Isolated only child- could moving help?

[TempsPerdu]

Hello wise people of Mumsnet. I posted on here last year about my 5-year-old daughter not really settling at school, but now things have come to a bit of a head and we need to make a decision.

We currently live in a busy London suburb. We are well integrated into the community as in DP and I have plenty of friends, but this hasn’t translated into DD having friends. There are no local cousins (only one overseas), close school/uni friends had their DC much earlier so they’re all now teens, and local friends and neighbours have mostly boys. Basically, we have a social network here but DD doesn’t. This evening, for example, I’m facing a choice of taking DD out trick or treating on her own, or in a pack of about half a dozen boys her own age who will all ignore her; there are no similarly aged girls that we know well enough to hook up with.

DD started school last year and that has become another issue. The school itself is good, but she’s ended up in a class of very girly girls who she hasn’t really bonded with - DD is into science and football and Pokémon while (without exception at the moment) the other girls are into princesses and unicorns. The ability range is also weirdly skewed so that other than DD the higher attaining and more motivated children are all boys, and she is working mainly with them. At play times she is currently playing mainly with much older girls (Year 4 upwards) rather than her peers, as they have so little common ground.

It all feels very isolated, and I worry about the future. Every time I read an only child thread, multiple people advise organising play dates and sleepovers and taking friends on holidays - we are totally open to this and when opting to have just the one child we naively thought this is what would happen. But circumstances have dictated otherwise; since the pandemic we’ve noticed people increasingly retreating into their families, and living in London people lead very fast-paced and stressful lives with little time for casual socialising.

We have wondered for a while whether moving to somewhere less busy and pressurised might help DD to make more settled friendships. We have a market town in mind, just outside of a smaller city. We know that it isn’t a utopia, but there seems to be more community engagement, a slightly slower pace of life, there’s only one secondary school so everyone goes there (as opposed to here, where secondary schooling is quite competitive and fragmented), it’s safer so children wouldn’t be ferried around by car so much etc. We just want a more relaxed lifestyle, where DD gets to make the close friendships that she’s going to need in the future.

Does anyone have any advice on this? Has anyone been in a similar boat? How have parents of only children managed to forge a social network in the absence of extended family? Any input massively appreciated, as we are feeling increasingly unsettled about all this.

We moved from a big city (not London) to a small market town when my eldest was 5/Y1.
Not for exactly the same reasons as you, but more to move closer to family and have a slower pace of family life - smaller community, children walking to school etc.
The town we live in now has maybe 5 primaries and 1 secondary.
On the plus side it is incredibly safe and friendly for children, lots of opportunities to get involved in PTAs, school governors and community groups if you want to. My eldest is now in secondary and all the children on our street walk to school together.
On the other hand it is very much everyone knows each other, lots of gossip, the local facebook page has a fair bit of bitching, and of course if you have a problem with the local secondary it is hard to move.
I'd say it took me about 5 years to really feel I'd made adult friends.

Some children do find it harder to make friendships and it may be that you just need to be more proactive in helping them with friends (one of mine is like this) - if friendships are an issue in this particular school, could you move to another school?
Could your DD go to an afterschool childminder with similar age children?
Could she join Rainbows/Brownies, Stagecoach, a football team and make out of school friendships there? It might help if you also get involved as a parent volunteer so you can see which children she clicks with and get to know the parents, and be really proactive about organising playdates and parties.

Is it an option to facilitate her friendships with boys?

@jesshomeEd Thanks for sharing your experience of moving location - we are currently weighing it all up and yes, it’s definitely pros and cons!

Suffice to say that I have done everything you’ve suggested (parent helper, school governor etc). It certainly gives you a lot of extra information about the school and your child’s place within it, but actually makes things worse in some ways; I see DD playing only with older kids at playtime, I know about the school’s changing demographics and the fact that DD’s cohort isn’t typical of their intake etc - ignorance really is bliss in some ways!

DD does Rainbows, swimming, choir and football (only girl to about 25 boys). She loves all of them but none of these have really translated into friendships, as they are quite fleeting weekly encounters and very adult led so little downtime for the kids to actually chat and interact. It’s all very ‘ferry to activity in car, do activity and then ferry home in car’ again, and you don’t really get to know any of the other parents either.

