One of the main beliefs, perhaps even dogmas, of our society is that children need peers for healthy development. Canadian developmental psychologist Dr Gordon Neufeld argues otherwise. "Children need parents and other mature adults for healthy development, not peers."
I know that this statement is something of a shock in our society. The idea that children do not need peers for healthy development, but their parents, can shake the foundations of many parents' thinking and lifestyles. But what does this even mean in practice. What is the role of parents in children's development and how do we put it into practice? What is the role of peers in a child's development and how should it be put into practice?
The role of parents
Parents play a key role in child's development, infinitely more important than that of peers. Parents must provide the conditions for the child to survive. They must, among other things, ensure that the child attaches to them securely and build a relationship with them in which the child trusts them. How?
1. Parents make sure that the child gets healthy food, has a roof over his/her head, is properly clothed, takes care of his/her hygiene when he/she is still young.
2. They make sure the child feels safe and that it gets comfort, when needed, but also encouragement not to fall into negative feelings.
3. Parents make sure the child gets the rest he/she needs when he/she is tired (going to bed on time in the evening, diverting the child from activities and socialising to rest, etc.).
4. As the child grows up, parents make sure that he/she learns to take care of him/herself physically: how to take care of personal hygiene (brushing teeth, etc.), the living environment (tidying up his/her room, teaching them housework, etc.), passing on to them their knowledge of healthy eating, how to maintain and take care of their physical health.
5. As the child matures, the parents also gradually guide the child to conscious awareness of his/her emotions, feelings and thoughts. Through conversations, the child thus develops self-reflection which is necessary for takeing care ofone's psycho-physical well-being in adulthood.
6. Parents ensure that, as the child matures, he/she recognises his/her strengths, weaknesses, talents and potentials and learns to express them.
7. They also teach them how our society functions. Ideally, children should also be involved in activities that they are not yet able to do, such as going to the office, the bank, the shops, fixing things, such as a broken fence, gardening, looking after animals, etc. They also learn while they are doing it.
8. Parents also give their children opportunities to spend time together in pleasant ways, such as reading and listening to music together, dancing, going on outings, holidays at the seaside or in the mountains, travelling, etc.
What is the consequence or result if parents do all this? The child is securely attached to and trusts the parents. This is important because of the following processes:
1. Because the child trusts them, the parents can pass on their values to them. I will list the values that are important to my husband and me, and you can, of course, insert your own. Our values are: truthfulness, honesty, authenticity, responsibility, respect for our own and others' boundaries (beliefs, lifestyles, etc.), inner integrity, which means not lying to yourself, not pretending, not manipulating, not pleasing others, but walking your own path, improving yourself over and over again (as naturally as a plant grows and becomes more and more beautiful). Then there is beauty, harmony, knowledge, respect, empathy... Every family, has its own values. It is desirable taht the family values are consistent with the universal humanistic values that are said to unite the whole human race.
2. When a child encounters difficulties or hardship in the course of growing up, he or she will first turn to parents for advice and help. As parents we are usually more mature and wise, and have more life experience, thus we will be able to advise and help our child wisely.
3. If a child is securely attached, this gives him a certain inner stability and resilience. Moreover, secure attachment and healthy relationships with each other provide the best basis for the development of empathy.
Imagine that a child does not receive the above.. What does this mean for his/her psychological development? Can he get all this from his peers?
The role of peers
Today, most people believe that spending time with peers is a child's need. This belief has become widespread and deeply ingrained in our minds because we are so used to our children spending most of their time with other children: in kindergartens, in schools, in activities. Meanwhile, we, the parents, are at work, or we are also socialising with friends or peers, or we are resting. But what is the role of peers?
Every child wants to feel connected to others. This stems from the fact that human being cannot survive without other people. This need is an instinct. But if I look deep inside myself, I see that I do not want the company of anyone or at any time. I want the company of, or association with, the person who enriches me in any way. I love to listen to those who are wiser than me. I love to learn from those who are more skilled than I am. I like to be with people who make me feel at ease. I am not afraid of challenges, so I also like to be with people who show me that I can improve. It's an instinct that's written in our cells.
When a child is born, it should arrive in the hands of parents who are more experienced and wiser than him/her. His or her instinct to attach to them is automatically triggered. If, for whatever reason, the child is unable to attach to its parents, this instinct is not switched off. It is redirected. It seeks out people to whom it can 'attach'. And it 'attaches' itself to the first one who allows it to do so, consciously or unconsciously.
