These children have difficulty making friends and lack good peer models. What is a common social impact?

• A. High social engagement
• B. Excess paring
• C. Over-competitiveness
• D. Loneliness due to limited peer models

Answer: (D)

When children have trouble making friends and lack good peer models, they miss many chances to observe, imitate, and practice social interactions with others. This leads to fewer opportunities to learn how to initiate play, share, take turns, and respond to social cues. Over time, the lack of these ongoing peer experiences can make them feel isolated and left out, which commonly shows up as loneliness. The idea is that social well-being grows from regular, positive peer engagement, so limited peer models naturally lead to that sense of loneliness.

Other options don’t fit as well because having high social engagement or over-competitiveness would require more peer interaction and modeling than is available in this scenario, and “excess pairing” isn’t a typical outcome of lacking peer models.