Need help with 11 yo’s social skills!
Hello all, needing advice about developing my 11 yo’s very under-developed social skills.
For context, she is the youngest of 3, her older sisters are 20 + 21 respectively so much older. We’ve been living overseas, but in the Uk where my family lives, she has no cousins her age (all much older or younger) and none of my friends at home have kids her age. My husbands family lives in South America and we rarely see them.
She started nursery in France age 3, kids were always happy to see her and would run up to her. At age 4 I noticed when I took her to the park that she would start playing with kids but she would quickly storm off and sit on a bench if she lost/ the game changed/ she didn’t understand the game rules. Tried to work on it but to no avail. She complained about always being alone at nursery, the teacher confirmed it but didn’t know why.
Come 5 and Covid hits. For the whole of lockdown she had no interaction whatsoever with her peers as her sisters were already teens at that point. The whole rest of the year was a write-off as no playdates or birthday parties etc. Come Year 1 of elementary school (age 6), Covid was still going on and her class was being shut down every other week with too many cases, she didn’t seem to make any real friends that year.
Year 2 of elementary started off ok, she made a few friends, started some activities, invited over kids from time-to-time but by the end of the year was complaining about girls trying to « steal » her friends and leaving her out.
Year 3 (age 8 by now) she was put in a multi-age class, she made a group of friends but within a few months she said she fell out with the « leader » and was « fired » from the group. She said all the other groups were « full » and so spent the year sitting alone on a bench, her teacher confirmed it but didn’t have a reason why she was so isolated.
Year 4 she was in a class with different kids, she didn’t know any of them, made friends quickly but then same thing, after a few months she was « fired » from the group and spent the rest of the year on the bench, other groups said she wasn’t allowed to play with them. Spoke to the teacher multiple times who made a lot of effort to encourage new friendships but still she was always alone. We went to many extra-cirriculars etc. and although our daughter never complained of the kids being nasty, she just said no one wanted to be friends with her or really talk to her. No one even really said hello at drop-off etc.
She started seeing the school psychologist but she didn’t seem to do a lot, they did « art therapy » which ended up just being drawings of random things but didn’t really give any information as to why this was happening despite her being extraverted.
We decided to change school for Year 5 (age 10), it went great in the beginning, the first few months she was invited to birthdays, Hallowe’en parties, playdates and sleepovers…..then all of a sudden it just stopped towards January. She said the other girls would say they needed to talk in private then would leave her by herself. She would go up to other groups and they would say « sorry this group is private/it’s a private game ». Talked to the teacher and she was also baffled, said she was a very lovely girl who was kind, helpful and sociable with everyone.
The realization came when around about the same time, we went on a camping trip with her Scout group as adult volunteers.
One night we heard a lot of shouting coming from inside the girl’s tent. It was our daughter, screaming and hollering about the tent door being left open. She was berating them as though she was a strict headteacher and they were naughty school girls. We had very, very strong words with her and had a long chat about it. She is very allergic to wasp stings and been extremely stressed about any wasps getting in, we know she’d been anxious but we’d never seen it expressed in this way before. The group leader had to lead a discussion with everyone as they group wasn’t capable of doing anything together anymore. The other kids basically complained that our daughter was always bossing them about, telling them how to do things, telling them off for doing things « wrong ». She recognized she had been doing these things and apologized but said she didn’t know how to stop.
We called a private psychologist when we got back who had a session with her and told us that 1) she had a very strong value system (e.g. hates hypocrisy and hypocrites, so can’t stand anyone who talks about someone behind their back and then calls them their best friend) and 2) is extremely
anxious and feels the need to control especially other kid’s behaviors, but trusts adults and older children hence why we had never seen this behavior.
We worked on it a lot with the psychologist and at home. Suddenly things got better at school and there were no longer « private » chats and games. She moved into high school in September and found many new friends and has had party invitations etc.
However, I still feel like after spending soooooo many years sitting alone on a bench at school and being left out of playdates and parties, her social skills are really lagging behind all her peers. I feel like being part of a group is something she should have learnt at age 5/6.
She was invited to a birthday with her Scout group today, the same group she was shouting at on the camping trip in May, the whole group was invited. We talked to her beforehand as it was at an arcade so lots of opportunity for her to tell people how to do things. We were happy to see that she did not boss anyone around at all, didn’t tell anyone how to do things.
But she just doesn’t know at all how to participate in a group……at all. She’ll go up to a few girls who are deep in conversation and say random things like « my head hurts » « I ate way too much » « I just saw a car with a donut sticker on it ». Of course the others all ignore her and carry on with their conversation. We then went to a Japanese restaurant and she said to everyone « I have no idea how to use chopsticks ». When they ignored her, she kept on repeating it over and over again, until I had to tell her to stop from the other table. Then she started saying that she had loads of mosquito bites and wouldn’t stop talking about them and bringing them up again later when no one was listening. Later, something on her plate was hard to cut and so she was exclaiming really loudly « OH MY GOD THIS IS SO HARD TO CUT!!! OH MY GOD ITS SO HARD! AHHHHHHHHHH HELP! HELP! I CAN’T CUT THIS!!!! » She was also talking really loudly and getting really close into people’s personal space, would put her arm around people who clearly didn’t want to be touched, get right into their faces, would bend down to talk to girls shorter than her and would literally be right in front of their faces…..I could see the others were visibly very annoyed and exasperated by it.
We’ve had her assessed for ASD, ADHD etc. by two specialists but they all said everything was fine. Her teachers say does not display any behaviors of those things in class. She isn’t like this one-on-one, or if she is in a group with her best friend (means she has one « ally » in the group).
So my question is, how on earth do we get her to practice social skills in a group setting?! Because even if I keep getting her to go to group activities etc., after a while she puts them off and they just all start ignoring her and she ends up alone. We’re worried that this could happen to her new friends at school if this is left unchecked.
We’ve tried talking to her about it gently but I don’t want to destroy her self-confidence, and sometimes there are so many problems I don’t want to make a huge list of things she did « wrong » and end up creating social anxiety. It’s almost like a sort of panic when she realizes other peoples attention is not on her and she has to do something to get it back. Even if she sees two people walking side by side, she’ll try and push them aside to get in the middle of them. She’ll even grab people psychically and turn them around if they turn their backs on her while she’s telling them something! At home I wouldn’t say she has too much or too little attention….she doesn’t attention-seek at home.
Anyway, any help or success stories please!!