Re play dates, I’ve tried but parents here are super busy and pinning anyone down is a nightmare; I’m one of very few parents not working full time, and most have moved to our part of London from elsewhere so are always disappearing off during holidays to catch up with family and friends ‘at home’. We are one of the few families who is ‘from’ here and don’t have anyone else to visit!

@SalmonWellington I have no idea why, as this wasn’t the case a decade ago and I used to teach Year 1, but the boys and girls in DD’s cohort will barely talk to each other. Some very strong masculine/feminine stereotypes are definitely prevailing at the moment, boys won’t invite girls to their parties (which are universally football parties at the moment), girls all have girl-only mermaid or unicorn parties - it’s like stepping back in time to the 1950s in some ways!

DD does occasionally try to play football with the boys at break times, but they always put her in goal and refuse to pass to her so she gets fed up pretty quickly.

How does DD feel?

I was in to science / electronics / non girly things and didn't have any female friends until I was 8 or 9.

I'm still a loner, I like my life, I like my own space.

Oh and do not underestimate teenage girls for trick or treating, the children that used to knock on my door as small children have turned up with younger siblings / cousins over the years.

Teenage girls are far too cool to T and T, taking a small child and getting sweets is fine though.

@sashh Thanks for replying with your personal experience. DD has been fine until recently; she’s generally a happy little thing, and we have mitigated a lot of the social stuff by always being jolly, engaged, ‘fun’ parents. Up until now she’s been able to hang out with neighbours with similarly aged kids and the friends we’ve made through nursery/NCT.

But all of those children are going in very different directions now -different schools, boys no longer mixing with girls etc - and forming new friendships, and with the lack of new school friends it feels as if DD has been left behind. This has only started bothering her quite recently; she is now asking why certain children won’t talk to her, why she isn’t being invited to many of the school parties, and why she finds it easy to make new friends at the holiday club she loves, but not at school.

We’ve also noticed that it’s gradually getting harder to keep her entertained during holiday times - we’ve just come out of another Half Term where, other than two days of paid childcare, DD hasn’t interacted with any other children, and I worry that all this additional time spent doing wholesome and edifying activities with adults (many of whom are teachers) is beginning to set her apart from her peers, who spend their holidays hanging out with cousins and family friends.

It seems a v high risk strategy tbh given that you are well settled where you are. Does she play club football? No like minded girls there? Also tbh the princess phase doesn’t last long. They all develop more rounded interests as they get slightly older. DD was obsessed with Elsa and Anna at 5.

OP I fear you may be misdiagnosing the problem and idealising what life is like everywhere else, I live in London but have moved around the country across my life. If anything I would say London is the best place for a slightly quirky young child to be. There's much more scope for finding like-minded children and for pursuing your own interests. Towns can be much more small-minded and you may find the pressure for your DD to conform to the girly stereotype is worse elsewhere, and your options for holiday clubs will of course be much narrower. Families are busy and cliquey wherever you go, I'm not sure London families are living especially fast-paced lives.

I think you may need to accept that it's not the environment that is the problem but that your DD is a child for whom friendships don't come as easily as they do to you and her father and look at ways to help her. Is private school an option? Could you look at a larger school, where she is more likely to find a crowd? If not, focus on what she does outside of school. What about science clubs? Could you put something on social media looking for other kids who love Pokemon and try to set up a playdate or outing.

I'm sorry but I really don't think the move you are considering is likely to work out how you want, if anything it sounds like you risk isolating your daughter even more.

The boy/girl split thing is frustrating. Is she in beavers? They can be good for that.

@SalmonWellington Rainbows at the moment (long waiting lists for Beavers in our area) but we could potentially move later in. She does quite enjoy Rainbows at present though.

Yes, the boy/girl split is super frustrating. We’re off to a football party this weekend - she will be one of only a couple of girls there (combination of not many girls invited plus self selecting as the girls dislike football) and I know exactly how it will go - DD will go in all keen, then it will be a free for all with a few boys dominating and everyone refusing to pass to her because she’s a girl.

Same story at the Saturday morning football class we go to (she started classes at 3, and even then some of the boys were refusing to pass to girls!) She’s used to dealing with it now, and the coaches are really good at managing it, but she really shouldn’t have to.

There's a girls football league where I live, we're in the North West. It's pretty well attended. Is there nothing like that nearby? We live really out in the sticks compared to you OP so it surprises me there are no girls teams? Ours start at Grassroots and go upwards from there.

