Isolated only child - could moving help?

[TempsPerdu]

Also posted in One-Child Families, but adding here for traffic

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 some kind of 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 unusually 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. We requested last year that DD change class, as she got on better with the girls from the parallel class, but the school was not open to this idea.

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.

I just wanted to add that I have realised recently that I was more worried about DD having friends at school than she was. Once we had the diagnosis it explained a lot to me & I don’t feel so much pressure to facilitate friendships & I’m more lead by DD. They are also very young still but DD is quite emotionally behind her peers.

A change of school sounds good- even all girls, where she won't be pushed to be girly as a tribal identity, but can be a child with varied interests and can make friends

Whether this is accompanied by a move to a smaller town depends on if you think you'd generally have a better quality of life for the three of you - would you have a long commute?

I agree a diagnosis doesn’t fix anything, but just having a deeper understanding of your child (and them of themselves, when they’re older) is priceless.

I honestly don’t know how terrible my daughter’s self-esteem would be if she thought she was neurotypical! She forgives herself for her awkwardness, for struggling to socialise and make friends, for being a bit of an oddball, for her slow processing. She put her brains to good use and got into grammar school (who so far have been great, and understand girls like her so well).

Kids like ours deserve to know that they’re normal autistic kids, not failing neurotypical ones.

I really resent this message that suggests that any girl who is intelligent, introverted/not into attention-seeking dance routines, and not into stereotypical girl stuff is by default neurodiverse.

There are some years in our primary school which are dominated by football mad boys. Some years have a large amount of girly girls. There's my son's year, which is full of Pokemon loving, book obsessed nerds. My daughter's year doesn't have extremes.

If my son was in the football-mad year above him, he'd be far less happy at school. If my daughter was in a girly girl year she's also struggle to find her tribe. Don't over think it, and as others have said, it will shake out a bit as they get older and friendships are no longer dominated by parental involvement.

@shockeditellyou, I don’t think anyone is saying that it’s the default assumption but signs of autism often go unnoticed & undiagnosed in girls because they don’t always have the stereotypical traits. Also I think underlying this attitude is an idea that neurodiverse is bad & neurotypical is good which I don’t subscribe to.

I really resent this message that suggests that any girl who is intelligent, introverted/not into attention-seeking dance routines, and not into stereotypical girl stuff is by default neurodiverse.

I stand by everything I said. That long list of traits could be autism and the OP should know that. It may not resonate now, but it might in the future.

Everywhere you look on MN you’ll find threads from parents getting their kids diagnosed at 15+ after a MH crisis. Because they’ve been sticking their heads in the sand for ten years or more and, frankly, failing their kids. We need to do better than ignoring kids who struggle and show ND traits.

You resent what I said? Then you’re being ableist. That’s not on me.

I certainly wouldn’t be jumping to autism here.

Your description could have been me at age 5 and I am as certain as I can be that I do not have ASD. I was just an early reader, academically minded, only child, not many family friends so very little social experience or confidence, and also young for my year.

As I say DD was/is similar and has now found a whole tribe of similar girls - I suspect one of them may have ASD but she also has extreme food limitations and a very black and white view of things. The others are just bookish!

Just to say thanks so much for all the replies so far - all very interesting and plenty to think about. I’ll respond to each as soon as I get time. 🙂

It took us 7 years to get a diagnosis, we didn't wait for a MH crisis as you put it jelly but the funding crisis in schools and cahms caused it. My child burst into tears on being told. It brought no support.

Support is meant to be needs based. But now its so limited and no diagnosis is illegally used as a means to justify no support. But you still don't get it after. All it led to for us is child kicked out of school during my chemotherapy.

Its very hard to tell if a child is asd at 5, some very similar children managed fine and some fell apart later on. The difference was largely how caring the schools were and how strong a friendship group there was and how good SN support is in a school. And their attitude to bullying, our school let autism be used as a term of abuse. There's a lot of parent blame re SN as that is free. But mine was in a school which knew full well he had a full time TA at primary and refused to fund any and also would ignore him outside lessons so when I had cancer and chemo they left him wandering round the field alone. Then then declared can't meet needs in my chemo.

Funny you should say that @minipie, because early, self-taught, precocious reading is called hyperlexia. Very few people have heard of it. And well over 80% of hyperlexic kids are autistic 😅

The funny thing about people being so sure that they/their kids aren’t autistic is because, quite honestly, hardly anyone has a decent appreciation of how autism presents, bar a bunch of tired old cliches.

So you could be autistic and not know it. You could muddle through life perfectly well and never realise. You could birth autistic kids and not question their quirks because they’re just like you.

This is how you get generation after generation of undiagnosed autism. I can now quite confidently say that there is autism going back in my family for four generations.

