2

Finding and Choosing Good Friends

Social Functioning is an Area of tremendous gratification and often frustration for nearly everyone; it represents an area of constant trial and error. We are all learning to be better friends, better partners, and better people, no matter what our age, challenges, and gifts. Entering the world of others is of course classic fodder for adolescent anguish, even for the most adept social players. In fact, navigating the social world can be so fraught with challenges that studies show nearly one-third of all adolescents struggle with friendships. Although not all of these teens have any particular documented challenges, approximately 30 percent of teens find it difficult to develop and maintain meaningful friendships often because of two social phenomena: peer rejection or social neglect.

Although the majority of teens in middle school or high school are able to develop and maintain meaningful friendships and experience a healthy amount of peer acceptance, research suggests that about a third of teens are not so fortunate. Within that unfortunate third lay a large number of teens struggling with social challenges, shyness, anxiety, behavioral problems, and neurodevelopmental issues, all of which can stand in the way of a robust social life. That means if your teen or young adult is struggling socially, he or she is not alone, sharing social difficulties with the rest of the third of the population. This also means that there is room for improvement-which is what PEERS was designed to address.

Peer Rejection and Social Neglect

Let's look more closely at what kinds of situations your teen or young adult is encountering. It might be useful to consider what your child's true challenges are. If we consider the different categories of peer acceptance during adolescence, as shown in figure 2.1, we see that there are generally four types. The majority of teens, approximately 55 percent, experience what we might call average acceptance, meaning that an average number of peers know them and like them. Then there are those teens who are well known and often well liked, also referred to as the popular kids, making up about 15 percent of adolescents in middle school and high school. Although not all popular kids are well liked, they are generally accepted by their peers. Finally, there are two major groups of adolescents who struggle with their social lives. Research suggests that approximately 15 percent of teens are peer rejected, meaning that they're excluded and possibly even disliked by the larger peer group. The other major group of adolescents struggling with their social world includes those who are socially neglected, making up the final 15 percent of the pie. These teens are also set apart from the larger peer group, not because they're intentionally excluded by others but because they rarely even attempt to engage their peers. If you're concerned about your child's ability to make and keep friends, with nearly one-third of young people struggling socially, chances are that your teen or young adult is likely struggling with peer rejection or social neglect.

Figure 2.1. Categories of Peer Acceptance

Peer Rejection

Research suggests that roughly 15 percent of teens fall into the peer-rejected category of peer acceptance. When peer rejection is the culprit, the social barrier comes in the form of intentional exclusion from the peer group, which not only occurs in adolescence but may also continue into adulthood. Peer-rejected teens and young adults are those who are actively seeking out their peers and trying to make friends but are actively rejected. Rejection may occur for multiple reasons. Perhaps they appear socially awkward or "weird" as judged by their peers or are considered social outcasts because of their obvious differences. They may be seen as intrusive and interfering during social interactions, possibly barging into conversations or talking about their own interests with little regard for their conversational partner. They may have behavior and emotion regulation problems, their actions appearing impulsive and uninhibited, as if they didn't think before acting. Or they may be hyperverbose, talking incessantly with little notice of the interests of others. Peer-rejected teens and adults also include those who see themselves as class clowns: constantly trying to make jokes, only no one else is laughing. Or if others are laughing, heartbreakingly, they're laughing at them, rather than with them. Teens and young adults exhibiting these behaviors are often branded with a bad reputation. Yet, although reputations can be branding, they need not be permanent. PEERS has helped teens and young adults struggling with peer rejection learn to tone it down, pay attention to social cues, and blend in and make room for their peers. The exercises at the end of each chapter in this book were designed to teach your child strategies for minimizing such behaviors.

Social Neglect

The approximately 15 percent of remaining teens struggling socially are called socially neglected. For these teens, social impairment comes in the form of withdrawal and social isolation and may persist beyond adolescence and into adulthood. Socially neglected teens and adults are those who tend to fall between the cracks, often unnoticed by their peers and even their teachers or supervisors. Seen as shy or withdrawn, they rarely approach others or speak up during conversations. Often described as timid or introverted, they sometimes even experience depression or anxiety. Because they rarely engage others, unlike those who are peer rejected, those who are socially neglected don't necessarily struggle with a bad reputation. In fact, they may not have a reputation at all. They're the forgotten ones, the ones who keep to themselves, don't bother others, and typically go unnoticed. Yet, just like peer-rejected teens and young adults, they struggle to make and keep friends, only the social drama for them happens internally rather than externally.

As a parent and ultimately your child's social coach, it will be helpful to consider where your teen or young adult falls on the social continuum of peer acceptance. Concrete clues for unraveling this mystery will be provided later but be aware that identifying how your teen or young adult is perceived and treated by others will be a critical element to helping him or her find a source of good friends.

Finding a Source of Good Friends

We often mistakenly think that all a person needs to be socially successful are good social skills but another important component of a healthy social life is having a source of good friends. It's not only essential that we have the skills to know how to behave socially, but we must also have access to people with shared mutual interests if we are to be socially successful. If the recipe for social success is measured by the development and maintenance of close and meaningful relationships, then we will need to combine these two critical ingredients.

Many social skills groups in the community attempt to help kids with social challenges by bringing these kids together in the hopes that friendships will develop in the group. We call these programs friendship-matching groups. These programs are essentially like dating services for friends, where kids turn up and parents hope there will be a match or a good fit. The problem with these types of programs is that they're not only failing to teach the critical skills needed for making and keeping friends but they also fail to teach kids how and where to find their own source of friends. This failure will quickly become apparent when the friendship matching group ends and the teen or adult no longer has access to this source of friends.

The first step in PEERS is not finding a friend or matching friends; rather, it has to do with stepping back a bit and observing the social milieu. We do this by becoming aware of the social surroundings in which we exist and seeing what's out there socially. Then we look for an appropriate pool of companions for our teens and young adults.

The Social Landscape of Adolescence and Adulthood

Within every social milieu, at all developmental levels, there are multiple levels of peer affiliations. At the smallest level of peer affiliation is the clique. This typically includes a few close friends, often identified as best friends. At the middle level of peer affiliation is the social group. This may include dozens of peers, all sharing some common interest. These social groups are often identified with a name or label, which defines their common interest. For example, one...