Is your home a sanctuary for your child?

[Deflatedgirl]

DD (9) is such an exuberant girl outside of school but every morning I watch her deflate as we arrive in the school playground. No other kids rush to greet her and if she tries to join a chattering group she is ignored

Have classmates over for tea and they have a great time but invites rarely reciprocated. Not really asking for advice just wondering if anyone else feels their home is a sanctuary from school for their DC?

She is not a loner by nature; at weekends we escape from our village into town where she does a team sport and has a great time plus she always makes friends on holiday but at school, not so much.

kids can be cruel at times i'm sure everything will work out just fine in time.Try not to worry yourself too much.Things will get better

Thank you, Shake, you're very kind. I'm past the worrying stage most of the time as she's basically a happy girl. Just wondering if anyone else feels home is a much needed sanctuary for their child.

That used to be almost exactly the way with my dd and in the end we moved schools for Y6 (not just for dd, was a long move for work but we thought it'd be good for her too) and just since the start of term it's been completely different - she's got friends in school who run up to her to chat rather than the other way round and she's much happier. I was never sure whether it was dd not fitting in or the other children (mainly the girls) being a nasty bunch but it turns out it was them not her. Not suggesting you have to (or can) move schools, I'm not sure what can be done when it's not your child's fault but the other children's attitudes but there's some good bullying books out there that talk about how to build confidence so that the other children's attitudes don't matter quite so much.

This sounds very much what happened to DD at that age. Girls start to become quite cliquey at 9. I found the move to high school gave DD a new start where she made some new friends. It is hurtful and upsetting to see this happen, so I would continue with the out of school stuff.

Yes I know so. The head has told me DS is well liked at school though he hasn't seemed to of formed a 'good friend'. He isn't part of the boys group who do football and play rough. There was also a big clique of Mums in Reception that extended to their children and DS appears to be a bit of an outsider

Thanks for replies

It's nice that DD can be happy at home; reading, watching TV, chatting and larking about with me and DH. I do wonder why parents of the friends we have over to play/take swimming/whatever don't reciprocate? I work from home PT and most of the other mums are SAHMs or work PT. Isn't it good manners to return an invite?

Hello all,

We're going to move this to Parenting at the request of the OP.