Peers become increasingly important in middle childhood. With their new awareness of reality (concrete operations), children are painfully aware of their classmates’ opinions, judgments, and accomplishments.

Children have customs, rules, and rituals that are passed down to younger children from slightly older ones. Jump-rope rhymes, insults, and superstitions are part of peer society. So are clothes: Many children reject clothes that parents buy as too loose, too tight, too long, too short, or wrong in color, style, brand, or decoration.

Communication with peers is vital; children learn the accents and phrases that their friends use. Parents may proudly note how well their children speak a second language but may be distressed when their children spout their peers’ curses, accents, and slang.

Independence from adults is acclaimed. Peers pity those (especially boys) whose parents kiss them (“mama’s boy”), tease those who please the teachers (“teacher’s pet,” “suck-up”), and despise those who betray children to adults (“tattletale,” “grasser,” “snitch,” “rat”). Keeping secrets from parents and teachers is a moral mandate (Gillis, 2008).

Because they value independence, children find friends who defy authority, sometimes harmlessly (passing a note in class), sometimes not (shoplifting, smoking). If a bully teases or isolates a child, it is hard for the other children to defend the one who is shunned.

FRIENDSHIPS Teachers often try to separate friends, but developmentalists find that friends teach each other academic and social skills (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011). Moreover, children learn faster and feel happier when they have friends. If they had to choose between being friendless but popular (looked up to by many peers) or having close friends but being unpopular (ignored by peers), most would choose to have friends (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011). A wise choice.

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Friendships become more intense and intimate over the years of middle childhood, as social cognition and effortful control advance. Six-year-olds may befriend anyone of the same sex and age who is willing to play with them. By age 10, children demand more. They share confidential secrets and expect loyalty. Compared to younger children, older children change friends less often, become more upset when a friendship breaks up, and find it harder to make new friends.

Older children tend to choose friends whose interests, values, and backgrounds are similar to their own. By the end of middle childhood, close friendships are almost always between children of the same sex, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (Rubin et al., 2013). This occurs not because children naturally become more prejudiced in middle childhood (they do not) but because they seek friends who understand and agree with them.

Gender differences persist in activities (girls converse more whereas boys play more active games), but both boys and girls want best friends. Having no close friends at age 11 predicts depression at age 13 (Brendgen et al., 2010).

POPULAR AND UNPOPULAR CHILDREN The particular qualities that make a child liked or disliked depend on culture, cohort, and sometimes the local region or school. For example, shyness is not valued in North America, especially for boys in middle childhood, but this is not true everywhere.

Consider research on shy children in China. A 1990 survey in Shanghai found that shy children were liked and respected (X. Chen et al., 1992). Twelve years later, Chinese culture had shifted and a survey from the same schools found shy children less popular than their shy predecessors had been (X. Chen et al., 2005).

A few years later, a third study in rural China, far from Shanghai, found shyness still valued; it predicted adult adjustment (X. Chen et al., 2009). By contrast, a fourth study from a Chinese city found that shyness in middle childhood predicted unhappiness later on—unless the shy child was also academically superior, in which case shyness was less disabling (X. Chen et al., 2013).

Other traits also vary in how much they are admired. At every age, children who are outgoing, friendly, and cooperative are well liked. In the United States, by the end of middle childhood, a second set of traits also predicts popularity: being dominant and somewhat aggressive (Shi & Xie, 2012).

There are three types of unpopular children. Some are neglected, not rejected; they are ignored, but not shunned. The other two types are actively rejected: aggressive-rejected, disliked because they are antagonistic and confrontational, and withdrawn-rejected, disliked because they are timid and anxious.

Both aggressive-rejected and withdrawn-rejected children misinterpret social situations, lack emotional regulation, and may be mistreated at home, which increases the risk of rejection at school (Stenseng et al., 2015). Unless they are guided toward reciprocal friendship with at least one other child, they may become bullies and victims.

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BULLIES AND VICTIMS Bullying is defined as repeated, systematic attacks intended to harm those who are unable or unlikely to defend themselves. It occurs in every nation, in every community, and in every kind of school (religious or secular, public or private, progressive or traditional, large or small). Victims are chosen because they are powerless, with many possible characteristics.

As one boy explained:

You can get bullied because you are weak or annoying or because you are different. Kids with big ears get bullied. Dorks get bullied. You can also get bullied because you think too much of yourself and try to show off. Teacher’s pet gets bullied. If you say the right answer too many times in class you can get bullied. There are lots of popular groups who bully each other and other groups, but you can get bullied within your group, too. If you do not want to get bullied, you have to stay under the radar, but then you might feel sad because no one pays attention to you.

[quoted in Guerra et al., 2011, p. 306]

Bullying may be any of four types:

The first three types are common in primary school and begin even earlier, in preschool. (Cyberbullying is more common later on, and it is discussed in Chapter 10.)

A key word in the definition of bullying is repeated. Almost every child experiences an isolated attack or is called a derogatory name at some point. Victims of bullying, however, endure shameful experiences again and again—being forced to hand over lunch money, to laugh at insults, to drink milk mixed with detergent, and so on—with no one defending them. Victims tend to be “cautious, sensitive, quiet . . . lonely and abandoned at school. As a rule, they do not have a single good friend in their class” (Olweus, 1999, p. 15).

