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When a friend of mine was thirteen years old, he felt cursed by his twenty-twenty vision. It seemed that all the popular kids in his class wore glasses. To fit in better with that popular crowd, he pretended to be having trouble reading. Even though his parents knew that their son’s vision was good, they arranged for his eye doctor to give him glasses with nonrefracting lenses so that he could feel better about himself.
Another friend, who attended junior high school in Brooklyn in the late 1950s, told me that he soon discovered that the height of fashion was to wear pants with a buckle in the back. The buckles were ugly and uncomfortable when he sat down, but those were small prices to pay for social acceptance. He even remembers wanting to paint a picture of a buckle on one of his less-fashionable pairs of pants so that he’d fit in.
My friends’ seventh-grade worries about being popular were and continue to be typical, even though the physical trappings of style have changed considerably. Children begin talking about popularity from their earliest school experiences. They watch the most popular children to find out whether they should wear expensive but loosely tied athletic shoes and brightly colored baggy shorts this year, or whether those styles are passé. They listen for what special words they should be using to show that they are up-to-date.
Parents also worry that their children may not be popular enough. We may imagine dire consequences if they are not in the "in" group. Yet psychologists who study popularity and how it differs from friendship say that most of the time popularity has little effect on a child’s development. Simply having one or more friends is much more important.
One way researchers begin studying patterns of friendships at school is by asking children to write down who their closest friends are, and seeing whether those claims of friendship are reciprocated, at least on paper. They measure popularity, however, by asking children to write down the names of two or three classmates they like the most and those they like the least. Usually a small cluster of children get the most votes on either end, showing them to be the most popular or the most rejected. The majority of children fall somewhere in the middle.
The children rated as most popular tend to have stable characteristics that can be seen as early as preschool. These include having a sense of humor, having good social skills, and being fun to be around. Adhering to traditional sex roles, being physically attractive, and being intelligent also seem to help a child become popular.
Despite the assumptions of many parents and children, studies show few long-term differences between the most popular children and the ones in the middle group. The children psychologists worry about the most are the ones who are consistently rejected. Not being among the most popular is not, by itself, a problem or a predictor of future problems.
Although many of the rejected children are treated that way because they’re bullies or they lack social skills, others are rejected simply because they don’t seem to fit in. They may wear the "wrong" clothes or look different in some other way. Weight seems to be important, too, especially if the child has been overweight for a few years.
Being rejected by classmates for several years as a child has implications for adulthood as well. Socially rejected children have a high probability of getting into trouble as adults.
Rejections can be a particular problem for children who have just started attending a new school, especially if they are young adolescents who didn’t make the transition with friends from their old school. They may feel lost, not only in the new buildings but also in their new social groups. These children’s heartfelt pleas for a particular article of clothing or hairstyle—even if it seems out of character—may be more than a simple submission to peer pressure. It may be a way of avoiding rejection and the problems that come with it.
Although forming and maintaining friendships is fundamentally your
child’s responsibility, especially during adolescence, there
are some things you can do to help if your child is having difficulty
or is being socially rejected. Here are some ideas:
- If your child says, "Nobody likes me," do not immediately disagree. It’s tempting to correct your child when you know such a statement is not true. But if you disagree quickly, your child will feel like even more of an outcast and will keep his feelings to himself.
Instead, ask your child why he feels that he’s disliked. Encourage him to keep talking, both to explain the situation and to ventilate his feelings. Ask what he (or the two of you) might be able to do to change the situation.
- Listen closely to your child’s suggestions. Seemingly silly things, such as cutting strategically placed holes in a pair of inexpensive pants, can make a young adolescent feel much more a part of a social group. Buying a new outfit or switching from eyeglasses to contact lenses can be a worthwhile investment—although it won’t make much of a difference if poor social skills are the underlying problem.
- Don’t worry about your teenager’s experimentation with such things as hairstyle and clothing. Remember that it’s important for adolescents to test ways they can be different from adults yet similar to their peers. Fashion is a relatively safe way of rebelling. Besides, in a few years your child’s lime-green baggy shorts will probably suffer the same fate as your old Nehru jacket or vinyl go-go boots. (A child psychiatrist friend of mine told me how upset he became when his teenage daughter wanted to dye a streak of her hair bright purple. His wife took him aside and reminded him of his own shoulder-length hair during college. The girl got the purple streak.)
- Get your child involved in outside groups such as YMCAs,
Girls Inc., and weekend sports programs that draw children from
other schools. Meeting new children can help break a cycle
of rejection. Sometimes a child just needs a better match so that
he gets practice making friends. Those skills and that new confidence
can then transfer to school.
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