A Better Response to Rejection

(Jacqueline Larma - Associated Press)

What makes long-term rejection most likely? An inability to regulate behavior and emotions that may be expressed in numerous ways.

Many tend to reinforce each other: For example, the child who is initially left out because she cried easily becomes a target of bullies, increasing her isolation and thereby reducing her chances of practicing social skills. This makes early intervention critical.

Failure to be friendly and welcoming to others is one common reason for exclusion, according to Steven Asher, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Children who are poorly accepted by peers, he says, often have "an absence of positive social skills like being cooperative, helpful and kind."

Shy kids may be too timid to be friendly; bossy kids may not recognize the importance of taking turns and cooperating. Kids who engage in disruptive behavior -- making strange noises or acting in an unpredictable way -- also alienate peers, says Asher, putting children with such disabilities as attention-deficit disorder and Tourette's syndrome at especially high risk.

Competence -- either in academics or in sports or other activities -- is generally protective. Though teens sometimes label conspicuously smart kids geeks or nerds, intelligence itself does not place a child at high risk for rejection, Asher says.

What does isolate many bright children is a lack of common interests. "A gifted child whose interests are not shared widely by other kids misses out on this basis for connection," he says.

Aggressiveness is a more variable risk factor. In preschool and elementary school children, impulsive violence often intimidates peers and leads to isolation, research shows. But once kids reach middle school, some gain status by using aggression deliberately -- for example, pushing others around to win dominance.

How children perceive their friendships is also critical to their mental health and behavior. For sensitive children, the tendency to see ambiguous events as negative can increase risk for depression and anxiety: Perceived rejection is more closely connected with depression than the real thing.

A 2005 study of 159 adolescents in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology found that being bullied while also being sensitive to rejection was linked with symptoms of depression.

Whether kids act out in response to rejection tends to differ by sex and perception. According to Cillessen's research, boys who feel especially excluded tend to lash out; rejection-sensitive girls tend to blame themselves and keep quiet. By contrast, girls who don't seem especially sensitive to rejection but experience a lot of it tend to externalize their response and behave poorly.

In designing interventions, researchers have learned it's critical to take perceptions, responses and reality into account. Whether a child actually has no friends or simply believes that matters greatly in terms of what will help, according to Cillessen.

School cultures also influence outcomes. In the course of working at five schools, former New York social worker Jessie Klein, now assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Adelphi University, learned that to be effective, programs must be integrated into a whole-school focus on inclusiveness, community and tolerance.