SHARING YOUR CRAYONS
Why We Like Our Friends
When you're with your best friend, you do everything with them. They're there to play with you on the playground, you both have the same favorite color, and they even like the same ice cream as you! This is the person that is so special to you that you would even share your crayons with them.
Can you tell me why you like your friends? A lot of us would like to say it's because that person is nice, or maybe you get some things from them that you don't get from the other people around you, like candy, or maybe a group lets you play games that are more fun than the other games. I remember back in my kindergarten class, all of my friends lived in the same area. We lived on top of a mountain, and we could see each others houses from our bedrooms across the big corn field that ran between our back yards. We didn't know one another at first, but after we would play hide-and-go-seek in the big corn stalks a couple times, we became best friends, even in college!
Our need for friendship, even at such young ages, is because nobody wants to be lonely! We all like to be with even one other person, if not a bunch of our friends, so we have someone to talk to. (1) A lot of the time, these friends have a lot in common with us, but friends can come in all shapes and sizes, and there is no limit as to how many we can have! When we think of friends, we normally think of people who aren't related to us, but we can even be friends with our crazy uncle!
What does this have to do with why we like our friends? Our brain is like an ENORMOUSmulticolored crayon, and our emotions, or the things that made us happy, sad, sleepy, and even silly, are all of the colors! This is why you may have heard your mommy or daddy say that someone was feeling "blue" when that person was sad. Our brains have a super special ability that none of our other body parts can do! Our brains let us have these feelings by letting out little signals to other parts of our brain in order for us to know what emotion to feel. A lot of the time, emotions aren't as simple as one color, and we have to melt the colors of our emotions together to make an entirely new color and emotion!
Our brain does some pretty amazing things without us even knowing it! Not only does it let us feel happy and sad, and let us dance around when we hear our favorite song, but it is the main thing that lets us have friends! We can have friends because the brain releases these two special substances called vasopressin and oxytocin (2). These little chemicals are created in a special part of the brain called the pituitary gland (3), where these, and many other chemicals just like them, are made. These chemicals are responsible for making us feel happy and liking things and people when combined, and are a main contributor to the reward center in our brain! This means that these chemicals make us happy when we like something, and when they get to the reward center only moments later, we feel really good about liking that particular person or object!
So the next time you see your best friend, you can know why you have such a strong friendship with them that will last forever! Your brain worked hard to get you those friends, make sure you give yours and your friends a big thank you for liking one another, and remember, you never know when you just may make a friend, so be sure to share your crayons!
(3) Costello, R. B. et al, (Ed.) (1993) The American heritage college dictionary (3rd ed.). New york, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company
(2) Johnson, S., Selim, J. (2003). Love. Discover, 24, 4.
(1) Kagan, M. (2015). Why do we need friends? Retrieved from http://www.whyzz.com/why-do- we-need- friends
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Can you tell me why you like your friends? A lot of us would like to say it's because that person is nice, or maybe you get some things from them that you don't get from the other people around you, like candy, or maybe a group lets you play games that are more fun than the other games. I remember back in my kindergarten class, all of my friends lived in the same area. We lived on top of a mountain, and we could see each others houses from our bedrooms across the big corn field that ran between our back yards. We didn't know one another at first, but after we would play hide-and-go-seek in the big corn stalks a couple times, we became best friends, even in college!
Our need for friendship, even at such young ages, is because nobody wants to be lonely! We all like to be with even one other person, if not a bunch of our friends, so we have someone to talk to. (1) A lot of the time, these friends have a lot in common with us, but friends can come in all shapes and sizes, and there is no limit as to how many we can have! When we think of friends, we normally think of people who aren't related to us, but we can even be friends with our crazy uncle!
What does this have to do with why we like our friends? Our brain is like an ENORMOUSmulticolored crayon, and our emotions, or the things that made us happy, sad, sleepy, and even silly, are all of the colors! This is why you may have heard your mommy or daddy say that someone was feeling "blue" when that person was sad. Our brains have a super special ability that none of our other body parts can do! Our brains let us have these feelings by letting out little signals to other parts of our brain in order for us to know what emotion to feel. A lot of the time, emotions aren't as simple as one color, and we have to melt the colors of our emotions together to make an entirely new color and emotion!
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| Image 2 |
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| Image 3 |
So the next time you see your best friend, you can know why you have such a strong friendship with them that will last forever! Your brain worked hard to get you those friends, make sure you give yours and your friends a big thank you for liking one another, and remember, you never know when you just may make a friend, so be sure to share your crayons!
(3) Costello, R. B. et al, (Ed.) (1993) The American heritage college dictionary (3rd ed.). New york, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company
(2) Johnson, S., Selim, J. (2003). Love. Discover, 24, 4.
(1) Kagan, M. (2015). Why do we need friends? Retrieved from http://www.whyzz.com/why-do- we-need- friends
(Image 2) Cool brain [illustration] n.a. (n.d.) Retrieved from Google Images: http://images.sodahead.com/polls/003507543/115130305_fotolia_33810761_subscription_xxl1_xlarge.jpeg
(Image 1) Pixelated crayon art [illustration]. n.a. (n.d.) Retrieved from Google Images: http://img.weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/crayon-portraits-2.jpg
(Image 3) Puppy and kitten friends [illustration]. n.a. (n.d.) Retrieved from Google Images: http://cdn.cutestpaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/l-photo_0024.jpg
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