@Silkiefloof
@Jellycats4life
@Kitchendisco1

Thank you for sharing your own experiences with your DC. To be honest, I was fully expecting the neurodivergence topic to come up, as that’s the way my other thread last year went - the consensus was that DD must be autistic.

I don’t know, it’s a tricky one to navigate. It’s not something I would dismiss out of hand, and we’ll definitely keep a close eye on DD as she gets older - as a former primary teacher with a Master’s in a child development/psychology related area I think I’m more tuned in than most to this possibility. I’m also aware of the complexities around diagnosing girls, and know that the fact that none of the professionals who have worked with DD have ever raised any issues doesn’t mean that she isn’t neurodivergent.

However, I’m rather inclined to agree with what @shockeditellyou said about gender stereotyping. Yes, the list of traits above could point to an eventual diagnosis, but it does feel like we’re not in a great place as a society if a girl can’t be notably academic, non gender-conforming or non people-pleasing without being given some kind of ‘othering’ diagnosis. I believe social conditioning at home is an important factor, and as a strong feminist myself at least some of DD’s traits have definitely come from me - I have never ‘banned’ or denigrated things that are stereotypically ‘girly’, but have also never pushed pink, princesses or unicorns on her in the same way as many of DD’s peers‘ parents clearly have. This whole area of increased gender stereotyping is something that has really struck me since DD started nursery (where the staff did ‘spa treatments’ with the girls while the boys played football), let alone school.

In our case it isn’t even that DD actively ‘hates girly stuff’ - she has dolls, loves cuddly toys, wears dresses etc. But she likes lots of other stuff too, and the issue she is coming up against is that the other girls don’t have anywhere near the same breadth of interests as she does. The boys are similarly one dimensional - football is king and nothing else gets a look in. Personally I see this largely as a parenting/societal issue, rather than neurodivergence.

Similarly, while I was teaching there was almost always a group of quiet, mature, bookish girls in my class, who would generally stick together and form a friendship group. DD would have got on brilliantly with any of these girls, but there is no one else like that in her current cohort - she stands out largely because she is the only academic girl within a low attaining cohort.

She’d definitely thrive in a grammar school, but the only one we have access to is a super selective for which you have to start intensively tutoring in Year 3, and I don’t think that level of dog-eat-dog competition is something any of us would want. It would also mean her friends would be scattered far and wide across north London, which isn’t ideal.

Sadly private schooling here in London isn’t really affordable for us - we could feasibly do it if we moved out to somewhere cheaper, but then that reignites the whole moving debate! In any case, the local independents are mainly academic hothouses, which I’m not sure would suit DD’s gentle temperament.

Not abelist at all but find this post really offensive. Nobody waits for a MH crisis but cahms waiting lists and lack of school funding mean many asd kids are left to go in a MH crisis before help comes. Everyone in LA and schools passes the buck in some schools. Diagnosis left my child in tears and very traumatised. Just because schools and LA are breaking the law with regards to support don't blame the parents. Nasty.

@Jellycats4life That’s really interesting about hyperlexia, and something I wasn’t aware of. However, that’s definitely not DD - yes, she’s top of her class in reading but she’s not really a super precocious autodidact - more a bright and somewhat privileged child with a stay at home ex-primary teacher for a mum! 🙂

Can I just say, these kids are 5/6 years and you are being a little unfair dismissing that the girls don’t have ‘depth of interests’ because they like unicorns and the boys only like football. You don’t know these kids or parents well at all, but you seem to be stereotyping them a bit? And disregarding them as a low attaining cohort. I think you need to look for a different school.

I'm surprised it's so gendered already at your DD's school. My DS is in year 2 and is still friends with girls - he arranged trick or treating with a girl in his class.

Admittedly he is friends more with the girls like your DD than the ones more into unicorns etc

@Polpa Lots of good advice there, thank you. I’m glad you found somewhere that suited your family, although I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or not that lack of down time and helicopter parenting isn’t just a London thing!

I think, when I say that I live in London, that some posters are perhaps picturing a slightly different version of the city. Obviously London is a huge place, and the suburb we’re in certainly isn’t a naice liberal enclave of strong parental engagement and extracurricular pottery and capoeira classes! If anything, it’s rather socially conservative, hence all my agonising about gender stereotyping. DD’s primary is also a church school, which I think attracts a slightly more conservative type of parent (more so than I realised when we applied, actually). And a large and increasing proportion of the parents are very detached from school and not especially engaged in their child’s education.

So it wouldn’t be a move from buzzy, liberal London to some rural backwater - the area we’re looking at is probably more politically Conservative but is very connected to a university city and has quite a lot going on in terms of the arts etc. And the local comp there is large, strong on arts/music and actually seems to have a more liberal ethos than our catchment school, which is a super strict academy.

