Friendships

Post by Janet Griffin

now

Re: Discussion Form 7

When I started school I was very shy and scared. As time went on I didn’t get along with another girls and I didn’t like boys at the time. Soon after I meet this girl and we became best friends. She was African –American and I was Caucasian. We were one year apart from age difference. Our friendship started out voluntary then turned into intimacy as time went by. Till this day we are still as close as the day we meet. No, I was never in a clique or crowd. I always kept to myself and was very shy. I was never a nerd or play sports. I wasn’t into drugs so I never fitted into one of the categories for a clique or crowd. I just had my one best friend thru all my years of school. We even graduated high school standing beside each other.

Yes, we co-ruminate which means we had conversations about our personal problems. We still do after all these years. I think it’s very healthy for my development. My parents were always there to listen and help me but my friend lived the same situation at school like I did. We had a better understanding and coping strategies that help us get thru. We would talk about how our parents gave more privileges to our middle siblings but would be strict on us since we were the oldest. We would talk about school and homework. Now we talk about our relationships and about my god child.

“Dominance hierarchy means the ordering of individuals within a group in which group members with lower status defer to those with greater status” (human development p. 202). I think I don’t fall into dominance hierarchy since I was never in a group of people. I never played sports or was in any organizations in school. I kept to myself and I only had one friend.

The category of peer status I was in was neglected. “As applied to children’s popularity children who are ignored –neither like nor dislike by their classmates” (human development p. 203). I was never bullied or hurt when I was in...