Gentle boy & rough play at school

[Brokendisc]

Hi my DS aged 5 seems to be struggling with friendships at school because he doesn’t enjoy rough play. It’s a fairly small school and he tells me that all the boys in his class enjoy mostly playing games that he thinks are “scary” and involve “fighting”. He prefers to play tag, hide and seek etc. There is one boy in his class who will sometimes not get involved in the rough play but he’s a bit erratic and when he drops my son to play these games he will tell him he can’t play with them my son gets really down about this like he was today. I’ve asked him to join in with the girls games but he says the girls say that boys are yucky.

Any suggestions for how to help him as it break my heart to see him down. Should I just accept this is playground life? Should I try to help my son to be less affected by this stuff? Should I encourage DH to do more rough play with him?

I'd speak to school gently about the girls excluding him. It's ridiculous at 5 that we accept little kids saying this nonsense

I hate how they become so stereotypical in how they play, even at a young age. I may be bias as my 5 year old's best friend is a girl; he's also not a rough and tumble boy at all. Could you organise play dates with the quieter boy/one of the girls?

Aww, dear of him, mine was the same. This is why we send them to school, so they can learn to negotiate all this stuff.

Its hard, but it's probably nowhere near as bad as it sounds and you just need to give him some words of encouragement and let him get on with it. Have a word with his teacher to put your mind at rest.

@TonTonMacoute Yes I have wondered if it seems worse than it really is in either his mind/ what he is reporting to me or how I am perceiving it. I don’t want to dwell on it too much with him but also do want to figure out how to help if I can. In general he is happy to go to school but has odd days like this. His teacher last year seemed to think he was fine socially so I don’t know what to make off it.

@mynameiscalypso Yes it’s ridiculous. I think he could suit playing with some of the girls. The boys all seem to enjoy rough play or at least do participate unlike my son. We have had some play dates with girls and whilst they are ok to play together at home once the girls are together in the playground it’s very much girls group and boys group.

I'm not sure making the girls the support humans is appropriate. Maybe the boys could be asked to do non-rough play once in a while? I know it's easier to force the girls to solve all the issues but it never works the other way around.

My DD (ADHD - hyper type) would have loved to rough-play with the boys but she was roundly excluded. The one boy that made friends was told by the other boys not to, so he didn't. I didn't bloody force them to.

I hardly think asking certain groups of kids not to deliberately exclude others is asking them to be "support humans". How about we don't encourage stereotyping in schools.

How about we don't encourage stereotyping in schools.

Great, start with the boys.

BTW OP I feel your pain and know how hard this is.

I also hate when girls are the solution to all boys' social ills at school, and thence forever.

I'm surprised the girls are saying that. I teach in a small school with small year groups (3-12 pupils) so by necessity children play with the other sex right through Y6. I don't think girls are the solution but the school would do well to encourage more playing between the two groups because it will save years of friendship issues if the pool of potential friends is bigger.

This is what I'd do! If he doesn't like rough play that's absolutely fine and I wouldn't be trying to get him to play more that way to fit in.

I do also think part off the issue is that my son likes to have only one best friend. He was like this at nursery too where he seemed fixated on one child. Unfortunately the child he likes in his class will drop him whenever he feels like it and exclude him. I’ve tried to explain why it’s important to have more than one friend but my son will say “But I only like X and only want to play with him”

I think you maybe have a few separate but connected things to tackle. It’s very unlikely that a school will allow rough play to the extent that he’s likely to get hurt. So dig into what he’s actually scared of. I’ve seen many children who are scared of what their parents term “rough play” completely unable to take part in any sport that might involve physical risk - which is almost all mainstream sports. Risking physical injury in the right circumstances isn’t a bad thing. It’s about teaching them to assess risk and minimise through appropriate behaviour. Not avoiding the activity itself.

Second task is teaching him that risk and play types are not gender specific so telling him to play with the girls isn’t the answer.

Third, which I suspect is your biggest problems, is not to fixate on a single friend. Especially at this age. They have a lot of growing up to do. If he fixates on one he risks missing out on relationships with others.

I agree

@TheBossOfMe I think you’re right. I don’t think the rough play is dangerous. He just doesn’t like it. I’ve seen a boy pounce up behind him and grab his school bag and this upset my son. Earlier today he asked me how to play a game called zombie tag. I explained it and said we can play it together so he can learn. When I started pretending to be a zombie he said it’s scary and got upset with me. Whereas my younger daughter was really excited to play along (so I doubt I was being too scary!)

and yes it’s becoming more apparent to me that the single friend issue is a big one but no idea how to get him to understand why it’s important to broaden his circle

No answers, but solidarity. My 5yo DS also isn’t into rough play, but he’ll go at it for ages with his best friend (a girl) and my 3yo DS, who love rough playing together.

One day my DS’s best friend was being particularly boisterous with him. Her dad asked my son “do you enjoy this sort of playing?”, trying to check that he was ok. My DS’s response was “no, not at all, but I love [Best Friend] and my baby brother, so if this is what they want to do, I try to go along with it.” Sort of sweet, mostly heart breaking.

You sound like a really lovely mother who is trying her best for her DS :)

I’m speaking from experience having been that “risk avoider” child. It’s one thing wanting to be safe. It’s another thing to fear things that take you out of your comfort zone. It’s taken me years to unlearn those fears and I slightly regret being scared of pushing boundaries in the physical world as much as I’ve done in the past. Your DS might not be the same but for me it was a bit of a “I’m not as good as other people at this so it’s scary and I can’t do it”. That’s not good and hasn’t been a positive force in my life. I might just be projecting though so ignore if not relevant.

The flip side is I’m fearless in the world of work. Go figure. I have no idea why one is a safe space and one isn’t :)

Oh and the single friend fixation isn’t unusual at all at that age. My DD was the same. What worked for her was me arranging different activities (walk, swim, play date at home, even days out) when we would talk about who is the right person to invite to make it the most enjoyable day - either for DD or the other child. Teaching her that not one size fits all was good.

@TheBossOfMe Aw thanks. I do think you’re onto something. I think I am a bit risk averse too when it comes to physical activities or at least I was growing up but rough physical play wasn’t part of my childhood probably because I enjoyed more stereotypically girls activities and my friends were all girls.

I think as you get older you can understand why it’s important to get out of your comfort zone or have a wide circle of friends but when you’re little you don’t really understand it and my sons case you end up really resisting it.

It's a while ago now but we enrolled our daughter into judo, I think, when she was little. Gave her a fair bit of confidence and helped her a lot. She's always been very gentle.

I think this is so important - widening the social circle really boosted my DC’s confidence (and mine when I was a left-out teen and started going to drama classes with kids from other schools). Any mum friends with kids you can meet for a play date? Clubs? Even if it’s not a deep friendship for your DC it really helps to list all their ‘friends’ when they’re feeling low, and when the ‘best friend’ at school inevitably lets them down somehow.

Speak to school about the rough play. We don’t allow it at my school. Also mention to them the term ‘yucky’ being used by the girls. The teacher can talk about this with the class as they’ll be learning their class rules and how to treat each other nicely.

The school should not allow rough play, they should be setting appropriate boundaries.

Many schools provide equipment to encourage different types of play eg hoops, bat and balls. Maybe check with school whether they have things like that, and if not maybe PTA can raise funds for them. Definitely talk to school about the rough play and the boys are ‘yucky’ type comments

I'd talk to the school and find out more about what's going on. Play time shouldn't involve games that children feel are scary or exclude some children.