Its really difficult to tell at 5 re autism in a bright child, mine presented similarly and I remember the head being perplexed saying some of the things you say are like an autistic child but he's the opposite. Then in y2 social anxiety diagnosed by ed psych who thought not autism.

The amount of people put in the autism category has gone up a lot since I was at school. It does run in families and certainly my brother has similar traits but undiagnosed and all my family are very opposed to him being diagnosed but he did very well - first in degree and straight into management job, bought 4 bed house, no mh issues but always lived alone and very restricted diet, no social skills.

Mine coped at school until y9 and was on track for great grades then. He fell apart with lockdown and then my cancer but with the EHCP and then autism diagnosis things got worse not better. Suddenly all schools could declare can't meet needs and the only option offered was home tuition which was a rubbish option for him as he says school is for learning, home for chilling. It took 7 years to get a diagnosis out of cahms, they kept kicking him off the list - first time we moved areas, second time he couldn't do online so was kicked off for non-engaging, third time he wouldn't speak with them kicked off. But LA said if we got private they would refuse to accept it. Previous area had given full time TA and he thrived, second highest SATs in school, friends, autism based methods but without diagnosis. The only thing the diagnosis did was give us PIP for him, which does mean we can pay for things for him but if I could turn back time would have stayed in same area so support of other parents and gone private. Or if moved gone to the school with autism base even though he wouldn't have been in it. We tried for that and LA refused. We have it now, 3 years too late. They shoved everything onto cahms who gave him the wrong drug which put him into almost a coma for 6 months (catatonia) and he's still not recovered a year and a half on - he can now walk again and see again and eat unaided but that's it, still can't talk, can't write, can't read and terrified of anyone but us. And the Maudsley agreed with us it was lack of education support which caused this which should have been given with or without a diagnosis. But they did at least tell us about the Halpol which cahms covered up for 8 months so we had no idea why our child was literally starving to death.

Oh yes no hyperlexia here either - I have met a kid like that and it wasn’t me - just lots of adult input, incl from teacher granny, and a very verbal brain.

I have considered autism plenty, especially for DD but I really don’t think it fits. Nor does her SENCo who knows her very well. ADHD on the other hand potentially does (will be pursuing investigation, possibly for both of us) - I am not anti-ND at all if you’re suggesting that.

anyway this thread is not about me and my DD so will shut up now!

@Jackiebrambles I’m not dismissing them; it’s a fact - I’m a governor, have seen all the relevant data and it’s an unusual low attaining cohort of girls in DD’s year, something that the class teachers and SLT have frequently commented on in meetings. The school has also questioned the unusual lack of interaction between boys and girls among the last few incoming cohorts of children, and have wondered whether this could be a knock-on effect of the pandemic/lockdown.

As for not knowing the parents, I’ve lived in the area my whole life, seen several close friends put their children through the school and am now as involved as I can be in school life. For whatever reason things have definitely changed recently, and the girls and boys in DD’s cohort are unusually detached from one another. It’s been noted by several other parents as well as myself (indeed, the gender divide has been showing in many ways since nursery).

Children of 5/6 years old frequently are quite one dimensional though?

I have twins, one boy one girl and at that age the boy was into Pokémon and the girl into horses. Children of that age aren't yet rounded grown personalities with lots of interests.

In my experience they tend to go through fads which then fade - so with my son it was dinosaurs, Pokémon (that never really faded and he's finished uni now), yu-gi-oh etc.

If you are saying your DD's class doesn't have anyone that she wants to play with because the boys are all boring because they are obsessed with football and the girls are boring because they are obsessed with princesses and unicorns; well they sound like normal children and you can either teach your dd how to interact with them - or not.

@arintingly Yes, I’m surprised about this too, and I’m sure it’s very different elsewhere - I think it’s probably due to a variety of different factors and we’ve just been very unlucky with the cohort we’ve ended up in.

DS was totally like this at that age, although because he was young in his year, not so much precocious.
Older now, loads of friends, definitely not autistic.

I was wondering this and yy to the kids spotting neurodiversity way way quicker than adults. I’ve two ND kids the older is very like your daughter, she has loads of friends and is off to an Oxbridge type Uni so this is by no means a bad thing.

@Octavia64 So (and sorry, I might have misinterpreted here), you’re saying that DD has to suck up playing princesses every break and lunch time, ad nauseam, despite having no interest in this, because that’s what the other girls are into? She’d be fine doing that for a bit, and then playing something else, but at the moment there is nothing else the other girls will play, so she just opts out completely and plays with the older girls.

I worked with children for many years before becoming a parent myself, and most of the children I’ve taught, even at 5/6, have had a range of developing interests - girls who like Lego and dinosaurs; boys who choose to do drawing as well as football. I don’t think it has to be quite as gendered and one dimensional as you suggest.