Hello all, my first ever post so please be gentle if I've got anything wrong.
I've a six year old daughter in Year 2 and I would like to help her to make some good friendships at school. I'd love to make some friends too. Making friends is something that I found hard as a child and still do today so it's close to my heart that I want to help my daughter not to also find this difficult. My perfect scenario would be to find a mum and daughter who we can both establish a friendship with.
I work full time so I am rarely at the school gate so I don't get the chance to chat regularly with other Mum's/carers. But to be honest, the times I have been at the gate, I haven't identified anyone that I could see myself establishing a friendship with. I think this is mostly down to me being an older Mum (age 44) and that I work (we're in a reasonably deprived area where work and opportunities are not plentiful so not working is not a self-made choice for most).
My daughter talks about a couple of girls at school she is friends with but I don't know the parents and never see them at the gate. I'd like to encourage these friendships and maybe one way of doing that is inviting them over for a play date. Do your Year 2's have play dates? Do you accompany them/invite the parent as well? I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with my child going to the home of people I don't know yet.
What can I do to encourage friendships, both for my daughter and myself? It seems such a simple question but it's a struggle for me. It doesn't help that we are also fairly new to the area. I've used Apps such as Peanut but being an older Mum aged 44, all I seem to find is very young Mum's who probably don't want to hang out with an older Mum.
Hoping for some positive suggestions of how you manage friendships for your Year 2's please.
Thank you in advance 