Deep thinking 4 YO

[sodthe]

DD will be 5 in April. She is very clever (in year R but spends 3 days a week in year 1)
She has been able to speak in sentences from a fairly early age. We have always been able to communicate with her well because of this.

She has always been unfortunately a bit like me, an over thinker. She is incredibly kind & acts a lot older than her peers. Because of this, maybe, she doesn't really like hanging out with anyone in her year. She has friends who are a year or 2 older that we know mostly out of school.

She's started to worry me recently with things she's been saying. She woke up this morning & said 'her brain felt weird' then when I asked why she couldn't really explain but was thinking back to when she started preschool (2.5 years ago) & something that happened on a particular day (of no relevance)
We went out today & stopped for petrol. When I got back to the car, there was a builders van parked next to us which was empty. She said to me 'The 2 men in that van were laughing at me, they think I look weird'. I assured her she's beautiful & no one especially grown men would think she looks weird. I asked her if she thinks she herself looks weird? She said yes, my eyes are weird.

She just seems to be very self aware at such a young age & tbh it's making me sad. I want to help her as much as I can, but I'm very conscious of asking questions & in doing so, making an issue that wasn't there. She's honestly hilarious at home, incredibly dry & sarcastic sense of humour for her age & I just want to try & help her be as happy & confident as she can be. I grew up without that for various reasons & I feel downhearted that despite me always building her up, she's obviously feeling some anxiety.

Anyone in/has been in a similar boat, any advice appreciated x

Oh Op, DS is just like this. He's 9 and has always been the same way, incredibly intelligent, deep thinking, and the 'weird looking' thing has come up multiple times even though he's anything but, which I'm sure applies to your dd too. He gets so anxious about little things. Self esteem isn't great and even at 9 I find it difficult to convince him of all his good points, of which there are so many.

Sorry I have no advice but empathy !!

How about a book like I like myself?

A Mighty Girl has some suggestions on books for confidence here.

My daughter, now 8 has always been a bit like this- a voracious talker, and has come out with things like this from 3 or 4. She's super sensitive to anything that might be embarassing or different to others, but she's hilarious and IS different/humour is more grown up/the things she comes out with. She's made some good friends now, but I've only just noticed that at parties she's joining in with her class mates- before she was more or less on her own doing her own thing.
Anyway, yes I think building confidence would be amazing, and give her the confidence to just be who she is

I would suspect that it's worth looking into ASD. A lot of what you describe does fit into it, but the thing that really said it to me was the friends a couple of years older and not really getting on with her age.

DD was like that. And it wasn't a sign of social maturity as I initially thought, but the opposite. The older ones make allowances, subtle ones that you wouldn't notice in the normal way of things, and so they adjust round your dd, which means she then struggles with her own age who don't do that.
It's really hard to understand that because it feels counter-intuitive. You feel: She's getting the games of the older ones. She prefers older games. She's just more mature than her peers, so they don't understand her.
But the older she gets the less age difference there is between her and the older ones, and then she may well find they stop making the allowances, which means they will drift away, and she won't have learnt to make friendships with peers.

If I was starting again with dd, these are the things I would do:
I would start by asking them not to put her up into year 1. You're reinforcing the idea she's different by doing that. And by spending half the time in each form, she's not getting the opportunity of bonding properly in either.
You may think she'll be better stretched in year 1, but really they can stretch her with her peers. DD was reading the Little House books in year R, but most of year 1 weren't reading those either, so she could read them just as well in year R. When her friends were writing single words, she was writing full stories-she won a story competition aged 3yo. She was doing long multiplication while the others were still doing basic adding. But none of these were being done in year 1 either. It would have been better for her to have done her own work in year R with her peers; they don't really notice that they're doing different work at that point in the same way. Going into a different room is marking them out.

Then I'd really work on friendships with her own year. Go for lots of playdates. Make them really fun ones. I found with dd that the best was to have something for them to do initially. So a craft activity, or cooking, or the paddling pool out, plant some bulbs etc. Something they think is fun and both want to do. Once they've done the activity they play so much better together because they're already having fun.
In the holidays go somewhere for the day and take another child.
Encourage her to see her form as her friends. At the beginning you may need to be a third person in the friendship to keep it going smoothly, so stay with them and be at hand to alter things if they're going badly. When the other child has gone, if things have gone wrong, you may need to talk it through later.
Dd didn't really get small talk. So we spent a lot of time giving ideas as things she could say. "I like your hairband", "what colour's your car?", "have you got a cat?".

And let her be silly with friends. Don't let her feel that she is above the games they play and can't join in.

That's what I would do if I had dd year R again. I'd concentrate on making her feel the same as her peers, not different.

Hey @MargaretThursday thank you for that. Really informative. How is your DD now?

It happens to be that 3 of my closest friends had babies the year before me so naturally she gets on well with them & I wouldn't say they are changing their behaviour when around her. I do agree that clearly older children who she likes who are in year 5 or 6 will be changing their behaviour to suit her.

I have asked who she likes from her class but honestly there doesn't seem to be anyone! I've seen them at parties, they do act a lot younger (or maybe they are just acting their age) but she does love to have fun & act silly, something I fully encourage. It's her birthday soon, & she's gone from wanting to invite her whole class to none of them 🤦‍♀️ I'm glad she seems happy just being with her year 1 pals we see out of school & obviously being with us & her sibling. We live on a farm so she's always up to something.

I'm hoping in the coming years she will find one or two good friends. I am assured she is is happy & hope that continues.

@sodthe
Dd's now in her 20s, so a long time has gone. She had friends her own age, but not close until she was at uni. She's now got a few close friends that she keeps up with. She was always better if she was doing something with a group rather than just "hanging around", so interest groups were generally her better friends than school friends.

Her best friends when small were 14 months older than her, but 2 school years. It's very subtle the allowances they make at that distance. It's just very slightly favouring their view, and not pushing them to do things they don't want to and making sure they're not left out in a very small way, but enough that it doesn't give them quite the being one of the crowd.

I'd go for one of two ways for the birthday. Full class/all the girls is easy We did all the girls for dd's year R birthday, but we did traditional party games, so they were busy doing things rather than grouping together than playing in the way soft play etc can be.
Alternatively, have a small group to do something special. Something that the children will be saying to others "guess what we did with littlesodthe" and an amazing party bag at the end. Pick a couple of children she's either friendly with or the teacher thinks could be a good match and make it really special. They'll associate the fun time with her and it will give them something to talk to her about at school.
For both, do a separate older child friends party, if she wants to invite them, so she needs to mix with the school friends.

For interests you might find she might get interested in drama. It's something that they have to operate as a team. Shop and around and look for one that is more about team work than competition. You want one that is inclusive, not pushing the children into doing things, and about fun. They're likely to be mixed years, so there will be older ones that she can mix with, but they'll also mix with all of them.
My youngest (ds, who has ASD and ADHD) has a wonderful drama group where a lot of them have grown up together and there's a lot of banter, and a lot of fun, but friendship as well.

I was exactly like that as a child, I used to spend playtime talking to teachers instead of playing with peers lol then I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when I was 15 so that ASD comment is not coming from nowhere, I was exactly like that too. I was described as ‘mature’, ‘sensible’ etc. it’s probably not that deep though. She’s obviously very intelligent and ignorance is bliss. I’m trying to raise my son with the confidence I was never given too.