The end, my best friend?

When I was in kindergarten, my best friend Charles lived just down the street. We were in the same class, we played after school, we ‘camped' at each other's houses on some weekends. I now realise that I loved him like a brother, though as a kid I would have denied it outright. His parents were like my second parents. And then, at the end of second grade, his father who was in the army, was transferred to another town in a different state. My heart was broken. I refused to have another ‘best friend' for a long time after that.

But in time I was ready to move on. Over the course of the next few years I made five very close friends who not only made high school just about bearable but still remain in touch with me though we live in different parts of the world. We were together in most classes, got together to plot the most devious plans we could hatch, and sometimes even managed to study together after school. Would I be who I am today without those friends? Unlikely, I believe.

One too many?

There's nothing unique about my story. But if educationists in the US have their way, I may become a relic. Increasingly in the US some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that is surprising their parents: should a child really have a best friend?

Usually it is the children's preference to pair up and have that one best friend. Now teachers and counsellors are trying to dissuade them from doing that. They try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have larger groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends. Conventional wisdom was that a child needs that one special friend. These educationists say a child doesn't need a best friend.

"Nowhere do you find the values of a society so clearly marked as when you look at what educators are trying to teach children," says Bettina Hansel, a New York-based educational consultant who calls herself an intercultural explorer. "I am still mulling over recent efforts of some US educators to discourage children from having just one "best friend" on the grounds that other children will feel excluded. Those from other countries who have puzzled over the seemingly superficial nature of friendships in the US would do well to ponder on this and see if it sheds some light on the experiences they have had."

Friends forever

This brings into question the very meaning of friendship. "I think what you define as a best friend varies developmentally. Very young children may change their best friend every day," says Dr Onita Nakra, educational psychologist and counsellor at the American School of Dubai. "So the question does not arise for them. But the fact remains that they do develop very strong attachments from a very young age, and there's no getting around that. You have to value and respect that. When break-ups occur at a younger age it's like a taste of what lies ahead. That is true of any attachment and any break-up."

Friendships are a really important part of preparing a child for real life, says Dr Nakra. They learn empathy and the need to respect another person's point of view. Forging a strong friendship equips children with many skills they later on employ as adults to deal with relationships. "I think kids do need friends, and if within that group they have a best friend it is fine. It happens automatically sometimes, based on mutual interests and hobbies that the parents and the children share. I don't think children walk into friendships saying, ‘he's going to be my best friend'. It just evolves over time."

Exclusivity is not allowed

The concept of ‘best friends' is being redefined in some very definite ways in the US.

Some summer camps in the US have started employing ‘friendship coaches' to work with campers to help every child become friends with everyone else. The camp authorities' priority: if two children seem to be too focused on each other, put them on different sports teams, seat them at different ends of the dining table or, perhaps, have a counsellor invite one of them to participate in an activity with another child whom they haven't yet gotten to know.

"Apparently, these schools claim to be worried about the nastiness that can take place with exclusive cliques, and don't want students to be ‘so possessive about friends', but I am not convinced that their attempt to encourage children to form big groups of friends is a cure for social exclusion or bullying," says Hansel. "I haven't noticed that bullies have a single ‘best friend'. Yet, school and summer camp personnel are apparently concerned about children who form a tight friendship with just one other child. The goal is ‘healthy' (read: not too dependent) relationships with everyone."

More friends the merrier?

This is an attitude some psychologists in the US have joined issue with, pointing out that children will be denied the strong emotional support and security that comes with intimate friendships.

"If the idea is to keep children in larger groups rather than smaller ones, or one-on-one friendships, it sounds very artificial to me," says Dr Nakra. "I would like to see more research done in that area to substantiate their claims, but I would definitely like to draw the line at obsessions. If the friendship becomes obsessive and negative then I can see some valid reasons for encouraging other friendships. If you ask me, the child has to be highly dysfunctional to be put in such camps."