I’m an only child and grew up in the suburbs and spent my school holidays roaming the neighbourhood with my girlhood best friends - so I understand the idyllic childhood you’re thinking of. I can also see how London kids might be a lot less outdoorsy, my girlhood was spent roaming beaches and forests and things like that unsupervised and I do worry about any future London kids (ttc at the moment) not having that connection to nature or freedom to explore, especially girls.

At the same time, small towns have lots of negatives and I would have enjoyed being a teen much more in London than in my small town!

And although those memories and times were fun, the friends I have today are not the same ones I played with when I was 5, so it’s not like she won’t have friends ever, she might just make them in a few years.

It does sound like your main problem is the girls at her school, rather than anything about London - surely easier to move her to another primary that suits her better than all of you move as a first step to see if that fixes things? Your life and friends etc are important too!

@PieonaBarm No local grassroots teams until 8 here - until then it’s all commercial football classes, which are very boy dominated (DD started at 3 with a couple of other girls but they both dropped out). If we can keep her keen between now and then we’ll definitely sign her up once she hits 8, but it’s difficult when classes are dominated by a few very aggressive boys who refuse to play with girls!

Football has been repeatedly banned at DD’s school too as there are a few ‘star player’-type boys who refuse to play as part of a team and throw full-on tantrums if their side concedes a goal (not really their fault - it’s mainly down to parents piling on the pressure at home).

It sounds like the school is the problem rather than the area.
We’re in London amd DD is 6 but at her school:
-they choose their sports each term, 2 boys are doing netball whilst 3 girls are doing football
-further up the school there’s a girl playing academy football and a boy who is a royal ballet associate
-pokemon is huge even amongst the girls
-boys and girls play together- DD has as many playdates with boys as she does with the girls; tonight she’s trick or treating with 2 boys from school
-parties are typically the whole class

A larger school with more opportunities to find her people or a sporty private (no idea if financially that’s an option) might be a better fit.

Are you teaching her that, to make friends, we have to show an interest in what other people are interested in? It doesn’t sound like it from your posts and that’s a very useful lifeskill in making friends. DS is 4 and loves science and tech but he now knows (as I’ve taught him) that he should take turns playing with the things his friends like. That means unicorns with one friend, colouring with another, and singing with another. He’s extremely popular as a result

@InTheRainOnATrain That’s so useful to know; none of that (sadly) would apply at our school. I think I’m coming to realise that either the school or the immediate area we’re in (or quite possibly both) are more socially conservative than I thought, and that this is playing into the issue. Friends who have raised their families in more socially liberal areas, like Walthamstow, Hackney and Muswell Hill, would recognise much more of what your DD is experiencing in school - here, not so much. A boy doing ballet would definitely be frowned upon at our school.

@JustAMinutePleass I have honestly worked hard to drive home this message of ‘give and take’, and I am conscious that DD can be quite strong-minded at times, but I also believe that compromise is required on both sides. The problem is not just that DD is refusing to play princesses or unicorns with the other girls; it’s also that the other girls are entirely uninterested in joining in with any of the things that DD likes (science, Pokemon, chasing games, football, jokes, making up songs and rhymes, making story books and so on). DD can occasionally engage them in a bit of art or drawing for five minutes, but because she’s currently the only one who’s not wholly on board with the unicorns/princesses/fairies thing it very quickly reverts back to those things.

I’m not sure how to teach compromise to my daughter when the other girls won’t try anything new, and all of the compromise is expected to be on her side. I certainly don’t want her to change her interests to fit in with the dominant norm.

A boy doing ballet would definitely be frowned upon at our school.

That in itself would have me scoping out other schools in the area.

As it’s London there will be movement and places available. Do the research and choose the one that suits your DD. London schools are emptying atm - see if you can find out which schools will be affected if the LA decide to close some down before you commit.

I’m surprised the school isn’t tackling the boy/girl divide. Being excluded because she’s not into unicorns or can only play in goal comes close to bullying imo and is something the school should be actively addressing.

If this is the sole reason for moving, then no. Firstly, it's putting too much pressure into the child. Even if you shield her from the true reason for moving, she'll feel it as she gets older, especially if she doesn't bond in the new school. She would pick up on your disappointment/ anxiety no matter how well you hide it.

