My 9 year old has no friends

[Kidsfeet101]

So my 9yr old DD has lost one of her best friends - as in her friend has ditched her to be with the popular girls 😢 (said girls have bullied my DD also) This has been coming for a while so it was expected & she's handled it really well, however upon reflection I'm upset for her as she has no close friend/s.

She's a very mature girl, extremely kind, funny, not overly outgoing & can get overlooked quite often. I'm just so sad that she hasn't got that one or two friends that she's really close with. I'd love to have people over or take them out somewhere but there isn't anyone to ask.

I'm not sure how to help her as I found my best friend when I was 31! So any advice would be appreciated

Also as a side note she is a very dedicated dancer where she dances with two teams. Again she hasn't formed any solid friendships there & she's been there since age 4 🙈

My 10 year old has struggled with school friendships but she has an amazing group of friends from the sport she does outside of school. It's quite a time consuming sport and they spend a lot of time together but these friendships are very valuable to her. Does she do any out of school stuff where she could make friends?

Oh sorry I cross posted with your 2nd post. Try another club??

It's so tricky isn't it and as a parent all you want to do is fix it. I don't honestly know what the answer is but I would go for a combination of:

• be open to fostering friendships (finding new activities, keeping an open door as you are doing) without putting too much pressure on your DD
• if you have friends with children, organise social activities with them yourself
• make your family life feel a generally warm and sociable place via other means than child friendships e.g. have your own friends over, do things with your wider family (grandparents, cousins etc)
• do fun things with your DD yourself - days out, adventures, etc

i.e. just generally expand and diversify all your social life (not only your DD's). All in all I think the pre-teen years can be difficult socially. I hope she will find her feet again soon.

Is your dance environment competitive ? I did a lot of ballet at her age ( started young also). Some of the mum’s definitely could be, the kids not so much, you mention she’s on teams as well not just classes

I’m 32 btw so before the reality tv hype !