Helping 7yo DD with friendships

[Worriedmum987]

Lately DD has been coming home and talking about feeling sad and left out. Things like one of her friends was meant to be her partner for something and then picked someone else to partner with so DD didn’t have anyone.

Another one was her friends running away from her when she didn’t want to run, but did explain here that they weren’t doing anything wrong and she could have run with them but it was her choice not to.

Then today she told us she felt sad because everyone was playing in groups and none of them wanted her to play with them and she was just left out.

Obviously we’ve empathised with her, encouraged her to keep trying, try to spend time with different groups and reassured her that she’s an amazing person etc, but it’s absolutely breaking my heart hearing this so didn’t know if anyone had any advice for anything else we could do that may help her in the moments? She can be quite shy and a lot of the girls that she’s been/is trying to spend time with are more “alpha” personality types so I do think there is a bit of a natural clash there. I definitely don’t think it remotely reaches bullying at the minute - they’re not doing anything wrong by not wanting to play with her but just don’t know how to help her and it’s horrible hearing that she feels sad/lonely/left out so much.

7 years old is prime ‘friendship struggles’ age. Girls especially go through a developmental stage, where they start to realise that other people have different perspectives. This makes things more complex, friendship-wise. They become more sensitive to peer dynamics and social image. My friend is a Y3 teacher and her class is riven with ‘friendship fallouts’.

Continue to organise opportunities for socialising outside school and make sure your DD has a hobby or two outside of school. Things do tend to settle down a bit later in primary (and then shift again in secondary!).

This is really helpful, thank you! DD is our eldest so no frame of reference for whether this is normal/how involved I should be, so definitely reassuring!