Children's friendships are currently understood from a psychological perspective that focuses on the child's internal concept of friendship and how it develops. Very few scholars have directly examined how children's talk in the relationship influences the friendship or the perceptions children have of the friendship. A communicative perspective of children's friendships focuses on the communicative experience that informs cognitive transformations. The assumptions of an interactive focus include: (1) children talk friendships into existence; (2) children co-create friendship rules; and (3) children internalize friendship interactions to gradually form a model of friendship which then further structures interaction. Data to test such assumptions must come from naturally occurring friendships rather than limited choice school interactions, and must include observations of the friends talking as well as interviews of each friend about the talk. Quantitative analysis of coded interview responses may reveal characteristics of different types of friendships as well as the reciprocity of responses within friendships. Qualitative analysis of conversation transcripts may reveal patterns of talk describing relational rules and allow more global assessments of emerging dialectical tensions. A communication perspective of friendship demands time-consuming and labor-intensive research elements of design, data, and analysis. But such elements are more likely to lead to adequate descriptions of how peer relationships are formed and transformed over time by talk. (Forty-one references are attached.) (SR)