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Although it is often thought that victims are chosen because their appearance or background is odd, this is not usually the case. Victims are chosen because of their emotional vulnerability and social isolation, not how they look. Children new to a school, or who do not know how to make friends, are especially vulnerable.

Remember the three types of unpopular children? Neglected children are not victimized; they are ignored, “under the radar.” If their family relationships are good, they suffer less even if they are bullied (which they usually are not) (Bowes et al., 2010).

Withdrawn-rejected children are often victims; they are isolated, feel depressed, and are friendless. Aggressive-rejected children are called bully-victims (or provocative victims), with neither friends nor sympathizers. They suffer the most because they strike back ineffectively, which increases the bullying (Dukes et al., 2009).

Unlike bully-victims, most bullies are not rejected. Although some have low self-esteem, others are proud; they are pleased with themselves and have allies who admire them and classmates who fear them (Guerra et al., 2011). As already mentioned, some are quite popular, with bullying a form of social dominance and authority (Pellegrini et al., 2012). Over the years of middle childhood, bullies become skilled at avoiding adult awareness, picking victims who are rejected by most classmates and who will not resist or tell.

Boy bullies usually physically attack smaller, weaker boys. Girl bullies usually use words to attack shyer, more soft-spoken girls. Young boys may bully girls, although girls ignore rather than bully boys. By puberty (about age 11), cross-sex bullying usually stops, and sexual teasing becomes apparent. Boys who are thought to be gay become targets; suicide attempts are one consequence (Hong & Garbarino, 2012).

CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF BULLYING Bullying may originate with a genetic predisposition or a brain abnormality, but when a toddler is aggressive, parents, teachers, and peers usually teach emotional regulation and effortful control. If home life is stressful, if discipline is ineffectual, if siblings are hostile, or if attachment is insecure, those lessons may not be learned or even taught. Instead, some children develop externalizing and internalizing problems, becoming bullies or victims (Turner et al., 2012).

Peers are crucial. Some peer groups approve of relational bullying, and then children entertain their classmates by mocking and insulting each other (Werner & Hill, 2010). On the other hand, when students themselves disapprove, the incidence of bullying plummets (Guerra & Williams, 2010). Age matters. For most of childhood, bullies are disliked, but a switch occurs at about age 11, when bullying becomes a way to gain social status (Caravita & Cillessen, 2012).

The consequences of bullying can echo for years, worsening with age. Many victims become depressed; many bullies become increasingly cruel. The worst bullies seem unmoved by their victims’ distress: Such bullies become more aggressive with age (Willoughby et al., 2014).

Unless bullies are deterred, they and their victims risk impaired social understanding, lower school achievement, and relationship difficulties. Decades later they have higher rates of mental illness (Copeland et al., 2013; Ttofi et al., 2014). Compared to other adults the same age, former bullies are more likely to die young, be jailed, or have destructive marriages.

CAN BULLYING BE STOPPED? Most victimized children find ways to halt ongoing bullying—by ignoring, retaliating, defusing, or avoiding. Friends defend each other and restore self-esteem (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011). Friendships help individual victims, but what can be done to halt a culture of bullying?

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We know what does not work: simply increasing students’ awareness of bullying, instituting zero tolerance for fighting, or putting bullies together in a therapy group or a classroom (Baldry & Farrington, 2007; Monks & Coyne, 2011). This last measure tends to make daily life easier for some teachers, but it increases aggression.

Another strategy is to talk to the parents of the bully, but this may backfire. Since one cause of bullying is poor parent–child interaction, talking to the parents may “create even more problems for the child, for the parents, and for their relationships” (Rubin et al., 2013, p. 267).

The school community as a whole—teachers and bystanders, parents and aides, bullies and victims and bystanders—needs to change. In fact, the entire school can either increase the rate of bullying or decrease it (Juvonen & Graham, 2014). For example, a Colorado study found that when the overall school climate encouraged learning and cooperation, children with high self-esteem were unlikely to be bullies; when the school climate was hostile, those with high self-esteem were often bullies (Gendron et al., 2011).

Again, peers are crucial: They must do more than simply becoming aware, as some naive adults believe. In fact, some bystanders notice and then disengage from the victims, which increases bullying. Others are sympathetic but feel powerless (Thornberg & Jungert, 2013). However, if children are helped to empathize with victims, feel effective (high in effortful control), and refuse to admire bullies, then classroom aggression is reduced (Salmivalli, 2010).

Efforts to change the entire school are credited with recent successful attempts to decrease bullying in 29 schools in England (Cross et al., 2011), throughout Norway, in Finland (Kärnä et al., 2011), and often in the United States (Allen, 2010; Limber, 2011).

A review of ways to halt bullying (Berger, 2007) finds:

This final point merits emphasis. Longitudinal research on whole-school efforts finds that some programs make a difference and some do not, with variations depending on the age of the children and the indicators (peer report of bullying or victimization, teacher report of incidents reported, and so on).

Objective follow-up efforts suggest that bullying can be reduced but not eliminated. It is foolhardy to blame only the bully and, of course, wrong to blame the victim: The entire school community—including the culture of the school—needs to change. That leads to the final topic of this chapter, the moral development of children.