Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
– Anaïs Nin

An article on the National Library of Medicine website, quotes the book From Neurons to Neighborhoods on the importance of friendships in early childhood:

“Establishing relationships with other children is one of the major developmental tasks of early childhood (see Rubin et al., 1998, for an excellent review). How well children fare at this task appears to matter…It matters to their future, as the patterns of peer interaction in early childhood increasingly predict whether children will walk pathways to competence or deviance in the tasks of middle childhood and adolescence.”

The Exchange Essentials article collection, “Friendships,” offers supportive ideas to help early educators encourage young children’s friendships. As a bonus, there are also articles that speak to the importance of adults modeling their own friendships for children to observe.

Some of the articles include:

• A Classroom Community – Where Everybody Knows Your Name by Joni Levine
• Building Relationships with Young Children by George Scarlet
• On the Rocky Road to Friendship – Emerging Peer Relationships by Kay Albrecht
• On the Way to Friendship – Growing Peer Relationships Among Infants and Toddlers by Janet Gonzalez-Mena