Schools are banning best friends to protect students’ feelings

Business Insider – by Chris Weller

Members of the royal family aren’t often told what they can and can’t do. But just a few days into his first year of school, 4-year-old Prince George already faces a mandate: No best friends allowed.

Thomas’s Battersea, the school George attends, bans kids from having best friends,Marie Claire reports. Instead, teachers encourage all students to form bonds with one another to avoid creating feelings of exclusions among those without best friends.  

Jane Moore, a parent whose child attends the school, explained the idea on a recent episode of the British talk show “Loose Women.” “There’s a policy,” she said, “that if your child is having a party – unless every child is invited – you don’t give out the invites in class.” 

The trend of banning best friends has been growing for several years, and it’s spread beyond European borders to American schools as well. Some psychologists and parents argue kids become more well-adjusted when they have larger friend groups and can avoid negative feelings associated with feeling left out.

Critics, however, say the approach robs kids of the chance to form valuable coping skills. By grappling with mild social exclusion when they’re young, kids will emerge as more capable, resilient adults, these advocates argue.

People who support kids having larger friend groups in place of best friends tend to view these larger groups as healthier for nurturing a sense of belonging. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends,” Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute in St. Louis, told the New York Times.

Best friends, with their tight bonds and inside jokes, throw a wrench into that open environment, school officials contend.

In England, where the trend is still more popular, schools across South West London, Kingston, and Surrey have taken up the practice. Some accounts suggest the practice has moved up north to Canada, as teachers in big schools may shuffle friendships around to expose kids to a range of peers.

A wealth of research indicates best friends create value for people throughout their lives. One study recently published in Child Development found people with best friends enjoyed better mental health well into adulthood.

“We weren’t surprised that better adolescent close friendships turned out to be important, but we were surprised by just how important they turned out to be into adulthood,” Rachel Narr, University of Virginia doctoral student and lead author of the study, told New York Magazine.

Narr’s study also found kids with broader friend groups tended to grow up with higher rates of social anxiety than kids with smaller numbers of closer friends.

And although anti-best-friend policies may help kids in the short-term, research suggests the strong connections found among best friends could be vital for mental health in a world where adolescents are lonelier than ever.

Business Insider

4 thoughts on “Schools are banning best friends to protect students’ feelings

  1. These commie bastards will break any human bond they can. You can fill your human emotional needs with love and loyalty to the party.

    “….Best friends, with their tight bonds and inside jokes, throw a wrench into that open environment, school officials contend……”

    They throw a wrench into communism because they form a secret bond that allows for conspiracy against it.

    They want solitary slaves whose only friend is the government that enslaves them.

    1. But people don’t wake up. There are a million TV-brainwashed Moms telling their kids right now that they can’t have best friends….. because the Jew-TV said so.

      They’re comfortable with slavery, and their useless life is easier when they’re told what to do and how to think.

  2. It’ll be interesting is they “exempt” Prince George form this rule.

    And I will says this–had I not been allowed to have “best friends” I likely would have committed suicide at some point, because I was a non-conformist for the most part (my only conformity was love of rock music) and often a “loner” so I needed these best friends. Kids and teens need someone or two or so “someones” who will always have their backs. A crowd never will. And, if you are a non-conformist like I was and your teacher forces you to mingle with a group that has bully types that will bully you of you don’t–this seems like a suicide waiting to happen. But what do the conforming teachers and elites care when they are setting the boundaries to suit themselves?

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