Background: DS is 4.5, late August born, and started reception in September. It took him about half a term to settle in, and since then he seems to have loved it and is doing well in reading and maths.
His teacher mentioned at parents' evening in autumn that he tended to play by himself. I wasn't too worried as he was still young and he seemed happy enough anyway. She put him in a "social group", where I guess a handful of children who need help with social interactions are put together to help develop some skills. After this he started to talk about one boy quite often.
Parent's evening last week - teacher said he still mostly plays alone and is quite quiet generally. Alongside this, he came home in a really grumpy mood last week and eventually told me that no one wants to play with him. I have told him to try and suggest a game the other child might like, or to find someone who doesn't have anyone to play with and play with them. He tried this today with no success.
I chatted to the teacher today, and she said she will try and facilitate some interactions within the classroom. She said he always tends to approach the same boy (the one from his social group), but that boy often doesn't want to play as they have different interests.
He's been to a couple of whole class parties recently. At one he kept coming back to me because no one wanted to play with him. At the other, DH said he had a good time but mostly was flitting around/playing by himself. DH thinks he tends to "get in peoples' faces", and noted that he was going up to other children with his chest thrust out to show them the light on his superhero outfit. He can be quite immature in this way - for example he tries to be friendly in playground before school and will approach other children, but often says something like "look, I have green gloves on", or "my grandma lives 200 miles away".
He has had one playdate so far and I'm starting to arrange others. I'm not sure how they will go, as I haven't seen much evidence of him playing cooperatively with other children (more often just running around after each other), but then I guess I don't see him with other kids that often really. I'm also not sure if he has many interests in common with his classmates. He is not sporty at all and isn't interested in football. In terms of tv, he has always just been obsessed with one show at a time and rejects watching anything else. Since he turned 3, the main shows he has watched are Disney Cars, Paw Patrol, and now Numberblocks. He spends a lot of time playing with plastic numberblocks that he got from a magazine, and drawing pictures of them. I've tried to get him to watch things like Rescue Bots in the hope he will have something to talk to his classmates about, but not much success so far.
If anyone has any tips on developing his social skills I would be grateful. I can't stop worrying about him at the moment and wondering how he is doing at school.