My child really dislikes a few other children

[sillysalmon]

Hi, I'd like to know if anyone has any experience with their child taking a strong disliking to other children?

The situation is that our 4 year old really dislikes 3 children. Our child is very popular at nursery, is very social and liked by all the kids, for some reason our child is adamant she dislikes 2 of the children to the point that she does not want to invite them to parties or play with them, she also regularly tells us that she doesnt like them or want to spend any time with them.
The other child she dislikes is a close friends child who have been 'friend's' since they were born as are a similar age. Recently our child has stated again she dislikes the other child and wishes to spend no more time with them.

In a typical child's way, ours has expressed she doesn't like the children to their faces by saying she doesn't want to play with them bluntly, were working on her delivery of that so as to not hurt the other child's feelings.

We're happy for our child to not like other children as that's her choice and we don't know the reason for it to say otherwise. We would just like to know if anyone else has experienced this sort of blunt and decisive behaviour with their children and if there were any reasons you could think of to attribute it to the behaviour. We think it may be because the other children are more handsy and forceful with their play and are possibly quite loud, big characters but we are only speculating from what we could fathom from our child's explanation!

You’d want to nip that in the bud fairly soon or she’ll be what we usually describe as a bully. If she’s isolating other kids from the kids she dislikes you need to put a stop to that. I would invite all children to a party, I wouldn’t leave out two or three if everyone else is invited.

Our child shows no signs of being a bully and gets on perfectly with all the children except these 2 at nursery. Obviously she is expressing her feelings in an obvious manner which i'd imagine is normal for children who cant always find the words or convey their emotions like an adult and this is something we are going to work on. We invited a child to a bday party before and ours got really upset about it especially after expressing that they really didn't want that child there so I'm not going to force friendships with children. I don't know what's going on between these few children but ours was bitten by one of the children so that could be a negative experience thats led to a dislike of them.

Not liking other children is fine. Excluding only 2 children from a birthday party seems cruel. Especially if the other children aren’t themselves bullying your child.

Yeah, or the other child could have bitten your daughter because she’s excluding them from play and they got frustrated. Being ‘popular’ and then deliberately excluding two or three children is basically what bullying looks like at four, so this really needs dealing with. When my DS has taken a dislike to kids I’ve repeatedly said ‘you don’t have to be friends with them, but you can’t be mean to them either’. I would never have facilitated it by excluding children from a party after they’d been invited.

How verbal is your daughter? Is she able to discuss what it is she doesn’t like about other things? E.g. I don’t like these trousers because the waistband feels funny? If she can do that, you ought to be able to guide her to discuss what the issues are with these children. Maybe using books about friendship as a guide?

Obviously she is expressing her feelings in an obvious manner which i'd imagine is normal for children who cant always find the words or convey their emotions

Nope. At 4 years old I would expect a child to understand you don't talk to others like that. If I had ever heard my child do that they would be told in no uncertain terms we just don't do that.

Some children get on and some don't. It isn't always the fault of any of them. I'm surprised you have no idea why though, if she is that forthcoming to their face, hard to believe she's never said to you what the problem is.

I'm a nursery teacher and see tho a lot. Have you asked her why? At this age they are blunt and honest. When ever I had an issue with kids not getting along I liked to get them together and ask what happened and talk about it. I spoke to them with respect and honesty every time.

We invited a child to a bday party before and ours got really upset about it especially after expressing that they really didn't want that child there so I'm not going to force friendships with children.

I would cancel the party rather than let my DC exclude one or two 4 year olds in their class (absent bullying). It’s not forcing friendships, it’s not excluding from a group event.

At 4 my DS really disliked one girl and was adamant that she was not invited to his whole class party. I spoke to him about it to find out the reason - similar to your situation- the girl was loud. I explained that he might not like everyone but he could not be unkind to them. That the DC would feel so sad knowing she was the only one not wanted and that it would be very very mean. How would he feel if the girl had her party and he was the only one not invited? Eventually he agreed to invite her, although with bad grace. By the time the party came round he was so excited he greeted her with a big grin, and it all blew over.

Fast forward two years, and they are now best friends.

The biting was an accident that happened a long time ago while they were both playing. At that time there was no mention of her not liking the child.

We have talked to our little one about why and she has just said that they 'shout in her face' and have 'pulled hard on her hands' etc so i assume they may be a bit excitable and not realising they are.

As i've already mentioned, she is not being horrible to these children or going out of the way to try to isolate or hurt them, our child just doesn't get on with them and has chosen not to spend time with them. If they ask to play with her she just says no. They don't seem to understand that she she doesn't want to play with them. I would also like to say that none of these children have been invited to a party and then told not to come.

I posted on here to find out if anyone had experience of this behaviour, how common it is and if so what other children's reasons were so we could piece together some more info on potential issues.

It could be they dont do what she wants and doesnt like it when they dont.

I am not sure you realise but you dont make her sound very nice

If I'm making her out to not be nice, then that's completely my fault and not my intention so i'm sorry if anyone has been thinking she is some horrible child! She really is a lovely little girl, caring, kind, happy and compassionate. She knows her own mind and knows right from wrong.

To be honest, I don't really think I can get any info from here anyway by the looks of it but thank you all for your contributions.