There are others who see some merit in the emerging concept. "I think it shouldn't be an ‘either-or' situation, but an ‘and-also' one instead," says Dr Saliha Afridi, a clinical psychologist with the Human Relations Institute in Dubai. "Children should not be discouraged from having close and deep friendships but rather encouraged to be open and curious about everyone in their class.

"I understand that educators are trying to teach children to be more tolerant of everyone in their class/school - but it does not have to be at the cost of a best friend. It can be done by creating space and time for groups, teams and activities that will give them exposure to different people within their school, while still having a best friend that they can share their inner world with."

What happens when children have only one friend is that they tend to depend on him or her for everything. That creates a kind of over-dependency. "If the partnership between the two friends is not equal that can create an unhealthy imbalance in a friendship," says Dr Nakra. "You have to look at individual instances and see if that's what is occurring. But I feel these are issues that can be dealt with by the family and counsellors or teachers on an ongoing basis."

Isolated by technology

Regarding camps that actively work to discourage one-on-one friendships, Dr Afridi says there may be a bigger social dilemma at play here - that of children just not being as socially savvy as the previous generation. "While we grew up playing in the backyard or running on the neighbourhood streets, these days children spend very little time outside with their peers. Through play our generation learnt about human interactions and relationships, for instance, negotiating, compromising, advocating and resolving issues.

Due to two working-parent households, or parents who want to give their children the same edge as their peers, they put their children in nurseries and kindergartens and other institutions that structure play and have them listen and follow directions. Couple that with the culture of instant gratification and the virtual world and you may have an impatient, socially unsophisticated child."

What Dr Afridi is implying is that unstructured face-to-face interactions are lacking and children are not as socially able as the previous generations. Hours of television, video games, handheld devices, smart phones, internet and the digital world are denying children opportunities to be creative or to socialise. Thus, friendship coaches may serve the purpose of teaching children social skills they just don't learn naturally in their digital virtual worlds.

Despite the mind-boggling technological revolution of the last decade and its impact on the social lives of people and societies, the fact remains that we humans are programmed to seek out deep personal bonds from a very young age to anchor us in emotional waters. Having that one best friend is debatably more of a need than an option. Therefore the question that trips up adults - teachers and counsellors - is, are they right to discourage children from looking out for what is a natural instinct?

One at a time?

"I think educators are on the right track when they encourage and create space for children to socialise with others in the class/school to create a culture of tolerance in their schools," says Dr Afridi.

"However, it should not have to be at the cost of having deep friendships. We are not teaching them too much about the real world if we don't teach them that there will be people in their close inner circle as well as their outer circle. The way one behaves with their close friends is different from the way they would with acquaintances and strangers. Our children learn a lot about themselves through close relationships. They learn what they like and don't like; they learn about the characteristics they admire and the ones that they don't respect; they learn about give and take; about trust and dependability; about love and vulnerability and about pain. One cannot learn these important life lessons if they are not in deep relationships," she adds.

A class apart

Robin Hanson, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, finds the new trend worrying. "In the classic dystopian novels, 1984 and Brave New World, societies encourage conformity by discouraging strong personal relationships. For example, in Brave New World the maxim "everyone belongs to everyone else" is repeated often, and the idea of a ‘family' is considered highly undesirable; and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed.

"I look at this trend from this point of view. Since schools are where we now train children to conform to social pressure, you shouldn't be surprised to hear that they are now discouraging close friendships."

The classic best friend bond - the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out of the door together every day after school - signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying, says Hanson. Such an attitude worries him.

Hansel feels the attitude is US-centric. "It has often been noted that the US culture is highly individualistic, but I've never before read such a clear statement of this value as it pertains to friendship," she says. "It does, of course, fit with an entire genre of popular songs about the "ramblin' man" who can't possibly give up his freedom to commit to a married life."

