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Kaleidoscope of the Heart: Do today's children really need a friendship 'how to' book?
I heard from someone in the publishing industry that books that teach kids "how to be friends" are really selling. As someone without children myself, at first I didn't really understand what that meant. However, I went to a bookshop to see for myself, and found titles for kids like "Nakama" (Mate) and "Tomodachi" (Friends).
Between the covers are plenty of cute illustrations, alongside exhaustive advice on how to make and keep friends, with themes like "How to talk to someone for the first time," and "How to make up with a friend by e-mail after a fight." By the look of the pictures, the books appear to be aimed primarily at girls.
The books gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I thought, "No matter what era we live in, friends are always important," while on the other hand I was startled to think that anyone would need a book to study how to be a friend.
When I was a little girl, I had times when I was upset about not getting along well with my best friend in class, but there were certainly no books around to tell me how to solve the problem. I tried to remember what I did in those times, but couldn't. I think maybe nothing got really resolved, and I just went on to a different junior high school.
Even now, however, I exchange New Year's cards and e-mails with that friend, which means that, somehow, over time things got better.
Compared to my own childhood, how much do kids now try to resolve problems with friends on the spot? Maybe they talk to the person that they're interested in right away and then, if feelings are hurt, try to solve the problem by e-mail later. They may not be able to just leave a problem with friends alone.
On a related note, I have had people come to my office and ask me to introduce a book to them that will help solve their problems. "I don't want to waste any time," they say. "I'll buy the book on the way home from here. Please tell me the name of a book on basic psychology." I sometimes want to say, "It's that kind of impatience which is the biggest problem."
There are some problems in life that cannot be solved immediately by reading a book. It may seem obvious to say so, but people should not expect every problem to be solved by following the methods laid out in a book, even if they find new ways of thinking about things and take them to heart.
What will happen with the primary school kids that read these friendship "how to" books? I hope they do not see them as the be all and end all of social problem-solving, giving up hope if the methods in the books don't work, but rather read them with a sense of fun. This is what I thought as I stood in front of a mountain of this instructional literature. (By Rika Kayama, psychiatrist)
Click here for the original Japanese story
(Mainichi Japan) March 14, 2010