In the case of the vast majority of today's children, it's their peers. Why? Parents give their children to peer groups at a very early age in kindergarten, and children spend most of their time with each other. This slowly starts to build emotional relationships between children, while opportunities to build relationships with adults are not so numerous. These peer relationships are marked by immaturity because children are not yet mature beings.
What values are transmitted among children?
1. Competitiveness. Who's better, faster, coolest, etc.
2. The importance of looks. It is very important to children and young people how they look. All sorts of industries - clothing, cosmetics, you name it - are preying on this 'need'.
3. Copying. It is important to look and behave like the peer group you are part of. This prevents children from developing into the individual that is the goal of our psychological development.
4. The importance of material goods. Money and social status.
Can these values prepare a child for an independent life and make him/her happy and fulfilled later? I doubt it, and yet this is our general social practice and reality, and we must no longer turn a blind eye to it. That is why we need to give the right place to socialising with peers.
So why should a child have peers at all? In my view, peer relationships should never take precedence over relationships with parents and other mature adults. Neufeld also emphasises this over and over again in his lectures and training courses. Children should spend most of their time in relationships with their parents and other mature adults. This is what I described in the first part of this article. But then what should they do with their peers?
Children should never be attached to their peers. Never. Peers are there for children to have fun, to create together, to pursue common interests, and to test and practise what they learn from and with their parents and adults. What does this mean in practice?
1. Playing.
2. Sport.
3. Trips to nature, museums... (accompanied by an adult if the children are young).
4. Common interests (sports, books, exploring different topics, film, music....)
5. Music and dance.
6. Caring for animals.
This list could certainly go on.
infantilisation of society
Children want to be with other children. But even more than that, they want to be with their parents, even if it sometimes seems the opposite. When a child is born, it feels with every cell of its body that it will not be able to survive in this world on its own and that it needs other people to do so. But since his/her mind is not yet developed to the logical conclusion that he/she can only survive with people who are more experienced than he/she is (primarily his/her parents), his/her attachment instinct is directed towards whomever he/she spends the most time with. As already mentioned, this is most often peers. The child is therefore not able to choose who to attach to. He/she cannot understand the attachment process. For us adults, however, it is different.
Although attachment happens in an emotional dimension, we adults have a sufficiently developed mind to understand the attachment process and its meaning. Since it is clear to us that only the more mature and wise person can help the immature and needy, the importance of the role of parents cannot be denied. We can also understand that socialising with peers is of secondary importance for child's survival and development.
Peers play the most important role in a child's life only when the child is not securely attached to his or her parents or other mature adults. Only then. A child's secure attachment to adults is not a given. Parents and other adults have to make an effort to make it happen. Put in the time and energy and effort. But even all this is no guarantee that the child will attach securely. Sometimes circumstances are such that they simply do not allow a child to attach securely to parents or other adults.
That's when peers can jump in. And that's when they can play an important role in a child's development. In individual cases, that's quite OK. Nothing wrong with that. Obviously that's the way it has to be. The problem arises when this starts happening en masse, because parents either don't have the opportunity for whatever reasons or even don't want to respond to their children's attachment needs. At that point, society becomes permeated by peer groups (in kindergartens, schools, various activities, etc.) and thus by peer culture, resulting in the infantilization of the whole of society. If you look around and observe the values that drive our society, what do you notice? Which values are the most widespread? Material wealth, social status, importance of physical appearance, efficiency, money, enjoyment and pleasure.... Everything revolves around these. Are these mature values? Who cares about wisdom anymore? What about knowledge, harmony, beauty, goodness, honesty, integrity?
To conclude
I hope I have at least got you to the point where the statement 'Children need parents and other mature adults, not peers, for healthy development' is no longer outrageous to you. All I am describing is a theory that explains collective processes in society. It is not about individual cases, it is not about individual situations. It can happen that we parents try very hard to get our child to attach securely to us, and we are not successful. It also happens that we parents do not try at all, and yet the child will be securely attached to us. And all the variants in between. Each individual situation has its own laws that determine how things will turn out.
However, society in general has its own collective patterns, in which we as individuals, are involved in different ways. Collective trends determine the atmosphere in society, affecting all its members. It is therefore important to know not only our own situation, but also the collective trends in the society of which we are a part. The purpose of this text is to shed light on the collective pattern of child's attachment to peers in our society. I hope that I have succeeded, at least a little.
Mateja de Laat