Learning The Rules: The Anatomy Of Children's Relationships

Reporting what children themselves say about their personal and social relationships, this book illuminates the personal constructions children use to order their interpersonal worlds, as well as the actual content and meaning of their relationships. In its interpretation of children's verbalized social rules with parents, siblings, peers, and teachers, the book provides a contextually informed framework from which to explore such issues as the impact of parental authority on child compliance, sibling rivalry, close friendships, and disclosure.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Social Competency and Friendships in Middle Childhood: Lord of the Flies Revisited 2. Social Rules and the Implicate Order: Toward a Sociology of Childhood 3. Phenomenology and Relationships: The Birth of Social Rules 4. The Rules and with Whom They Are Used: Compliance and Autonomy 5. The Rules and with Whom They Are Used: Self-Control and Conflict Management 6. The Rules and with Whom They Are Used: Mutual Activities and Obligation 7. Social Competency and the Sorcerer's Apprentice: The Importance of Parents 8. Siblings: The Relationship You Don't Have to Earn to Keep 9. Social Rule Rationales: The Child as a Relationship Philosopher 10. Concluding Remarks Appendix 1: Extracting the Social Rules from Interviewing Appendix 2: The Recursive Interview Protocol Appendix 3: Data Analysis

About the Author :
Brian Bigelow has been teaching child development for many years and is most noted for his research on children's friendship expectations. More recently his interests have extended to how children and adolescents order their social understandings which has given rise to research on social rules. Current activities include children's social construction of educational goals and the effects of social class on personal relationships. His parallel career as a clinical psychologist has extended to forensic issues. Dr. Bigelow currently teaches at Laurentian University in the Psychology Department and in Child and Development Studies. Geoffrey Tesson received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1982 and is currently Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and a member of the Centre for Research in Human Development and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Laurential University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. He has contributed chapters on socialization and development to various volumes, including K. Anderson, et al., Family Matters, J. A. Meacham, Interpersonal Relations: Family, Peers, Friends, J. Lafontant, L'Initiation thematique a la sociologie, and P. Anisef and P. Axelrod, Transitions: Schooling and Employment in Canada. He has co-authored, with Brian Bigelow and John Lewko, previous papers on the development of social rules in children and adolescents. John H. Lewko, Ph.D., is Professor and Director of the Centre for Research in Human Development at Laurentian University. His launching of the current social rules research program has led to more recent work on mental models and decision-making related to risk perception and changes in adolescent risky behaviors.

Review :
"Makes an important contribution to the literature on communication and children...also highlights the need for the communication field to increase its attention towards children....Learning the Rules breaks new ground....The book offers an interesting, first look at the complexities of children learning to manage rules in diverse relationships and raises many interesting questions for future work." - -Communication Education "This book offers noteworthy contributions to both the field of child development and to the emerging field of personal and social relationships. The authors have completed groundbreaking...research, resulting in new descriptive data about children's family and peer relationships, from the perspective of children themselves....The rich semantic map of rules and rationales revealed by [the authors] will provide a descriptive foundation for research on school-age children's relationships for years to come." - -Contemporary Psychology