorist Robert Sternberg proposes that healthy adult relationships have three components: commitment, intimacy, and passion. Adolescents are capable of commitment, which is the drive to stay together, but their commitment is limited. Few high school romances lead to marriage. Adolescents are capable of intimacy as well.

Intimacy is the ability to share one's emotions, thoughts, and dreams. Teens can form powerful bonds with friends in whom they confide their secrets, hopes, fears, and dreams. Likewise, teens are capable of passion, which is the erotic or sexual component of a relationship. They experience erotic arousal even if they do not act upon it.

Even though teens are capable of experiencing all three of these components, they cannot balance these three components over a long period of time. For example, two adults can coexist quite happily in a marriage without sex if one or the other is incapable of performing sexually (i.e. a spinal injury). The reason they can do this is because their passion is based on more than simple sexual desire. It is also balanced by their intimacy and commitment to stay together.

Few teens can balance these three components, but adolescent romance allows time to learn these components and what place they hold in one's relationships. During these years, they learn for themselves the importance of each component and how to most appropriately express them. Learning to express love and the place love holds in ones life is one of the difficult tasks about learning about love and romance.

As they struggle for a place in the world, especially in the world of relationships, broken romances are very painful for teens. Not only do they have difficulty identifying and coping with their feelings, but their egocentric world-view makes them feel as though their hurt will never go away, no one will ever love them again, and they will be alone the rest of their lives.

Even though adults experience these same feelings when their romances dissolve, they usually have the ability to cope much better than most adolescents because they have experienced broken relationships and they are aware that time heals wounds. For teens, their limited experiences inhibit this confidence. Therefore, broken relationships are extremely hurtful. In fact, one of the risk factors for suicide during adolescence is a broken romance. Take seriously the pain that your teen feels when rejected by a girl or boyfriend.

Emotions are confusing things. We learn to identify emotions by context and experience. Something in the environment arouses our affect, we search our experience for context and prior similar situations, and then we label the emotion. As we get older, we recognize that we rarely feel a single emotion. More often, we have many emotions operating at any one time - happiness, nervousness, apprehension, excitement, etc.

Sorting out these emotions and learning how to handle them is a skill that takes years to refine and some adults never fully master it. You can help your child through love's ups and downs by helping him or her label emotions and find ways to cope with all of the complex feelings that make us human.

Adolescent 's life

"Some of the best lessons are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future." - Dale Turner

"A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses. It is an idea that possesses the mind." - Robert Oxton Bolton

quote

"The healthy man does not torture others. Generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers." - Carl Jung

Intention: Aware and Awake

Intentional Silence / The Journey Inward

Adolescence - Period Of Possibilities

Adolescence is a transitional period in the human life span that links childhood and adulthood.

THE NATURE OF ADOLESCENCE

As it is in the development of children, genetic, biological, environmental, and social factors contribute in the development of adolescents. The genes inherited from both parent influence thought and behaviour during the period of adolescence, but inheritance as it is now known has interaction with social conditions present in an adolescent's world - with family, peers, friendships, dating, and social experiences. New experiences and development tasks appear during adolescence, an adolescent's thoughts are more abstract and idealistic Biological changes trigger a heightened interest in body image. This period has both continuity and discontinuity with childhood.

There is an issue of worrying about how and what adolescent will turn out. It is viewed as a turbulent period charged with conflict and mood swings. Presently, adolescents face demands and expectations, as well as risks and temptations that appear to be more numerous and complex than those faced by adolescents a generation ago. None the less, contrary to the popular saying of adolescents as highly stressed and incompetent to handle some issue, the majority of adolescents successfully find their path from childhood to adulthood. By some ratings, adolescents of today are being described as doing better than their fellows from a decade earlier.

Recently, more adolescents complete school, especially in African setting where adolescent girls were not allowed to attend school, more adolescents now have positive relationships with others.

People's attitudes on this period of adolescence emerge from a combination of personal experience and what the media portrays, neither of which produce an actual picture of how normal adolescents develop. Many adults measure their current perceptions of adolescence. So adults may portray adolescents of our today to be more troubled, less respectful, more self - centered, more assert ore, and more adventurous than they were.

Here in issues of taste and manners, every young person of every generation has seemed radical, unnerving and different in their behaviour, mode of dressing, the pattern of hair style, the choice of music and in general look. Although it is a massive mistake to confuse adolescents' enthusiasm for trying on new identities and enjoying moderate amounts of indifferent behaviour with hostile nature toward parental and societal standards, many adolescents move toward accepting, rather than rejecting parental values by acting out and boundary testing.

However, no matter how it is viewed majority of the adolescents experience the transition from childhood to adulthood more positively than is portrayed, though too many adolescents of our today are not provided with adequate opportunities and support needed to became competent in life as adults. Further more, today's adolescents are presented with a less stable environment when compared with adolescents of a decade ago due to so many socioeconomic factors that emerge as life goes on. Such socioeconomic factors as high divorce rates, high adolescent pregnancy rates and increased geographic mobility of families have a contribution to this lack of stability in the lives of adolescents. The media has contributed what today adolescents looks like by exposing them to a complex menu of life style options. Although studies have shown that the adolescent drug rate is showing some signs of decline, the rate of adolescent drug use in some areas like U.S is higher than that of other country in Western world. More importantly, our today's adolescents face the temptation of sexual activity, at increasing young ages.

This discussion centers on important points about adolescents. They do not make up a homogeneous group. Adolescents of individual kinds negotiate the lengthy path to adult maturity successfully, but too large a group will not.

In all, ethnic, cultural, gender, socioeconomic, age, and lifestyle differences influence the actual life trajectory of every adolescent. So the portrayals of adolescence are differently and emerge depending on the particular group of adolescents in view and being described.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chibuike_Nnamani

Psych Cycling Night

Just a reminder that we'll be having Psych Cycling (plus jogging) Night tomorrow night, to promote healthy living style among UTAR psychology students.

