Children with Adhd

It is widely accepted that children's peer relationships contribute to their psychological adjustment throughout life. There have been many studies that show the associations between peer acceptance and psychological adjustment but few have shown the associations between friendship and psychological adjustment. The role of friendship is just as important in psychological adjustment as peer acceptance is. Peer acceptance refers to the degree to which a child is accepted by a group. Friendship involves having a close relationship with someone where the feeling is mutual. There is a distinction between peer acceptance and friendship, but when it comes to psychological adjustment these two will sometimes overlap. Skills such as cooperation and communication enhance friendships (Asher, Parker, and Walker, 1996). Children who are better accepted children usually have higher-quality friendships. Being accepted allows the child to feel appreciated. Being accepted by their peer group helps develop their cooperation and communication skills when dealing with a group of people and this will lead to having the ability to establish a more meaningful friendship. Parker and Asher (1993) demonstrated that acceptance and friendship are not redundant constructs. These researchers found that some highly accepted children had no close friends in the classroom, but half of the low accepted children had a best friend. This supports the distinction between peer acceptance and friendships. Also, peer acceptance and friendship each make their own unique contributions to different areas including self-esteem, loneliness, depression, and anxiety. Children who are widely accepted but have no close friends will probably experience loneliness, low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety because all though they are accepted, they do not have anyone close to them to confide in. Children who hold close friendships but are not accepted by their peer group will face the same problems because they may feel only good enough for their friend and not for a group of people. Only being accepted by a group doesn't allow anyone to get to know the real you. If we lack having friends, we have no one besides our family who know us a person.

One of the major theories that propose why children's peer experiences are related to their adjustment was described by Sullivan (1953). Sullivan studied social relationships from a developmental perspective and proposed that certain interpersonal needs emerge during different stages of life and development. He also proposed that particular relationships are best suited for meeting the individuals' needs at each stage in their life or development. Sullivan believed that from birth onward, a person's personality is shaped by their relationships from others. We all learn from our environment and learn how to react to certain situations based on our surroundings and what we are familiar with. We learn