Positive relationships: Ask the expert ... Best of friends?

I have a three-year-old son, Josh, and I help out at the pre-school he attends three days a week. What I find disconcerting is that he is happy to play with his best friend Chloe, also aged three, when we meet with local mothers and their children at a weekly coffee morning but ignores her at pre-school. There, the children immediately divide into gender groups and play only with children of the same sex. Why do you think this is happening and what should we do about it at pre-school?

This question has two parts - first, the mother's concerns and second, what is happening at pre-school. What struck me immediately was that Chloe is described as his best friend. This is very much an adult perspective on the relationship between these two children and the idea of a 'best friend' is probably beyond their understanding.

Maybe the children's mothers are best friends and so the children could be meeting up more often than with others. This does not mean these children do not genuinely like each other. They may indeed be 'friends' and play happily together in some situations but once Josh is at pre- school, he suddenly has a wider choice of playmates.

If Josh has just turned three, he may still be at the late toddler stage in discovering playmates. Children can begin to notice and play alongside other children from around ten months and, interestingly, early toddler friendships, according to Gable (2009), can be quite stable and affectionate, with children seeking one another out. This potentially is the history of the relationship between Josh and Chloe, which is perhaps why his mother interpreted their relationship as being 'best friends'.

However, as children get a little older, friendships become more fluid and a choice of playmate at this stage may depend on what they want to do. Children are now very aware of the personalities and likes and dislikes of other children, and so may choose someone with whom they have experienced a similar interest in a particular activity, for example, during co-operative pretend play. Josh is potentially 'trying out' different relationships.

Josh's ignoring Chloe at pre-school may have something to do with the type of play he particularly enjoys when in that context, and it may be that his male playmates are much more to his liking and more satisfying.

Gable notes that friendships at this age tend to reflect play choices, so different friendships may arise for different activities - that is, a child may have a friend with whom they will go exploring, but another with whom they may carry out construction activities.

This reflects, in some part, adult friendships. For example, we might love to go shopping with one friend but may tell our troubles to another friend.

The emergence of fantasy-type play at this stage may also help to sort out different attitudes and approaches, which all help to increase social skills as they learn to be with others in varying situations, both real and imagined.

Young children do try to keep their friends but can 'replace' friends, especially when they move to a different area or to a different setting. Again, this might be what is happening with Josh and Chloe's relationship as he is now discovering all these new people.

PRE-SCHOOL PRACTICE

As for the pre-school, I wonder why the writer feels concerned that the children appear to divide into gender groupings. Is this a concern about equal opportunities or about the pre-school promoting gender stereotyping, or does the writer feel that boys and girls should play together?

First, Josh's response could reflect a very natural impulse to be with peers of the same sex and also may reflect the different play styles of boys and girls. This would tie in with the previous comments, that children of this age tend to choose playmates for particular activities.

While not all boys are the same, many boys enjoy - and need - active, physical play, including rough and tumble as well as construction type activities. Such play tends not to be favoured by girls who are, quite literally, born communicators and whose play tends to be focused, although obviously not exclusively, around social activities.

Unfortunately, this can sometimes be seen as 'gender stereotyping'. The danger is always that the differences between boys and girls are all put down to cultural and social pressures, whereas these differences are real and need to be respected and accommodated within the setting.

Equal opportunities does not - or should not - mean treating boys and girls as though they were exactly the same and interchangeable. One of the four principles of the EYFS is 'the Unique Child' and so each child will have their own particular needs. But within the specifics of any individual child, there are also some broad similarities between children, not only in the timing of the emergence of skills and abilities, but also in the ways that boys and girls tend to behave.

Trevarthen (2007) notes: 'The evidence shows that age-related changes change parents' behaviour, teaching them to expect different behaviours from their infants, and to act differently in their support. Each relationship is a dynamic affair with its own history, but there are remarkable similarities, including differences between the timing of developmental changes for male and female infants, that cannot be explained as consequences of cultural ideas that shape parental responses' (p96).

While this quote refers to parents and infants, it nevertheless highlights that very real differences do exist from infancy and manifest themselves in the broad behavioural patterns that each gender tends to exhibit. This means that staff in a pre-school setting need to be very aware of individual needs, developmentally appropriate practice and sensitivity to how boys and girls tend to behave.

It is a delicate balance that practitioners need to tread between avoiding either stereotyping a child because of their gender (for example, always getting the boys to lift things), or being so afraid of encouraging such stereotyping that they don't adapt their provision to ensure that children feel safe, secure and emotionally comfortable.

Children at around three years of age are aware of their gender. They may indeed express stereotyped behaviour in their play, such as the little girl I heard about who stood outside the home corner entrance, arms akimbo, saying to a child, 'You can't come in, you're a boy!'

Such a sentiment would need practitioner intervention so that boys who wished to play in the home corner could do so. Similarly, excluding a girl from a game simply because she is a girl needs the same type of interventions. However, offering equal access to provision does not mean, as already said, that there is no room to allow activities to be adapted in order to appeal to either gender.

A sensitive approach helps ensure that the child is not 'put off' play and learning through subtle messages that what they do is somehow not acceptable in the eyes of adults.

- Maria Robinson is an early years consultant and author of From Birth to One and Child Development from Birth to Eight: A journey through the early years (Open University Press). Her Nursery World series on child development can be bought online at: www.nurseryworld.co.uk/Books

- If you have a behaviour query for Maria Robinson, please e-mail it to: ruth.thomson@haymarket.com, or write to the address on p15

REFERENCES

- Gable, S (2009), 'Children's Relationships with other children in childcare', University of Missouri: http://missourifamilies.org/ features/childcarearticles/childcare4.htm

- McClure, A (2008), Making it better for boys in schools, families and communities. London, Network Continuum

- Trevarthen, C (2007), 'The Musical Art of Infant Conversation: Narrating in the time of sympathetic experience, without rational interpretation, before words'. Musicae Scientiae 2008, Special Issue

- Sax, L (2006), Why Gender Matters. New York, Broadway Books.