To be worried about DD not making close friends.

[Dammitthisisshit]

DD8 is in year 3. She seems to get on ok with lots of people in her class but has never had a best friend.
She gets sad as everyone she knows goes on play dates and she almost never gets asked. She went on 1 a year ago, but that’s 1 in the whole of year 2. Since then we’ve had ~ 6-8 times when we’ve invited her friends over (different ones). They always accept so I’m assuming they can’t dislike her. But she never gets invited back.

I don’t think anyone’s nasty to her or excludes her in class, but she says she doesn’t really play with anyone in particular - ie if she asks to play they let her but she doesn’t have anyone who waits for her to finish lunch, or who runs to her when they have to pair off etc. she’s lonely. She gets sad as everyone is paired off and because each pair sees each other outside school they talk about it in school.

It’s been the same for years and I’ve always thought it would sort itself out, but as we’re in the 4th year of school I don’t think it will.

I know everyone is different, and if she was happy on her own it wouldn’t matter. But she’s not. Aside from pretending that we’ve never noticed that play dates aren’t reciprocated and just keeping inviting potential friends over to ours is there anything I can do?

Aah Op, you sound like a lovely mum and I can see why you’re worried, it would upset me too. But likelihood is she just hasn’t clicked with anyone yet. They’re still young in the grand scheme of things. Does she have any hobbies or classes outside school? That might be a good place she can strike up some new friendships. You could also mention it to the teachers and they might be able to engineer something eg seating plans so she sits with some of the children she already has a relationship with but can build on it a bit?

I could talk to the teacher I guess. I tend to think they have bigger things to deal with than someone who’s on the surface ok, just a bit lonely. But I guess if I say something they can choose to address it or not.

DD does go to a couple of clubs, in one she has made a friend, though she’s started saying how ‘X is her only friend’, which I’m uncomfortable with as this girl X is quite popular so I suspect that for X DD is just one of many friends and not one that she’d think of as close. So whilst I’m keen to develop their friendship if I can I also don’t want DD to get upset if it never develops into a close friendship. I suspect DD is so desperate for friends she scares them away a bit!

Is it a multi form intake and if so do they mix the classes at any point? My DC’s school mixes up for y3 and for both my kids that was a bit of a turning point friends wise, aided by new kids joining around then.

My daughter never gets asked on play dates, probably because I work full time (there is a group chat for the part time/stay at home mums i understand). But she has made really good friends through after school club!

Have a chat with the teacher and ask her to be honest - is your daughter perhaps unintentionally doing things that deter the other kids?

But also don't romanticise the best friend pairings - it's not always very healthy for kids to be paired off as "best friends". You are heading into peak friend drama age as well...
Having a broad group of friends is better so try and reassess the way you think about it and the message that you are giving her about having a "best friend".

And keep inviting kids over to your house regularly to build bonds. Yes, maybe ideally they'd immediately invite your daughter back but not everyone can or wants to host a lot. You may need to do a lot of hosting to help build those bonds if it isn't happening naturally at school so far.

Just 1 class per year unfortunately (we thought that would be good as bigger schools seemed a bit intimidating 🤷🏻‍♀️).
though there have been leavers/new joiners but that doesn’t change the dynamic enough maybe ?

It’s hard to organise isnt it! I get that, and maybe she’s clicked more with others that have full time working parents, but I just don’t think so, I’ve been very ill over the last 2 years so it’s been difficult to have play dates but when we could we’ve invited friends over for her, just wish it was reciprocated.

Is it a school or area where best friends and pairs are a thing?
Round here, best friends are discouraged in pretty much all the schools. Group friendships are encouraged instead by most parents. Doesn’t solve all problems but might have helped your “floating” DD.

Just see you mention that you have been very ill during the past two years. Sorry to hear that. Depending on how your DD experienced that, there are all sorts of reasons why she mightn’t have bonded closely with children at school. So things may improve for her with time.

I appreciate ‘best friends’ have their dramas but poor DD is just so sad when she sees her sister or classmates go off for play dates. Initially I just said to her it would happen and to give it time but now I really don’t know what to say. It might not 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Sorry, replies aren’t posting so I’ll try quoting!
I think it is a school or class thing a bit, certainly best friends aren’t discouraged - teachers tend to split best friends up in classes as they distract each other, and they rotate class tables but that’s to get them working rather than for friendship manipulation.

My daughter was like this all the way through primary. She never had a 'best friend' just lots of friends.
She's now yr8 and it's still the same. She can feel very left out when her friends pair up and go off with their best friends but there's tbh not much I can do to help.

I was worried but I recently went up the school for a look around, where lots of kids in her year helped out. She knows and speaks to, what feels like, everybody. They generally all seem to really like her.

