ABSTRACT
Children need friends. Friends will spend time with them and will help them with their social and emotional development. Siblings can be friends but children are also drawn to other children about the same age outside the family, in the neighbourhood, at school, and at other places where children are likely to meet. By 4 years of age nearly 80 per cent of children have a real friend. Even lonely, neglected, or rejected children can have at least one friend. On the other hand, 10 per cent of preschool and primary school children have no friends and 20 per cent have only one friend. In this chapter we discuss why this is so. Young children also can invent imaginary friends. It was once thought that a child with an imaginary friend might have psychological issues but more recent research shows that this is not the case, and that up to 60 per cent of children report having had an imaginary friend. In this chapter, we also discuss the value of imaginary friends.
