Feel for my shy little girl

[Willowmartha1]

I changed my dd school in March as she was having various problems including friendships. I was delighted to get her into our local catholic school and she started a week before lockdown. She is now attending twice a week as I am a keyworker. She is desperately upset as there are two girls there who won't play with her and she is left out, a problem that happened at the old school when her best friend went off with the new girl. I don't feel I can raise it with the teacher as she is only there twice a week and they are doing us a favour by allowing keyworker children in. Does anyone else have a problem with their kids and friendship groups ? She is 8 and very shy

Bless her.

It's a really hard time to have started a new school and be trying to make friends.

I think you can raise this with the teacher as long as it's from the perspective of 'can you help DD to settle in/make friends/be a little bit more outgoing' and not 'these girls are being horrible'.

Hi @Willowmartha1, it does sound hard for your DD. I was a shy kid and there were many times I came home crying that no one wants to play with me, that kids are being mean and similar. It was hard and the pain was real. It needs to be acknowledged by the adults.

The things that helped me as a child was:

1. I got a pet (cat) very randomly and I spent a lot of time learning about cats and reading books and it made me love all animals (perhaps more than people, but well)

2. sports (but can be arts, piano, anything really) - something she will grow to be really good at. It will give her self-confidence for the rest of her life. She will stop trying to get liked and she will concentrate on being good at something the others are strangers to. I did gymnastics and then horse riding and I was maybe a weirdo, but a happy one :)

It is bad with the lockdown, it is harder for kids than for adults I think but maybe something to think about. Hope this will be of some help.

Poor girl. Try to feed her with confidence and try not to let her know you feel sorry for her. Maybe these two girls aren't worth playing with - don't talk badly about them to your daughter, but maybe just say something like " well maybe you should just try and play with the other girls instead, they might be super fun!". I'm not telling you not to recognize and acknowledge - do talk to her about her feelings and say that it's okay to feel that way etc. and you would feel the same, but maybe these girls are just not ready to play with other children right now.

I have had a similar talk with my boy who is 5 and he seemed to feel better after this talk.

Thanks for your responses, she already has a pet cat who she adores ! It's a shame that these two girls are the only ones in the group as the rest are boys !! She was happy yesterday as one of the girls wasn't there and she played with the other girl but I think that's a one off sadly. Hopefully more children will come back to school in the next few weeks x