Valentine's Day is coming and, somewhere, the mere thought of it is filling a child with dread.

The decorated Valentine's box on his desk can seem like a ballot box. By casting a red-and-white vote or withholding it, the class gets to publicly declare whether he is liked or rejected, worthy or unworthy.

Most schools have smartened up enough to make Valentines mandatory for everybody, but there will always be ways to differentiate. Who gets the pretty card with the Barbie, who gets the plain one? Who gets the treat tucked inside? Who is noticeably excluded from the excited talk about someone's Valentine's party?

Not that there is a special season for this kind of social pain. For some children, every day on the playground, every gym class, every bus ride home can be another chance to be hurt or excluded.

''To those of us who knew the pain of Valentines that never came. To those whose names were never called, when choosing sides for basketball,'' Janis Ian sang in the 1970s. Her song, At Seventeen, was popular because everyone thought it was written for them.

Hurt stabs deep

A ''wonderful boy, gentle and kind,'' is excluded by classmates and comes home crying. A first-grade girl is the only one left out of a birthday party. A high school girl vacillates between loving her friends and hating them.

It was hard to tell who hurt more, the children who were taunted and shunned, or the parents who loved them.

''There is no topic where parents bring as many feelings of helplessness, anxiety and confusion than their children's social life,'' Dr. Thompson told parents. Then he taught them a few things about childhood relationships.

First, forget about ''popular.''

''Researchers started out assuming friendship and popularity are the same thing, but they're not,'' Dr. Thompson said. ''It's not necessary to be popular, but it is essential to have a friend. That's what protects you.''

A friend doesn't have to be a best friend. It can be a brother or sister. It can be someone who is socially outcast himself. A friendship will give a child almost everything he needs from peer relationships - intimacy, mutual aid, companionship, nurturance. While it does not provide inclusion - that comes only from the group - a decent friendship will at least give children a place to discuss the mysterious dynamics of the group: who's in, who's out, should we care?

But, Dr. Thompson warned, a parent can never be that friend. The confusing world of social relationships is one that children, in large part, have to learn to negotiate for themselves. The small pains we wish to spare them are the very things that teach them about human behavior, he says.

Home as a refuge

For most children, it will be enough to get them through childhood with relatively minor scarring. But for one child in 10, it will not.

These children are rejected by their peers. Bullied. Ignored. Humiliated. They need special help learning and practicing social skills. They need opportunities to demonstrate their own areas of giftedness, and raise their esteem in the eyes of their peers. And they especially need teachers, parents and other adults to take a hard stand against cruelty.

If we want children to grow up compassionate and confident, as neither victim nor bully, then all of us must make spaces where children learn to cooperate, accept and be kind to one another. No child's education is complete until he has learned these things.

Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202.

RAMSEY ARCHIVE