Coming to a US school near you: banning best friends. Uh-huh.
Schools should ban best friends, writes psychologist Barbara Greenberg inU.S. News. Besties are “exclusionary.”
Restricting exclusive friendships is an“emerging trend” in European schoolsthat’s starting to catch on in the U.S., she writes.
While some think “kids should toughen up” and “learn to deal with the natural shifts in friendships,” Greenberg thinksemotional distress could be avoided if friends are “good” but not “best.”
Parents shouldn’t push their child’s school to enact a best-friend ban, she writes. They should encourage their kids to cultivate a small group of close friends rather than putting all their social and emotional eggs in one basket.
Via Joanne Jacobs