At all ages, companions may be of three different kinds. What they are and what role they play in the socialization of young children are explained below:
Categories of Companions
Associates
Associates are people who satisfy an individual’s companionship needs by being in the same environment where they can be watched and listened to. There is no direct interaction between the individual and the associates. At any age, associates can be of either sex and of any age. Adults, for example, enjoy watching and listening to children just as children enjoy watching and listening to adults.
Playmates
Playmates are people with whom individuals engage in pleasurable activities. Their age and sex are, on the whole, less important than the interests and skills they have in common with the individual for whom they serve in this role. Children prefer playmates of their own sex.
Friends
Friends are not only congenial playmates, but they are also people with whom the individual can communicate by exchanging ideas and confidences and by asking or giving advice. Throughout childhood and adolescence, the most congenial and most satisfactory friends are those of the individual’s own sex and level of development, who have similar interests and values.
In early childhood, companions are mainly associates and playmates. While young children may refer to some of their favorite playmates as their “friends,” few play the role of friends during the early childhood years.
During the first year or two of early childhood, when contacts with others are mainly in parallel or associative play, children’s companions are primarily associates. Later, when they engage in cooperative play, their companions become their playmates. At this time, many young children have one or more favorite playmates with whom they not only play but with whom they also communicate their feelings, emotions, interests, and even their aspirations for the future. These children then play the role of friends as well as of playmates. Only as early childhood draws to a close and the egocentric speech of young children gradually becomes more socialized does this happen.
In the selection of companions, children prefer other children of their own ages and levels of development who can do what they are able to do. Children younger or older may serve as associates but they are not satisfactory playmates because their play is on a different level.
Young children give little consideration to the traits of those they associate with. In fact, some traits they find unacceptable in playmates, such as foolhardiness and cutting up, they find amusing in associates and may even envy them for their “nerve.” However, when it comes to selecting playmates and, later, friends, the traits of these individuals become very important.
Not only do they want playmates who have the play skills they admire but they want their playmates to be good sports, cooperative, generous, unselfish, honest, and loyal. These qualities are even more important in the children they select as friends. Because young children are relatively unaware of socioeconomic differences, and even less of racial differences, these factors are of little importance in young children’s choice of their companions.
Substitute Companions
When companionship needs are not met, either because of geographic isolation or because the only other children available are of different ages or levels of development or have different interests and values, young children often try to fill their needs by substituting imaginary playmates or by treating a pet as if it were a real person.
Most young children, at some time or other, have pets – dogs, cats, hamsters, white rats, goldfish, birds, etc. – but the ones that meet their needs for companionship best are dogs and cats because they can play with these animals as if they were people. This they cannot do with birds, hamsters, goldfish, and other common pets.
Less common as substitute companions are imaginary playmates – children who are a product of the child’s imagination. Lonely children create playmates in their imagination and play with them as if they were real playmates. These imaginary playmates have the qualities children who like real playmates to have and play as their creators want them to play. Because young children’s vivid imaginations are not held in check by reasoning ability, they actually believe that their imaginary playmates are real children and treat them as such.
