How sociable are your 3 year olds?

[mylifemykids]

DS started nursery last April just after he turned 3. It's school attached and a lot of the children moved up to reception class in September.

Since then DS seems to have attached himself to one little girl (she's also attached to him luckily!) but he isn't overly interested in playing with anyone else. He does have a couple of other children he will play with if his best friend isn't there but would much rather play on his own. He does seem happy but I kind of wish he had a bigger group of friends.

Is this normal for a 3 year old? I never had many friends at school (in fact I only had one best friend and a few back up friends in case she wasn't there) and I hated school because I lacked the confidence to make more friends. Am I worrying unnecessarily or should I have a word with his teacher?

[PuzzleRocks]

Bumping for you.

[katalex]

Hi mylifemykids. My dd is 3.9 and exactly the same as your ds. She goes to pre-school with her cousin and doesn't play with any of the other children. The teachers assured me that it was quite normal. Her cousin didn't go on Monday because she was ill. Dd told me that she asked another little girl if she would play with her but she didn't answer and no one else wanted to play doctors with her I was the same as you at school. I was never good interacting with groups so if my friend wasn't there then I was on my own.

I'm hoping dd will make more friends when she starts school in September. She's unlikely to go to the same school as her cousin so she won't be able to rely on any existing friendships.

[MorocconOil]

My 2 DSs were the same at that age. DS1 who is now 9 has group of about 6 friends he plays with off and on. DS2 is 7 and doesn't seem to have a best friend. He plays football at break-times which seems to be his way of socialising
DD who is 3 is a different animal altogether. She started school nursery last week and has a little circle of friends already, who she chats away with. It is quite a change for me, as I was used to the DSs playing on their own.

[mylifemykids]

Thank you for the replies.

Mimizan I also have a DD who is 2. She is a sociable, chatty little thing and plays with more children in the playground waiting for them to go into nursery than DS does! Must be a girl thing!

I am going to mention it to his teacher I think and see if maybe he does play with other children and just doesn't tell me about it, or if the children in his class are all the same

[MorocconOil]

I agree about it being a girl thing, although Katalex's DD sounds like our DSs.
Try not to worry about it. It might be he'll be a football type of boy at school. There does seem to be a bit of a divide between those boys who play, and those who don't.

[sophiaverloren]

My DS is 3.6. Since he started nursery last March, he is most attached to 3 other kids (boy twins and a girl) and if all I had to go on was what he told me, I'd think they were the only people there!
When I pick him up, he's always with one of them - but he's they are the last to leave club, which partly explains this I think.

However, at parents evenings, everyone has told me how friendly DS is and how he plays with all the other children at different times, and 2 mums told me that they hear all about him and how their DCs play with him and I'd never heard of their DCs!!

So the truth is never so simple. Mylifemykids - sorry, maybe I missed this, but do you know this from the teachers or just from what DS tells you?

[mylifemykids]

Well he told me yesterday when his best friend wasn't there that he didn't play with anybody else and couldn't even conjour up a name to shut me up like he usually does lol

At his parent's evening before Christmas I did ask about it and his teacher seemed to struggle to tell me who he plays with and kind of ignored my question. I don't know if that was just because she didn't know or because he doesn't play with others?

[Kathyis6incheshigh]

My dd was like this until recently - she claimed her only friend was Raffaella and she didn't want any other friends.
Now all of a sudden they are all her friends and she wants to marry three or four of them.

Perhaps it's a phase?

[sophiaverloren]

It's terribly difficult isn't it? I don't think the teacher's reaction was particularly helpful though.

I've no experience with any other 3 year olds but my own, so I'm probably not much help. It's so easy to project your own fears though - you say he seems happy. But I don't think it will harm to have another chat with the teacher, even if just to find reassurance that he is happy!

[mylifemykids]

'It's so easy to project your own fears though' That's what DH says. DH loved school, plenty of friends all in different 'groups' and he has no worries about DS at all. I think maybe it is just my own experience playing on my mind

[happystory]

It's a stage of play. Children go through 3 stages (though they might overlap) Solitary, parallel, where they play next to another child/children, ie at sand tray, but don't interact, then interactive, sharing, talking etc. At preschool we normally only see the really interactive play a couple of terms before they go to school.

Don't worry!