Struggling with 3 Year old friend

[sabrinaq]

My DD (3) has a friend who is also 3.

They are next door neighbours, play most days and are very close. We don't have other close by neighbours so they are keen to play. Both only children. The issue is that most play dates end badly.

The other child is very well behaved. My DD is more prone to tantrums, not good at sharing etc. But one issue is that the other child won't settle to anything. I'd say an activity can hold her attention for maybe 1-2 minutes max before she jumps up and switches. My DD has a long concentration span and will play absorbedly for a long time (30-40 mins).

So is this leaping up and changing the game normal? I don't have any experience of kids so I don't know.

And how can I help? Should I time limit the play so that my DD doesn't end up getting so wound up. Or should I encourage my DD to go with it and accept the frenetic pace and be more patient and accepting.

My DH thinks the other child has ADHD. But I have no frame of reference for SEN and no idea if that is true.

The other child's mum is v strict on behaviour but doesn't seem to have any awareness of their different styles of play. I think she thinks my DD is naughty as they end up falling out and my DD is in the 'wrong' as she gets wound up and shouts. But I can see why she gets stressed as everything they play gets stopped and changed after a couple of minutes.

I'd like to help them as they are really fond of each other, but their playtimes are difficult.

Will they just grow up and grow out of the issues?

Mine is only 2.5 so a bit younger. I’d say she’s a bit of both the girls you describe in one tbh. Sometimes she can concentrate for quite good amounts of time eg if we are having a tea party with her dolls or doing a jigsaw but sometimes she’s like the Duracell bunny leaping from one thing to another every 5minutes. She has no social awareness about it either. Like if she loses interest in an activity and I try to encourage her back to it she normally couldn’t care less I would say over half an hour attention span for a toddler is on the long side but it’s a good thing and should definitely not be discouraged as that’ll stand her in good stead when she comes to school etc. Definitely don’t discourage anything that you’re doing with her to compensate. Acknowledge that she’s frustrated but maybe talk to her about how we need to compromise when we’re with friends. The other child’s mum should be doing the same with her dd and encourage her to stick at a game once they’ve decided on it. Ultimately though this is the age that they have to start negotiating friendship for themselves so I’d try not to muscle in too much

Thanks for replying.

It's tricky. I'm not generally an over involved parent (I don't think) but I'm personally very easy going and always accommodated my friends and older siblings so never really had any conflict. And in fact I don't like conflict. So I am unsure whether to try and get my DD to be more accommodating or to support her in her being honest about her feelings ie fed up with annoying friend.

But of course she is also unreasonable, bad at sharing, bad tempered whereas her friend is very sweet and well behaved.

I think it would be better if they had different friends, sadly.

I suspect the best you can do is talk frankly to dd about how it's ok to feel that the constant changes are annoying but she's not going to change her friend. Help her come up with some coping strategies (maybe Dd could decide to continue the previous activity and play separately for a bit; maybe she could tell her friend she's not done and agree an amount of time to continue before they move on).

Aria that's very wise. Funnily enough they played quite well today but after a bit DD came to find me and said "phew! I just need a break from friend" so we did some puzzles together. This is a big improvement from them fighting.

That's good!