Think your kid's too clingy? That might not be such a bad thing.
A new study from the University of Illinois links preschoolers attachment to their mothers with their ability to forge friendships.
In other words? If they're in tight with Mom, they have an enhanced sense of empathy. They're better able to make friends, but also better able to sustain friendships.
Researchers used data from the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early
Child Care and Youth Development to look at the way more than one thousand kids interacted with their mothers and then with their peers. Following the kids from age three (preschool) on through first grade, they found the kids who had secure relationships with their mothers also had a better grasp on language at age four and a half than their peers.
"When kids feel comfortable talking about their emotions, especially
their negative emotions, it increases their social competence with
classmates and leads to closer friendships," explains researcher Nancy McElwain of the University of Illinois.
It's hard to assess this one internally - how do you determine whether you and your child have the best relationship? But watching my friends with their children, I see direct evidence of this theory. One friend, in particular, worried that her second child was too firmly attached to her coattails when she sent him off to nursery school. Small for his age, a "mama's boy," he could easily be the picked on kid. And yet, a friendship forged with another little boy in his class is one of the strongest I've seen - especially for two four-year-olds. He's been able, at four, to determine which kids he likes, which kids he doesn't - and already allied himself so closely with his little buddy that the two have an almost intuitive sense of where they fit in one another's lives.
Secure in his sense of where he fits in at home, and how much he's loved by his parents, he's been able to transfer that sense of self over to the school building, not bothering to be pulled into the playground politics.
Do you see a difference in how your kids relate to other kids from the way they relate at home? Do you think they're too clingy to you?
Image: LIve Science
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