CHILDREN WITHOUT FRIENDS - IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE AND POLICY

Children's friendships provide a logical focus for school mental healt h programs: they act as early warnings of and preventive interventions for both scholastic and socioemotional distress. This article examine s developmental investigations of children's friendships and children without friends and explains how they challenge current conceptualizat ions of social interventions and their supporting policies. Developmen tal changes in children's understanding of friendships and strategies to identify children without friends are discussed. Factors that co-oc cur with any may contribute to friendlessness are discussed: behaviors with peers that disrupt interactions; difficulties with the social co gnitive tasks of peer interactions; limited empathic abilities; limite d confidence in social situations, and constrained opportunities to en ter into social activities. Recommendations for practice and implicati ons for school policy are given.