Parties, friendship and girls in general

[Molehillmountain]

Not enjoying year one with dd1 I have to say. I feel as if I don't know how to help dd1, feel she needs more support to negotiate friendship. She's doing well academically, but in the bit of her development where she needs support at the moment, playtime and relating to people, they basically get a couple of adults for the whole of key stage one. I am beginning to see a pattern of not being invited to parties of girls she thinks she's good friends with and I really do want her to have good friends. I can see why things might go pear shaped-she's quite boisterous and bossy and really want to help before she gets stuck in a rut. She likes to play with boys, which is fine now but I've seen as a teacher that there comes a point where things start to divide along with gender. It's not the first time I've posted on similar. I'm not sure whether to leave alone or get more involved-which approach will work better. I have no instinct for this kind of thing and tend to panic, which doesn't help. Her teacher is kind, calm but quite passive. The parties are getting smaller so I'd expect her to be invited to fewer, but it's the mismatch between who she thinks are friends and who invites her that concerns me. Or is six still little and it will come out in the wash?

Any long term resolution that she finds for herself will be better (stronger, more stable) than you trying to engineer & impose. So I would go for hands-off approach when possible.
That said, I would keep encouraging her to try different people to be friends with, more likely to settle on someone nice to be friends with who likes her back.
DD was in similar situation in y1 & the school switched her (and only her) to the "other" class for her yr group; she made completely different friends who have proven true & firm for past 4 years.

It's difficult, because whilst we all want our children to have friends, I have learnt with my DD1 that it is really impossible to engineer this and it really is best to just leave them to it. When my DD was in KS1 my DD1 didn't seem to have any close friends whilst many of the other girls in her year had a 'special' friend and DD received very few invites to parties. At that age she was very quiet and shy and no one seemed to really notice her.

I tried inviting other children round for tea, meeting up with their parents at soft play so that the children could play, and all those sorts of things but it made no difference. DD was quite happy with how things were though, it was me that was all panicky for her and really wanting her to have friends. Once she got into KS2 she did make a couple of good friends, and even now that she is at high school she is not one for having loads of friends, she has a handful of good friends and seems happy with that. I do think that some children are just happy with their own company and don't feel the need to have loads of friends. Also thinking about it there are usually a maximum of 60 children in a year, and so in that amount of children there may not be anyone your daughter gels with enough to want to be best friend with them. I know that in some workplaces for example I've met people that have become good friends, and in others there's been no one I've gelled with. How does your DD feel about things? If she prefers the boys she is probably playing with them a lot at school, hence she's not on the radar to be invited to girls' parties.

I would say that if she is happy then I would just leave it for now. If any of the girls are being horrible then I would see the teacher though. You could also get your DD doing a couple of out of school activities, such as gymnastics or dancing, then she will get to meet people she has something in common with rather than just all being thrown together in a class at school. :)

The only thing I think you can do is to invite girls she thinks she is friends with over outside school hours to play - friendships get cemented outside school often as that is when they get a chance to play 1:1 for longer periods. This is quite a good idea during school holidays as well as in term time IMO.

Beyond that as long as nobody is being nasty to her I think a hands off approach, and listening to her in case she wants to talk about it at any point, is the only way really. You don't want to be the one accidentally making an issue of it by trying too hard on her behalf or giving her lots of advice!
Good luck!