Teaching a difficult 4.5 year old to "make friends"

[AlaskaHQ]

Would love any advice. DS is 4.5 years old.

He is the oldest in his group at Preschool, and starting proper school in September.

He really struggles with social skills with peers. He just doesn't seem to know how to make friends, unless the other child is younger/quieter and prepared to let DS take charge of everything.

Are there any programs or books or anything that people would suggest.

We just have had another horrendous afternoon, meeting up with friends, where my son has just ended up in tears over and over again, whilst the other children play happily.

one thing thats sticks in my mind from reading a child development book is that you should model behaviour and vocab when you are playing with him, eg. 'can i play with you?', 'what are you playing?, can I join in', 'do you want to play with me?' etc

Also just read a story to my 3 yr old, (who's also not very social and always takes charge, called 'I'm sorry'. very simple story but useful for friendship

Thank you - I've just ordered that book on amazon to try. And we'll have a go at the vocab idea.

We are just slightly panicking, re school next September, as it doesn't seem to be getting any better. He has confirmed difficulties with "emotions" and "social skills" (we were referred to a behavioural pediatrician on some other behavioural issues, a few months ago) but getting very limited guidance on how to help that. His current preschool is lovely, and great at encouraging good play & interaction, but I am slightly dreading the unsupported environment of the school playground September onwards.

I suggest the book "Talkability" published by Hanen (www.hanen.org) but available cheaper from Winslow.

don't be put off that by the fact that it's useful for kids with an ASD diagnosis. It does say on the first page that you don't need to have ASD for it to be useful for you.

the great thing about it is that it breaks all these things down into simple skills and that takes some of the heat/heartbreak out of it for the mother - it makes it feel a bit more like teaching any other skillset that the child finds hard (like a not-particularly-musical kid might find piano lessons hard but given enough help could play the piano reasonably well)

And, although it's aimed at the 7+ age-group, it's never too soon for you as a parent to read "The unwritten rules of Friendship" - this will stop you suggesting poor strategies and help you see better the kind of successful strategies that successful socialisers use (eg they rarely walk up and say "can I play?". Instead they watch the game then find an opportunity to make themselves useful by returning the ball to play, that kind of thing)