Safety comes first, thus, there shouldn't be any risky cycling behavior (for example, speeding, cycling side by side, tailgating, chit-chatting) throughout the whole cycling session. Please be aware of the cars, pedestrians etc within the compound.

Date: 01/11/2010
Time: 8:00 pm- 8:30 pm
Venue: West Lake, Kampar

Cancell if it's raining!

Weight of Obesity: How it Affects the Adolescent

Aug 15, 2010 Jenny Hildenbrandt

There are three major environmental factors that contribute to the growth rates of obesity: the media, parental influence, and peers.

The Impact of the Media

Television advertisements in particular have a large bearing on adolescents. Advertisements are directly targeted toward the youth population. Therefore, adolescents are easily influenced to engage in the observed behaviors. In addition, the number of advertisements for food is overwhelming and thus entices hunger even when one does not feel hungry. Of course overeating is not the only negative consequence associated with the media.

The media has a large impact on defining roles and what is accepted by society. For adolescents in particular, it is crucial to be aware of the latest styles and trends. Much of this is found on TV and in magazines. The media plays a major influence in the development of young girls. Magazines and TV advertisements use thin beautiful models to sell their products. The perception of this ideal body image presents a difficult battle for the obese adolescent female. She is frustrated by her desire to be thin and her failure to achieve this goal. Her unhappiness with her body builds and her self-esteem diminishes.

Advertising does not only portray the wrong message but sends conflicting messages. Commercials use slim, attractive people who eat high-calorie foods and still look great. This only encourages eating these foods. False hopes and assumptions begin to develop. The preconceived notion is that "I can look like her even if I do eat a hamburger and fries from McDonalds." One advertisement stresses the importance to maintain a healthy active lifestyle with diet and exercise, yet another advertisement encourages one to indulge in fatty food consumption. This conflict contributes largely to an obese child’s thoughts and behaviors.

Parental Influences on Adolescent Behavior

Another environmental factor that contributes largely to an adolescent’s behavior is parental influence. For the obese adolescent, the parent’s role is crucial to modeling a healthy lifestyle for their child. In today’s society as parents, there is pressure for both parents to work full-time in order to meet minimal expenses of raising a family. Unfortunately, as a result, families are spending less time together. This can have a tremendous impact on a child. Consequently, children may engage in detrimental behaviors such as violence or promiscuous behaviors. They may become prone to depression and struggle both academically and socially. An obese adolescent can identify with these feelings.

With the hurried lifestyle of today’s families, often parents and children do not eat together as a family. Choosing cheap fast food over more costly nutritional meals becomes routine. This does not only affect weight and increase health concerns, but can have a detrimental effect in other areas such as social and mental growth. When families engage in other activities such as eating dinner together, social capacity is developed. For an obese adolescent, it is important to maintain positive social connections. Often these connections are lacking in their neighborhood and school. Maintaining positive social relations at home alleviates some of the struggles with self-esteem that an obese adolescent faces amongst their peers.

Peer Influences

As early as preschool, peers play a significant role on a child’s development. Acceptance and support becomes crucial to one’s interactions and behaviors. Unfortunately, however support and acceptance aren’t always offered. In their book Children's Needs II: Development, Problems, & Alternatives [Bethesda: National Association of Psychologists, 1999] S.G. Hassink and D.V. Sheslow explain that it is during the elementary-school years when children with weight problems withdraw and/or are pushed away by their peers. There is prejudice toward individuals that do not look a certain way.

The prejudice associated with obesity is intense. For an obese adolescent, the impact is that much greater. The self-concept of obese teens seems to suffer at this developmental period when “watching and being watched” by peers seems so important adds Hassink and Sheslow. Often these students are ridiculed and teased which can lead to depression and isolation. In turn they resort to food and sedentary non-social activities to satisfy their emotional needs.

Adolescents rely on their peers for guidance and acceptance. Because socialization is crucial to this developmental period, peer pressure is predominant. It is typical for teens to spend time together eating and socializing. Fast food restaurants become a typical hangout . The obese adolescent that struggles with their weight also struggles with fitting in. Comfort is found through these social connections and unfortunately the healthy lifestyle takes a secondary role.

Recognizing Prejudice Toward Obese Individuals

Obesity is on the rise as is the depression and isolation one feels that is associated with it. Emotionally, socially, and physically an obese child is affected. The problem will most likely not diminish soon. However, recognizing there is a prejudice associated with obesity and finding support through friends and family would be a great first step to a healthier social and mental development for these teens.

Sources

Hassink, S.G. & Sheslow, D.V. Children’s Needs II: Development, Problems & Alternatives. Bethesda: National Association of School Psychologists, 1999.

Marmitt, Lynn. Adolescent Obesity. New Haven: Yale-New Haven, 2004.

Read more at Suite101: Weight of Obesity: How it Affects the Adolescent http://www.suite101.com/content/weight-of-obesity--how-it-affects-the-adolescent-a274593#ixzz13u9v95DD

Topic repeated

Topics available: political view, marriage and singlehood, sex education, cohabitation

1. Yeoh Loo Kuang (0800186)Ammelia Tay Yee Ling (0800215)Lee Zen Chit (0801863)Tean Chew Meng (0801224)Lim Chai Leng (0800014)
2nd in “Diet” and “Sleeping habit”

2. Members: Tan Yi Shin 09AAB05089 (T6)Chin Woei Jye 09AAB05697Woo Siew Min 09AAB06763Destenie Chua 09AAB06432Yap Ke Xin 09AAB07070
October 19, 2010 6:02 PM
2nd in “Eating disorder”