How to make a 3 year old understand that not everyone wants to play?

[weeblueberry]

My 3yo DD is boisterous and full on. I'm under no illusions that she's perfect, for all her great qualities she tends not to know when to stop and her energy knows no bounds... I know she's too young to 'sense the tone' as it were but she can't grasp that some of the kids she considers 'friends' aren't up for playing.

I say friends but actually there's only been one example of it so far but I am worried going forward - our childminders son (5yo) was there for the first session this morning after not seeing her for two weeks as we were on holidays. She was really excited to tell him everything that happened and he wasn't interested so took himself off the garden where she followed and chased him as he played. To the point where he was shouting for her to 'get away from him'. This all happened in the space of three minutes so it wasn't like she was doing it for ages. Unfortunately I was doing handover with the childminder and didn't see it happen but heard it. I asked her to come in and I explained to her that he clearly didn't want to play and to leave him alone (he's more reserved than she is and is getting bored of her full on nature).

She's only got three more sessions with him before starting nursery on Monday but I am conscious that it could be a problem there too if there are kids who don't want to play with her.

Is it just a case of mentioning it every so often (I'm obviously not going to be there at nursery to see it happen then respond) or just mention it to the nursery and let her key worker take the lead on keeping an eye on it?

This is one incident! You don't need to mention it at all never mind every so often! Perhaps the little boy is usually receptive but was having an off day.

Are you usually anxious or is it because there's a change coming up?

I do this...I focus on one tiny thing....blow it out of proportion and stress when really, I am feeling general worries over one bigger thing.

This is what socialising means - you don't need to explain it to her, the boy has done that ! The CM will have given her a cuddle and something else to do She'll get the idea very quickly as she spends more time around other kids and a bit less around family who are totally focused on her. The other kids are all going through the same process - don't worry !

Thanks both. I'm not terribly anxious about it - it was really just to find out if it was up to me to mention it or whether she'll just find out by herself.

It's tricky because she's had one to one care until now and I understand lots will change with the introduction of larger social groups at nursery. I just don't want her to continually push to play with kids that aren't interested in being her friend/playing. It is just one other child this happens to so I suppose, deep down, I'm worried she's going to go to nursery and all the kids will be the same.

Reading that now I can see I'm overthinking it.

Sorry just as an aside it's not just a single incident although I appreciate it's only with this child it's happened with. The childminder has actually mentioned before that she's often too full on with him and he gets sick of her when she is at high energy.

Don't worry :) She'll get there. This is characteristic of something that you worry about with DC1 but you realise very quickly that they really do grow out of this kind of thing and get the idea before too long.

Being friendly is great and it's lovely that she has the confidence to go up to other children and ask them to play.

Given it's the cms son, I wouldn;t put much stock into it. Maybe he's not very patient with sharing his home.

It's when it's a sibling who's unresponsive / hostile that it gets really hard, because there's no escape. Not much you can do about that either !

Thanks all. Appreciate the feedback. She was an angel yesterday afternoon but we're looking at doing time outs for physical outbursts.

Footle actually one of my worries is that her little sister is going to watch and copy her. Then I'll be dealing with two!

Ha ha, this is my son! He's so enthusiastic. When we are with people and he's bombarding them (usually when he's tired, over excited etc) I just say, ah, look at X, maybe X is busy, or maybe X isn't very 'smiley' about playing Spider-Man today...he's getting it but like you OP I worry too.