She goes to the local youth group and is happy to go on trips with all the kids who attend, no matter if they are in her friendship group or not.

She's likeable and confident whereas some of the girls she hangs around with wouldn't speak to someone who wernt in the group. So in that respects she's better off with a broad group of friends then just clinging on to one.

I’ll ask the teacher.

I’d be delighted if she had a group of friends. I haven’t suggested to her that she should have a best friend - it’s her that gets sad and says she has no friends. Maybe she has a warped sense of what friends are? But when I ask her what she thinks friends are, tell her how it’s good to get on with lots of people and ask her why she thinks she doesn’t have friends she tells me about play dates and sleepovers the others are having.

i think she’s right, if ever I see her in assembly she doesn’t seem particularly close with anyone. And little things - they have elected class representatives for various things and she’s never been elected despite putting herself forward all years up to this one. I asked her if she was going for anything this year and she said there was no point as everyone just votes for their friends and not for her. She’s maybe a little more mature than some of the others in her class so maybe doesn’t click with a few of them, of course that’s fine, but maybe she does something that puts them off her?

Thanks. That gives me hope! Did you find anything to make it better when she felt left out? Or is it just a case of accepting that it’s ‘one of those things’.

Some children really seem to struggle with friendships. I don’t want to say it’ll get better, because it might not.

My older dd doesn’t have any friends.

She had one friend - a ‘best friend’ - from Reception to Year 2, but it was a very volatile, intense relationship, with frequent fallings out. I was privately relieved when that little girl emigrated to New Zealand with her family at the end of Year 2, as I thought a fresh start would be good for my dd.

But she ended up with no friends at all. She went to the library every single lunchtime to read. For the last two years of primary, she did manage to make 2 friends, but drifted apart from them when they ended up at different secondary schools.

At secondary, she had people she got along with, but had zero interest in seeing them outside of school. And when classes got mixed up going into GCSEs and then sixth form, she had no drive to keep in touch with people she was no longer automatically seeing everyday.

I assured her she’d find her tribe at university like I did, but she didn’t.

She’s 26 now. She has a fulfilling career, but no social life outside of work. She does everything by herself - day trips, cinema/theatre visits, holidays.

I’m sad about it, and I worry what her life will look like when we’re gone, but she seems to have no interest in putting herself out there and trying to make friends.

I could’ve written parts of your message, although here there is one girl who dd would call her best friend but it is not necessarily reciprocated which I’ve found very hard to manage and dampen expectations around.

it is hard watching your child struggle, especially if you have another child who hasn’t had the same difficulties. But like another poster has said, my older daughter has always had a small group of very tight friends but she doesn’t push out from them at all, and is quite intimidated by a lot of the other kids in her year (she won’t come to the park with me anymore, for instance, I’m case someone from her year is there and she feels awkward). My younger daughter will chat to anyone in her year and doesn’t find working or interacting in different groups hard at all. She is involved in scouting which is great and has helped her start to make some friends across different year groups at school, and just generally think she is more confident and capable in an unfamiliar scenario than her sister.

hopefully she will find her tribe soon, I’m still hoping my dd does, but we can’t do it for them and that’s really tough. Much sympathy from me!

OP I can see why you're upset by this but I actually don't think it's anything to worry about. To be honest I think the value of "best friends" is somewhat overplayed: it can very often lead to painful "breakups" and when it gets to secondary age a lot of toxic behaviour. When I look back at my school years the people who I've become lifelong friends with weren't my "best friends", but just people wo I had a good rapport with. The "best friend" thing can be very intense and often about status-marking, rather than actual friendship. I think encouraging children to have good relationships with lots of people at that age is probably healthier in the long term.

From what you've said, it doesn't sound as if your DD struggles socially, just that she doesn't have one particular special friend. As long as you don't feel she's being ostracised I would just encourage her to keep doing what she's doing, keep her self-esteem up as far as you can and support playdates when they happen.

The worst thing you could do would be to make her feel that you're worried on her behalf, that could intensify feelings of doubt and low self worth.

@DDammitthisisshit when she was younger and I knew there was a party or something she wasn't invited too I'd always plan to do something so it took the edge off a bit. Like oh; you couldn't of gone anyway we had X planned.
Now she's that bit older she's well aware she's not the first chosen and is left out of things.
I just talk to her about how different she is, how much confidence she has.

Just this week the school have offered a trip. She's asked me to book her in, so I asked if her mates were going. "Nope one wouldn't go because the other wasn't going so none of them are coming now"

I'm glad she's not missing out by following the others. One day she will see how much she's experienced because she has that confidence.
(Completely different to me as a child)