7 yo making friends

[Pea511]

my 7 yo daughter is a very social little girl and has a large number of acquaintances. The difficulty is that she has no real friends, which is really now causing her to be upset. At school there has been a lot of pair and small group work and everyone seems to be pairing up with their friends and she is left on her own. I am having to deal with the "Why" questions and I am running out of positive answers and it is breaking my heart to see her cry most days.

She has just moved up to Junior School but had relied on her younger sister to get her out of not having people to play with at breaktime when she was at Infant school. However she has now attached herself to a group of Year 5/6 kids which is not healthy as they are daring her to do stuff and is not getting into trouble because she just wants to fit in with someone.

I work 4 days a week and on my day off I have tried inviting people from her class round to try and move the acquaintance status into more of a friendship. Though everyone that has been asked has always wanted to come round and enjoyed themselves, nothing has been reciprocated. I think it doesn't help that I am only at the school 1 time a week to have a close friendship with the mums.

Have asked at both the infant and now at the junior school if there are things that could help but nothing really has come out of any discussions

Is there anything that I could do to help.

This sounds such a shame and is she happy to go into school? If she is I'd say that even though it's upsetting her it may still not be too bad but I've always felt if our dd is ever miserable I'd rather pull her out than let it continue (luckily she's happy as I do feel strongly about emotional well being!). If your discussions with the teachers haven't helped can you try the head? Or are you friends enough with any of your DD's friends' parents to gently mention your concern in case their DC could help and be sensitive to the issue of feeling left out? I really hope things improve and hope it'll soon pass

Ps I'm not saying pull her out, that sounded wrong and for hopefully not too big an issue! But just feeling for you and you sound like you're very supportive and helping as much as can and see if a fellow mum might understand or come on board to try and help

I feel your pain, my DD is 9 and she has had exactly the same issues last year. It's really hard. I encouraged my DD to play with different girls to see who was a good match for her. She found it incredibly hard and upsetting. This finally changed for her when a new girl joined the school, not in DD's class but they very quickly became the best of friends and knowing that she'll have her friend at play times has really helped. She also made a few friends while she was joining in with others which helped too.

For my DD, part of the issue was that she's the eldest, she's used to being the boss over her siblings and I don't think that helped her make friends. I talked to her about letting others take turns in making decisions which I think she did.