ABSTRACT Children who experience difficulties in their social relationships with their peers are at risk for later problems of social and emotional adjustment. However, little is known about the antecedents of these individual differences across children. This research will explore the contributions of the family in the development of social competence with peers. Children and their families (both mothers and fathers) have been followed yearly since kindergarten and will be evaluated again when they are in grade 3, during the current grant period. The research will evaluate several aspects of this issue, namely: (1) the impact of parent-child interaction on peer relationships, (2) the impact of the parent as advisor and (3) the role of the parent as a provider of opportunities for contact with other children. A multimethod, longitudinal approach will be used involving self- report and observational measures in both naturalistic and laboratory contexts. The research will focus on emotional processes including children's emotional understanding and cognitive representations of social relationships. Also to be examined is the role of the social context, the neighborhood, in determining parental management activities and children's social behavior. The research will permit us to identify (1) the changing role of the three parental influence sources across time (2) the relative importance of these three sets of strategies as a function of children's social acceptance and (3) the cross time relationships between changes in these strategies and changes in children's peer acceptance. This research will help identify how families contribute to the development of children's social behavior with their peers and suggest strategies for the modification of family patterns that would, in turn, lead to improvements in children's social competence.
