Should schools ban best friends to encourage inclusivity? British parenting expert Liz Fraser thinks so, but the public wildly disagrees (and so does this author). Fraser cites four-year-old Prince George’s school, Thomas’s Battersea, as setting a positive example for its ban on best friends.  According to the Daily Mail, Fraser, a mother of four, told Good Morning Britain that having a best friend is too “territorial.” “It immediately [separates] this friend out as being different from all other friends, which immediately sets you into a mini group,” explains Fraser.

“Some children don’t have a best friend. I didn’t have a best friend. If I did have a best friend, I think it’s because no one wanted to be friends with us.”

The British expert also asserts that men don’t have best friends (which would appear to contradict the concept of “bros before hoes”).

“Boys don’t have best friends,” said Fraser. “They have mates, whereas girls have a best friend. It’s very territorial, it’s quite possessive, and for me there’s an element of it’s actually not to do with this friendship, it’s more about telling everybody else this is my best friend.

“I think it’s a good idea to try and keep things a bit more broad.”

Fraser urges elementary school teachers to encourage children to be friends with groups of children, rather than with just one best friend. But psychologist Dr. Mark Rackley, appearing on the same segment, disagrees, stating that having a best friend teaches children how to form relationships. Moreover, said Rackley, best friends can be crucial for only children, who don’t have the benefit of long-term, supportive sibling relationships.

Viewers agreed with Rackley, with the backlash against Fraser, severe. Some called the idea of banning best friends “ridiculous,” while others called the concept “rubbish” (and worse). The controversy was so huge, it made its way over to the United States, where Dr. Barbara Greenberg weighed in in a column for U.S.News:

“The phrase best friend is inherently exclusionary. Among children and even teens, best friends shift rapidly. These shifts lead to emotional distress and would be significantly less likely if our kids spoke of close or even good friends rather than best friends. And, if kids have best friends, does that also imply that they have ‘worst friends?’ A focus on having best friends certainly indicates there’s an unspoken ranking system; and where there is a ranking system, there are problems. I see kids who are never labeled best friends, and sadly, they sit alone at lunch tables and often in their homes while others are with their best friends.”

Nonsense, says Bryan G. Stephens, in a reader op-ed he contributed to the conservative website Ricochet called, Ban Best Friends?

“Adults deciding who kids get to be friends with? That will not only breed resentment, it will reduce engagement in school. I have seen children without a best friend at school (in 6th grade I was one), and it hurt my performance in school. In 12th grade, when my then best friends and I broke up, I made it a point to find a new best friend, one whom I am still best friends with, so take that, social do-gooders.

“Think of all the friends I ‘excluded’ by having this one.

“To look at it another way, having someone force the kids in 6th grade who did not like me to be my ‘friend’ would have made things 100 times worse. I was already being bullied. Having teachers force apart cliques to include me would have [bred] resentment on their part, and guess who would have [borne] the brunt of their ire?” wrote Stephens.

 

Stephens’ brief defense of best friends had a positive response from readers. So positive that not a single reader disagreed with him. Readers at Ricochet, it seems, saw a nefarious political motive behind the drive to ban best friends in schools. One commenter described such bans as coming from “Big Brother,” with others suggesting the ban on best friends as a construct of the radical left, or in reality, a desire to ban the “free market.”

Like Stephens, this author has been on both sides of the equation. Bullied and excluded in the early years of primary education, then quite popular for a time, with best friends coming and going from 6^th grade through high school graduation and beyond into adulthood. To ban best friends would have meant grudging acceptance, which would have caused immense hurt. It would have hindered, not helped my self-esteem to be tolerated.

Best friends, on the other hand, are invested in keeping a relationship going, much as a married couple wants to keep a marriage healthy and strong. It takes work to build and maintain any long-term relationship. Through the months and years, best friends learn to listen to one another and grow. Best friends acquire experience in what makes things worse, and perhaps more important, they learn what makes things better.

Is there a down side to best friends? Not if you’re teaching children to be kind and nice to everyone. Having a best friend doesn’t mean you have to be mean to, or exclude anyone who is not your best friend.

Children should be taught to include other children at play and in activities so their feelings won’t be hurt. They should either invite all their classmates to their birthday parties or give out invitations outside of school (so the one or two children not invited won’t find out they’ve been excluded). Children should be taught not to mention party invitations within hearing of children who might not have been invited. Empathy for less popular children should be stressed and inclusion encouraged. Children should be asked, “How would you feel if no one wanted to play with you?”

But that doesn’t mean that schools should ban best friends or that children should not form best friend relationships. Being nice to all and having a best friend are not mutually exclusive concepts. Think about it this way: you can be friendly to people and still be committed/married to a single partner/spouse. You can be inclusive and still be exclusive and this is not at all a contradictory idea.

Yes. Teach these concepts to children: Be nice to all. Don’t bully or tease less popular kids. Try to include them in your parties, play, and other activities.

But say yes, as well, to BFFs. In allowing your child to have a best friend, you’re giving your child an opportunity. You’re allowing your child to learn how to have a close relationship. This is a crucial life skill.

By having a best friend, your child learns about commitment and trust; how to listen and get past disagreements; and yes, even how to be married and parent children. Long-term relationships—whether with a parent, a sibling, a spouse, or best friend—all involve the same critical skill sets.

So schools, please don’t ban best friends. A ban on best friends would only keep children from acquiring the experience they need to cultivate and maintain life-partner relationships. A school ban on best friends would eliminate the possibility of experiencing what it means to be extra special to just one person. It would mean not having the chance of gifting that feeling of being extra special to someone else.

And finally, you’d be robbing students of the joy and pleasure of having someone who understands them better than anyone else in the world, in a world that is darned confusing.

Know this: a best friend is an anchor and a rock and a pleasure.

Now why would anyone want to take that away from our children?

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