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In middle childhood, where academic issues and concerns dominate considerations of an individual's school performance, the importance of peer relations and social development is sometimes overlooked. Moreover, although children may be keenly aware of peer problems, they often attempt to conceal them out of embarrassment. The result is that difficulties are recognized and treated only when the behavioral complications of social inability are severe or deviant enough to attract attention. At this point, parents may feel either helpless and ineffective at promoting their children's social development, or demoralized and angered by the resultant behavioral problems.
THE SOCIAL SCENE
The Tyranny of the Peer Group
Once children have formed primary relationships with family, they begin to establish social ties with peers. Peers are of comparable age and development, yet have different backgrounds and experiences. Although the pivotal role that peers play in childhood socialization has been a focus of increasing research over the last decade, its importance has been appreciated in explicit and often agonizing detail by generations of school children. The quests for friendship, popularity, and the avoidance of humiliation at all costs are relentless campaigns, which may well take precedence over academic stardom or pleasing parents.
Children feel enormous pressure to define themselves by being like others their age, and the drive toward conformity becomes a nearly tyrannical force. In junior high school social pressure may reach its utmost intensity. Many early adolescents feel self-conscious and vulnerable, are keenly aware of stereotyped gender rolçs, and are heavily preoccupied with the need not to deviate from narrow norms. This period also encompasses the widest variation in cognitive and physical maturation, adding the irony of developmental heterogeneity at the very time youngsters are seeking uniformity.
Certain settings (such as the bus, cafeteria, gymnasium, and shopping malls) provide the backdrop for fierce and telling social transactions. Being labeled or called names is an ever present threat. Immunity from unkind appellations is a sign of social success. Contemporary derogatory terminology includes such words as wimp, airhead, and mental case. On the other hand, to be called awesome or radical is gratifying. Interestingly, the classroom is one of the most protected arenas for peer relationships.
This characterization of the social milieu ignores the nonconformist who prefers a more inner-directed...