Children who experience social acceptance from peers are more likely to succeed as preschool   and elementary school students and to have positive transitions through childhood and adolescence. Having friends has been associated with children’s positive self esteem and reported experience of emotional security and social support. Friendship can support adaptive social processing skills including perspective taking and the development of social skills too, which is important for interacting in many social environments.

Friendship can lessen the tendency for negative, uncomfortable and distressing emotions that accompany stressful peer experiences and as a result support emotional regulation. Emotional regulation refers to the ability to take action by changing behavior to modify feeling status for the purpose of accomplishing interpersonal friendship.  It requires new demands on young children’s social skill as friendship is different in content, construction and symmetry from adult- child relationships. They require children to suspend self- centered view points of their friends as equal to their own. Though friends help and support one another, children’s friendship are typically based on mutual sharing of activities and interest. To have a positive and enjoyable interaction with a friend, social, emotional and co- regulation is important. This requires that both parties are aware and responsive to the mood status and behavior of each other and then have a mutually shared meaning of the activity. To do this, children need to be socially oriented and not physically, cognitively or emotionally withdrawn.