Hi
Need some advice
My 5yo G is very friendly. Whenever she meets a new child she intoduces herself.
However the responses she gets is often negative. The children are either shy (which is fine), dismissive (annoying) or full on call her werid angry
Which leaves me with 2 problems...
- 5YO is an over eager single child who is desperate to make friends. Which sometimes works, and she easily make friends where ever we go. Most of the kids in our local area know her name.
However not everyone response well to her energy and the other day she told me a kid called her werid. angry
Which, in all honesty, I knew was coming.
I was a werid over egar kid, who, because of petty bullying and constant let downs grew up to be closed off picky adult.
But when she told me, well in that moment I tried to teach her all the things I learnt over a lifetime
a) werid is good as it makes you different and if we were all the same life would be boring
b) Be who you are and dont let others tell you different cos what you are is special
c) people who call you names dont deserve your time or energy, walk away.
However I can see this is going to be a slow progress and will take years of repating and being there to comfort her before she will really get it.
Has anyone got any further advice I should do with her. Does role play actually work?
- When she makes friends children will tell her their names and then she forgets and asks them again or makes up a new one for them. I cant count the number of 5 year olds who have snotterly said "you asked me that before!" with an eye roll. Or "Thats not my name".
Unfortuantly I'm no help. Im not a social person and speaking to strangers is embaressing and annoying for me.
I know I should get down to her level, help navigate the conversation, try and get the other mum to join us, to show what a conversation should look like. But I often just try and ignore the fopar and walk away, leaving her confused and me annoyed at myself.
So mums...anyone out there had a similar experience?
How did you deal with it?
I dont want to change her or tell her to stop making friends, but I do want her to see not everyone is as eager as her to jump on the friend train and some people prefer to go slow.