DD age 7 struggling to make female friends

[TickledOnion]

I feel so sad for DD2 (7yo). She has 2 friends who are boys but no friends who are girls. She desperately wants girl friends but says that whenever she plays with the girls in her class they do something that annoys her and she decides that she can’t be friends with them. I think she’s a bit rigid in her thinking and if someone messes up her game then she can’t deal with it.

It’s probably not helped by DD1 (10yo) who has a big group of friends and 3 best friends.

I don’t know how to help her. I was never very good at making friends though not for the same reasons.

When you say she's rigid in her thinking what do you mean? Does she like imaginary games? What sort of toys does she enjoy?

At 7, it's not that unusual to prefer playing with the opposite sex...but as you say she wants female friends you could try working with her on her ridid thinking. PLaying more imaginary games with her perhaps.

I know from having two girls myself that at 7, they love making up imaginary games which are quite complex....lots of "You be the Mum and I'm the Aunt, Annie is the bad neighbour who tries to steal the baby...Tom's the robber.." they plan it all out and then act the games out.

If your DD doesn't enjoy this type of thing....or singing and dancing...then that might be part of her struggle.

She loves imaginary play and singing (but not dancing) but I think the problem is when the other girls don’t follow the game in the way she had imagined it. For example one girl kept singing silly lyrics to the song they were practicing and that really annoyed her.
Another time she planned a huge role play wedding and gave everyone in the class a role. She wrote it all out the night before and then got very upset when people didn’t want to play their assigned roles.

So she sounds incredibly creative. Have you thought about putting her in a drama club?

I’ll ask her but she really wants girl friends from school. I need to teach her to be less bothered by people wanting to do things in a different way.

Yes and drama class will help her with that. She just needs to develop her social skills more. It's an incredibly complex thing...the way in which children socialise and communicate. There are strict but unwritten rules which some learn quickly and others don't. I once read a book which was a study of a group of girls in a primary school. The author followed them every playtime and in class and made a study of how they interacted.

It was fascinating. Some girls were "lower status" because they got things 'wrong' too often. Not gauging when to try to alter a game correctly was one of the reasons. Trying to "take over" at the wrong moment in other words.

If she can engage in more activities away from school she will develop faster.

Talk to her about not being "bossy" but explain that having an opinion is a good thing...but that she cant' expect to 'direct' a game as though she were a film director.

She might like to try writing scripts and making short films at home to get that out of her system OP.