How is she in other environments? Does she make friends easily, if so where? Larger groups or smaller groups? With children she's known most of her life or does she make new friends easily? Keep an eye on these things. My own daughter struggles to make friends, turns out she's autistic. My niece, also a lovely, very clever girl is a teenager now, gets on with everyone but had never formed the deep friendships that most girls do. I suspect she's also on the spectrum. Not suggesting it's the same for your daughter but something to have in mind as time goes on. It really became more apparent in my daughter in later primary years when other girls became more sophisticated in tastes and she was quirky, brainy one happier on her own 😁.

Be ruled by your daughter happiness, not your own preconceived ideas of what happiness is ie popularity. Many people don't need that and are better off for not chasing it.

My DD is 19 now and in her first year at uni. If I could go back in time and give myself advice about raising an only DD it would be "stop bloody angsting about her friendships."

Don't worry about organising playdates/sleepovers/ out of school activities. Just create a happy, secure home filled with warmth and laughter and that will give her a foundation and confidence to go out and make a lovely life for herself - including friendships.

Honestly, OP, this isn't something you can micro manage. And you'll give her a complex if you're always asking who she played with today, or you deride other girls' interests, or are continually suggesting "shall we invite Sophie over for tea?" etc.

Nothing wrong with her hanging out with older girls or trick or treating with her parents. She seems to have quite a lot of social interaction with her peers - plenty for a 5 year old.

Try to relax (I know, I know) and enjoy being a Happy Gang of Three (as Martin Clunes so wonderfully described his one child family) and the friends will come along eventually.

Best of luck.

What @MrsCuthbertson said.

There's a model for childhood that's all playdates and parties and the only friends that count are ones the same age and same gender.

It's very prescriptive and insidious - kinda like the 'women should have partners and children and be slim' one or the 'men should be tall and earn a lot and in no way at all ever like anything girly'. They're all bullshit and make people miserable.

I agree with all of this! However, I’d still want to get my DD out of school where the boys don’t allow girls to play football and the school does nothing, or boys doing ballet is frowned upon, because it’s not 1970. I don’t know what part of London OP is in but generally speaking it’s a fairly transient population where declining birth rates are showing the most so a move to another school shouldn’t be too difficult.

I have 3 thoughts. 1 - don't give up your community and London as a concept for this unless you fancy small town life anyway. 2 - Moving schools might not be the answer but equally isn't the big step it feels like when first considering it. My youngest daughter sounds similar to yours and we didn't move until year 4 but I wish I had done it sooner and it did solve everything friendship-wise (she was very lucky to slot into a group of bookish girls, my middle daughter was lucky to find this at the original school). Eldest also moved school in year 5 and found her tribe. 3 - Mine as teens love spending time in the calmer homes of their only friends, your current situation won't last for ever and friendship at 5 is often very superficial and your daughter sounds happy.

@MrsCuthbertson
@SalmonWellington
@InTheRainOnATrain

Thanks all - yes, I think perhaps I am falling foul of the ‘one size fits all’ model. Exactly as you say @SalmonWellington it is very pervasive and insidious, and so hard to have faith in yourself when it feels like you’re the only one bucking a social trend (DD is the only only in her class and one of only a very few only children we know locally).

I will admit that the thing I feel most is the lack of extended family - very elderly grandparents and no cousins in the U.K. - which is especially hard when all her classmates disappear off to visit all their cousins during school holidays. Give that there’s nothing at all I can do about this fretting about it obviously isn’t very constructive, but I suppose it’s why I’m so (over)invested in DD’s friendships to try and compensate.

Don’t want to give away too much about my location - it’s probably fairly guessable - but we’re in an outer London suburb with quite ‘traditional’/small c conservative tendencies, so not liberal egalitarian London. I agree that moving schools might be something we need to look at, but not sure those in the immediate local area would be much better in terms of openness and social attitudes - Crouch End, or even Bristol/Brighton this is not. As well as the attitudes to gender etc it’s the lack of investment in school/education that I’m slightly struggling with - but again, possibly not much better in your average market town.

@SwayingInTime Thanks - yes, we’d be looking to move by about Year 3 latest as I know from my teaching experience that upper primary starters can struggle to slot in.

This wouldn’t be the sole reason for the move - we’re not overly impressed with our local secondary options either (basically we can choose between super selective grammar, super strict academy or struggling comp here), our area of London is one that seems to be in slow decline rather than up and coming, and we do hanker slightly after a more relaxed, healthy, outdoorsy lifestyle anyway (although this may be because we spent a lot of time in Austria/Germany this summer and everyone there looked so bloody healthy and wholesome! 😆)