Sensitive 9yo girl suddenly ostracised by her friends

[petefrancis]

Our daughter(an only child) has had a good relationship with her friends but very recently she has all of a sudden been completely ignored by them.My wife and I have a good relationship with the parents although they constantly talk about each other to us which we find embarrasing.She's coming home from school upset everyday now.The only problem my daughter has is that she's very shy and TOO nice.I just wish we could somehow boost her confidence/assertiveness because when these girls do upset her she just cowers away.Its especially worse in the playground because they laugh at her and tease her but I would love it if she could just have the courage to stand up for herself.
Are their any steps we could take to give our daughter some confidence.She does activities such as swimming/dancing/gymnastics and Brownies although at Brownies two of these girls are giving her a hard time at the moment.
thanks

The first step is speaking to her teacher. This is bullying...any sustained, cruel behaviour designed to hurt is bullying. Of course the teacher can't make them play with her but she or he can certainly stop the meanness and teasing.

Then...as for helping her to get more confidence...when my DD was in a similar position, I thought about something she excelled at...in her case it was art...then I encouraged her to enter lots of competitions...I found them online...and she won the first one she entered which gave her an enormous boost...of course this was luck...but even the entering and encourgement and focus on the things she is good at will help her.

Speak to her teacher first and ask if there are any other girls, not in this group...who DD is friendly with and see if you can arrange a playdate...helping her to foster new friendships.

Worth taking a look at this www.amazon.co.uk/Parents-Toolkit-Simple-Effective-Child/dp/009194015X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433575032&sr=8-1&keywords=naomi+parent+toolkit

Hi,

You mention she does activities such as swimming and dancing etc... But what about karate or judo... This really helped boost confidence, self esteem and basically hardened up a bit my niece who was in a similar situation. X