worried about DD's friendships...advice pls?

[Sjen78]

After some advice to help us advise our DD (just gone into year 1).
Last school year, DD would come home from reception, full of tales about what her immediate group (about six of them) of friends and the wider class had been up to. Teachers reported good social skills and playing happily with anyone in the class.
Jump to this year and all we have heard about for the last 2-3 weeks is one girl. I started to delve into this a bit.
"Did you play with x today" (one of her main friends from last year)
"No because y wouldn't let her play with us"
"Oh, did that make x sad? - did you say she could play with you?"
"yes I said she could play but she went to play with z instead"

The next day:
"Did you play with x and z today?"
"No"
"Why not"
"because y is the boss and makes the decisions on who we can play with"

(this makes my heart break, this comment would never have passed my confident Reception year DD's lips)

When I asked further about why she doesn't go and play with the other friends she says it's because she doesn't want to make y angry.

As far as I can work out (and have learned from other mums) y has been quite verbally and sometimes physically abusive to the other girls. They have simply gone off and played away from her. No one reports similar behaviour from DD (I know we are all biased about our children and it would be out of character for her, but I did entertain the idea but been assured by teacher and other parents that she is not herself upsetting other children). It also seems that for whatever reason, this girl has not been as badly behaved to DD as she has to some of the others (I have been told by DD she has said unkind things to DD but nothing else). I simply think that now she a) feels sorry for the other girl and doesn't want to leave her on her own as noone else will play with her now, and b) is genuinely concerned not to make the other girl angry by going off to play with the other friends she was close to last year.

We don't have play dates with this girl, her parents are totally unapproachable. I have organised playdates with her other friends to keep that contact going and they go well with the girls having a great time. I have spoken to the teacher of our concerns and whilst they can't necessarily control what goes on in the playground they have said they had recognised the problem already and ensure they are in different groups in class to make sure DD has time with other children away from this girl.

I think the girl is in need / is receiving help of some kind for her behaviour (certainly the teacher when we went into talk about this intimated this to me) and I am trying hard not to think badly of a child who has not yet turned six, but spending time with this girl is hurting the sociable, confident DD that I had and I worry that soon the others simply wont play with her because she is seen as this aggressive girls friend.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Advice on how to talk to DD about this most welcome, how to get her to have confidence to go and play with the others which she has said she would like to do...?

thanks

I'd just nurture relationships with other kids and have playdates that give your DD an opening into other friendship groups at school.

Your DD sounds sympathetic to this girl's needs and that is a lovely trait, just give her the opportunity to do other things on her own without this girl and then it won't 'stick'.

Oh god, this was me one year ago! And, I thought it was only me it happened to. The other girl is 1 year older than my dd, my dd was 6 at the time.
I got some good advice on here, basically I just needed to reinforce the positive relationships, glaze over the unfortunate ones, encourage positive play and play dates with the nice friends, talk about both sides with dd- good and bad, and how each would make her feel if it were her to be excluded and how it's important for her to be the good friend.
What hurt me was that dd's "best" friend was the one being excluded but she didn't have any courage at all to confront any of the girls, dd included, and would just tell her mum who is also a close friend of mine, and expect her to deal with it completely. Unfortunately for me, she did not encourage her dd to deal with any of it at all, but rather she spoke to the teacher and me, and held me and dd responsible. It was most unpleasant and I felt completely torn. My dd has had similar treatment but I use this as an advantage and remind dd how this made her feel and how unfair this would be to others, and at the same time this toughens her up for what lies ahead sigh and makes her able to cope socially.
Only this weekend she made felt keychains- one for her and one for the "original" best friend, and today she wrote "X is my best friend" in her doodle pad. This girl is the nicer and much better influence so I have to say I am happier but I have made it clear to my friend (the mum) that there is very little I can do and I am trying my best to encourage positive play.

All you can do is your best, and try to have your dd see it from every angle to possibly avoid being part of the negative behaviour.
HTH