5 yo mean girls- how to help?

[maisiebabe]

My DD regularly plays out in the street(safely) with neighbourhood girls of approx the same and it's becoming more and more stressful for her - and me. They seem to be isolating her or, very possibly, her behaviour to try and win/ keep their friendship is isolating her. She wants to play but there's always an odd number and that's a crowd so she's starting to lie about who's being mean to who ( shes never the mean one) and attention seeking by hiding their toys then helping to find them. She's a kind, confident child and I want to defend her to the other girls and support her but Im worried about how these friendships are going and that she's lying to me quite readily and not accepting responsibility for her behaviour. I don't want to write this off as 'girl' behaviour....

Well in my opinion 5 is rather small to be out alone...BUT if it's safe etc then it's obvously your call....but a group of kids that small playing unsupervised WILL result in this kind of thing.

If she is hiding toys in order to get the others to look for them and resulting in her finding them this indicates to me that the games the others are palying generally are too sophisticated or not interesting to her....so she's trying to control things...that in my opinion is enough for you to limit or stop her playing out unsupervised.

Can you ask her to invite one other child into your house or garden to play? Then you can watch them more closely and see what the problem is....

When you say the same age, is she the youngest?
Because at that age they do see age as very important, and if she's the youngest (or youngest but one-the youngest gets babied, the next youngest is a nuisance sometimes) they may feel that they're too old for her.

Hiding their toys sounds potentially nasty. If they find that she is hiding them it really could kick off badly, and she will be isolated.

I assume you mean by "she is never the mean one" as that is when she tells you. That's fairly common, people always tend to see their actions as justified, and others as plain mean.

I don't think she's being "nasty" hiding their toys...it DOES sound though, like she's not coping with the routine of playing out and what is accepted in terms of games.....and as DeWe says, a year is a lot when you're talking 5 and 6 or 7.

By "nasty" I meant a nasty situation in the making. She hides the toys. One of them sees her hide it, they accuse her, she denies it, they refuse to play with her... that sort of thing can stick for a long time.

Yeah, she's the youngest. The child she gets on least well with is 8. The situation is really bugging me, although she was out today and there were no dramas.

Well that's a big gap...and an 8 year old will soon find out if DD is hiding things....I wouldn't let my 5 year old out to play with 8 year olds.