The way to deal with the birthday parties is to just have really small parties so it's not one child or 2 children who get excluded, but a small number of special friends who are included.

We asked her who she wanted to invite to parties and it was only around a quarter of her nursery class so it wasn't only 2 children who were left out, I was using this example of her specifically vocalising that she didn't want these 2 specific children to attend as an example of how adamant she is about not liking them.
It seems from a lot of these other parents comments that the only way they feel to resolve this is to force our child to invite everyone to her parties, but that is not how our child is, she doesn't require or want that, just around 10 children who she likes and plays with regularly.
We will not force anything upon our child, she has her own reasons for not liking these children (that at the moment she finds hard to vocalise with a specific incident or action) and we will not put her in an uncomfortable situation by forcing her to be around these, that would only provoke words being said.
Everyone has the right to their own opinion but I feel those who have stated that they've made their child invite other children to their birthday parties that they don't like, maybe you should have gone for a smaller party instead of making decisions for your children's friendship group?.
We have told our child that if you don't like another child and don't want to play with them then walk away and if they persist to tell one of the nursery teachers, as this appears to be the issue..our child doesn't unprovoked say things to these other children, she tries to walk away or hides behind my legs, but the other children don't seem to understand that this means she doesn't want to interact with them.
Everyone seems to have taken this question out of context, this is not us stating our child is a bully as she does not seek out these other children, she actively avoids them to the extent that she has been invited to a party this Sunday and has decided not to go as she knows they are going, or that she is excluding children (which she is not), the original post was just us asking for any advice of parents who had gone through a similar situation to know if this is common for 4 year olds, or if anyone had any decent advice about how to work with the situation as a family, not a load of people misreading/not reading my original post correctly and then shouting "bully" and "make them do it anyway" and "maybe your child deserved to be bitten".
The only person who has actually contributed something helpful is lovely36 and that's because they work in the industry and obviously have a lot more experience than everyone else, so thank you.

Sometimes people just don't like other people and that's fine. There are people in life I don't like, a couple of school parents spring to mind.

I would think you have to teach your child that it's fine to not like people but you still need to be kind to them and not hurt their feelings. So you can't say out loud to other people that you don't like them, even if you are just stating the facts. That wouldn't go down well among adults and kids shouldn't be doing it either.
You don't have to be their best friend but equally you shouldn't exclude them in any situation. You still have to be polite.
There will be people in life you like, people you don't. Some people will like you, some people won't. Just be kind to everyone.

That's a lot for a 4 yr old to understand and act on but you can try.

When you say your child is sociable and popular, with the exception of playing with two kids. That IS bullying. I’m sorry but there is no way of dressing that up.

How would you feel if your daughter was the child being excluded and not liked by the popular child in the class? The other kids will naturally follow suit. If they want the popular kid at their parties they won’t invite the two that will stop her from going.

She doesn’t have to like them, or play with them but when shes causing others to do the same (and they will) then it’s a problem.

You need to address it in a way she understands. It’s not nice to leave people out, and even if we don’t want to be friends with someone, we still must be kind.

I feel sorry for the kids being excluded to be honest. It’s hard to sympathize with bullying behavior.

Reading between the lines I think there probably is a reason for your child's dislike but they aren't able to verbalise it. 4 is still very young. At this age developmentally they are only just learning how to play with others rather than alongside. I wouldn't be concerned. Maybe spend some more time talking with them about what friendship means and what being a good friend looks like. This may also open up a discussion about times others haven't been a good friend to her which may give you an insight. We had a similar circumstance with my daughter who would say she didn't like one of the teachers when she was at nursery but she could never explain why. Years later she told us it was because she gave her a time out once. She clearly held a grudge

sillysalmon, I think you would have got more sympathetic responses if you had made it clearer in your OP that you were already negotiating this in such a way that it wasn't a case of 1 or 2 children being excluded. That's the best we can do as parents: teach them how to negotiate socially tricky situations.

The information you gave in your first couple of posts was quite different to in your final post. And no one said your daughter deserved to be bitten, just suggesting that the situation may have been something other than the evil other child randomly biting your angelic child. My DS has been bitten and scratched at school and the first question I ask is always, ‘what happened just before they bit you?’ With prodding the answer is rarely ‘I was minding my own business and they came over and bit me’.

I think it is ok for your child not to like others & to not invite them to parties.

Both my children expressed this to me and I acted accordingly. I felt I did not know what the children's behaviour was like but clearly something my children picked up on. Because I was not there to see these children's behaviour.

Fast forward several years and I can see why! Some of them are very unkind and I have witnessed it first hand.

While I appreciate you cannot 100% know what your child is seeing surely it it important to listen to them

those who have stated that they've made their child invite other children to their birthday parties that they don't like, maybe you should have gone for a smaller party instead of making decisions for your children's friendship group?.

No I don’t think that. My DS is now 6 and with the benefit of hindsight, inviting all the DC was absolutely the right thing to do. At 4 friendships are very fluid and young DC can be irrational. As I said, my DS is now best friends with the girl he didn’t like at 4.

Also holding a class party is not making decisions for a child’s friendship group - it is doing the opposite - it is inviting everyone .

That said, if your 4 year old is declining party invitations on the basis that the children she doesn’t like will be in the same room, I would be very concerned. I would speak to nursery ASAP and find out what light they can shed.