However, the effort to engineer children's friendship patterns is not unchallenged, says Hansel. "Many Americans do have long-term best friends, of course, but it is also true that friendships among adults in the US are often compartmentalised and dependent on setting appointments and "finding the time" to get together. That time together is usually enjoyed and valued, often with regrets that it cannot happen more frequently. The affection and the pleasure in each others company is real, but for many, it seems, life holds stronger priorities, including a close relationship with a spouse or partner, caring for the children and a career. These ‘other options in the world' can sometimes limit our ability to build and maintain strong, close friendships."

Prioritising friendship

Hansel remembers an anecdote that brought home this fact. "Some years ago I attended a training programme dealing with stress management. One of the suggestions that I recall well was to put telephone calls to friends on your ‘to-do' list so that you did not get so absorbed in your career that you neglected your friends. This struck me as funny, but it probably is a decent coping strategy and I have resorted to it myself. If my priorities are to be dictated by the calendar and the to-do lists I create for myself at home or at work, it makes sense to make sure that list includes friendship. I would prefer it to be spontaneous, but instead it is chosen."

It does seem ironic that children are being socially engineered to avoid close friendships, while at the same time the social networking website Facebook has made "Friend Me" a part of our every day vocabulary. But then, Facebook totally fits with this new attitude - where it's all about the number of friends, rather than the depth of friendship. I know of a boy who actually avoided joining the site for a long time because he didn't want to compete with the other kids for who has the longest friends list. How many of your Facebook friends can you count on to be there for you in a pinch? How many would still be your friend if the demands on their time and involvement was more than just a ‘Hi' or a comment on your Wall? These days we "unfriend" with hardly a twitch of guilt.

Culture of tolerance

Dr Afridi doesn't think that the number of friends versus depth of friendships is what the US schools are aiming for. "I think what they are aiming for is a culture of tolerance.

"As far as Facebook or virtual friendships are concerned, there is research that supports that the virtual world can actually be detrimental to the social skills development of a growing brain. Whereas, you and I grew up watching our parents, family members and peers interact, nowadays children are interacting behind the screen - which makes it difficult for them to actually read social cues in the real world. They may not be as sensitive to facial expressions or body language because they spend many of their interaction hours on the computer, smartphone or other gadgets that are void of social nuances. It is also important to note that social networking is what it says it is - networking. One cannot substitute real life relationships for ones that are in the virtual world."

In all this Dr Nakra sees more of an over-reaction. "I think children have to learn to balance all kinds of friends. I don't see the real value or the philosophy behind such an attitude. If a friendship is unhealthy or if a child is not able to set boundaries between himself and his friend only then is an intervention of such a serious nature required. Philosophically, I don't subscribe to the view that you have to have many friends. One-on-one friends can be very good too. A good friend and a strong friendship can really support kids through life. So I am less convinced by the argument that it breeds bullying or over-dependence. I am not aware of any research that supports this theory, except in cases of extreme bullying or an unhealthy friendship."

She encourages her students to develop wider friendships, "but we don't insist on it. As they grow the range of friends usually narrows but it's not a bad thing. I would say a best friend can give a sense of stability to a child. In nuclear families, a best friend can be a kind of extended family."

Christina Ann Thomas, a Grade 11 student at Our Own English High School in Dubai, has this to say: "Encouraging a child to interact with all the students in a class will definitely help to develop better networking skills, but dissuading him/her from having a single best friend might not always work.

"Some children only feel comfortable opening up to one confidante. Such kids might end up bottling up their inner feelings if they were made to simply flit about like social butterflies instead of making deeper connections with the few people they can relate to. While it is true that a break-up with a best friend could leave a child feeling betrayed or abandoned, a fight erupting among a group of friends could be equally damaging. I think it would be ideal if a person can be a part of a large group while maintaining an inner circle of intimate friends, such that they are neither overly attached to a single person nor stifled by the crowd."

And does she have a best friend? "Yes," comes the reply. End of the best friend? Nah!