Empirical Study On The Peer Relationship Of Mild Mentally Ret Arded Children In Regular Classes In Elementary School

The peer relationship is a special interpersonal relationship which is established by persons in same age or with equivalent level of mental development. It plays an irreplaceable role in children’ mental developments and socialization. For the mentally retarded children in regular classes, good peer relationship is beneficial to their growth in many ways, such as formation of individuality, value and social ability. The good peer relationship is the main reason of their socialization.Mild mentally retarded children in regular classes in Z district, Shanghai are studied in this research. I studied the basic conditions, key features and affecting factors of these children’ peer relationships through documentation research, questionnaire, interviewing and observing in the campus for 3 months. Based on this, I tried to give intervention training to 2 children with bad peer relationships for 3 months, aiming to study the feasibility of improving the bad peer relationships of mentally retarded children.The results showed that:1. The mentally retarded children in regular classes in elementary schools have the same desire for friendship as normal children. They all tend to resolve conflicts through friendly negotiation rather than violence. And the special children are more honest than normal children in many ways.2. The mentally retarded children behave poorly in monitoring social events. It shows in difficulty to find topic to talk about, to understanding others words and to deal with conflict.3. The mentally retarded children are more easily attracted by academic records, appearance and good character when they choose friends.4. The mentally retarded children in regular classes are generally passive in peer communicating strategy. They merely raise a talking topic and behave as a leader. Meanwhile, they show strong feeling of loneliness.5. The main factors affecting mentally retarded children’ peer relationship include personal social ability, home education ways, acceptance of their teachers and classmates.6、Suitable intervention measures would significantly improve the peer relationship and peer communicating strategy of mentally retarded children in regular classes.Compared with similar researches in China, this study paid more attention to the peer friendship and peers’ acceptance, rather than teachers’ attitude to mentally retarded children. This work set a new direction for studying mentally retarded children’ peer relationship. In addition, intervention training and its results have reference value for peer relationship improvement.