Making friends at nursery

[xfrankiex]

My little girl started nursery 3 mornings a week 3 weeks ago. She has been telling me about this friend she had made and every morning when we stand in the queue, she always says “I wonder if my friend will be here”. I thought great, she’s made a friend! I came across this little girl last week with her mom, her mom seemed lovely and the little girl was holding my daughter’s hand and they went off to play. My daughter seemed to be following her around, and I have seen her do this before where she gets attached to one child and follows them everywhere.
This morning at drop off this little girl came in and was with her mom looking a little quiet, my daughter went straight over and her mom said to her “look who it is” she looked at my daughter and didn’t say anything, her mom told her to say hi and she did, but then went back to looking a little off. I thought to myself, I wonder if this little girl is fed up of my daughter following her around?
This evening my daughter has been telling me that her friend has told her that she can’t be her friend and it has upset me a little and has set my mind off worrying that it’s going to hurt her feelings. She seems absolutely fine, and hasn’t been upset about it but it is just hard to hear her tell me that. She has been speaking about it before bed too so it is obviously on her mind. We have told her that it’s ok and she can just go and play with someone else.
Has anyone else experienced this with their kids, and how did it affect their future friendships? I have often thought to myself over the last few weeks that I am worried my daughter is just going to cling to this girl and not bother with any other children. Maybe now she will play with some different children?

OP she is tiny. She is learning about friendships and relationships and at some point someone will hurt her feelings and reject her. Children are brutal ! They also tend to get over things fairly quickly at that age . Please don’t worry or overthink

I am a terrible over thinker and have always had anxiety (don’t know if you can tell!) I was also bullied in school growing up so I think I am hyper aware to these type of things.

How old is your DD?

She is 3 and a half

Young children don't usually have 'best friends' at nursery unless they're together a lot outside nursery. Perhaps the other child just wanted her mum at that time. I'm sure they'll be friends again tomorrow but encourage her to play with lots of different children anyway.

It's normal to worry but I do think wringing your hands about future friendships and bullying etc is being a tad ott. They're tiny, they may end up being best buds for life, or ever see each other again post nursery depending on schools and stuff. She will be hurt by friends, it's just one of those things she will need to deal with, at some point we all have. You just try to teach her resilience and she'll be grand.

so the little girl came in clearly a little off, and you assume it is because your 3 yo is annoying her?? how is that your go to assumption? are you projecting how you think people see you?

no, one friend being quiet one day, or even one friend not being her friend any more, is not going to affect her entire future friendships.

Because I have seen it happen with her at soft play in the past, where she has spoken to one child and followed them about the entire time and in the end they get fed up with it. So I just thought that might be what has happened here?

I have been reading books with characters that have different friends and also she has been watching things like peppa pig where she has a group of friends as well.
She is my first and possibly my only child so this is all new to me, with what happened to me at school I just remember those feelings and how it felt to be told someone doesn’t want to be your friend or when you get singled out. I know she is not guaranteed to have the same experience as me when it comes to school but it’s hard to not remember those times and worry about her :(

She’s 3! They don’t really have set friends at pre school that age, all just mix and play with each other. Yes some might be closer than others but that doesn’t mean anything at that age. I honestly wouldn’t worry about it and I’d tried to work on your anxiety a little bit before school starts as otherwise you’re going to find it very tough!!

I get it - you were bullied and have anxiety and you want to try to protect your daughter from the pain you suffered. The best way to do that is to try to remember this is all normal, and stay positive and calm. It’s very unlikely your daughter is getting it wrong - she’s 3! They are all just figuring it all out. Just keep loving her for who she is and stop “borrowing tomorrow’s troubles”.

Just to add - I can 100% relate to this! It’s quite the monumental thing to feel so responsible for this tiny person and all their future happiness. The good news is, we aren’t! We just do the best we can, treat them with love and kindness so they love and trust themselves and know they are worthy of that love.

Thanks, it definitely is an overwhelming feeling at times!

You are massively overthinking this. It’s completely normal. Just encourage her to be kind to everyone and keep being friendly and asking new friends to play with her.

My daughter broke her heart crying in bed last night saying she didn’t want to go to nursery today. She still went but had a few tears at drop off, then a girl I know she has been playing with came in and they went off holding hands outside. Then at pickup today, one of the teachers told me that there had been some tears this morning and that she kept saying “I need friends”
The teacher said that this one girl did tell her that she didn’t want to be her friend but my daughter just seems to still want to play with her. They are trying to encourage her to be friends with other children but it doesn’t stop me from worrying and feeling upset that she feels like this. I don’t know how to tell her to just leave this other girl alone as she obviously doesn’t want to play with her.

Just tell her so? That's what I would do. Just be calm and straightforward, and focus on the positives of having more fun playing with other children. Children aren't always going to get along just because they are similar ages, they have their own personalities. This child may change their mind in future anyway but for now I'd just encourage her to play with other children of which there will be many with different personalities in the class. I mean this gently but it's not a really a big deal, they're learning and navigating relationships independent of you. It will all be forgotten about completely soon.

Everyone keeps telling me it’s not a big deal but it obviously is for her as she’s been crying about it and it’s just upsetting seeing them like that isn’t it, when your child just wants to play and be friends with someone but they don’t want to be. This girl is a little older than her too apparently. She does have this other little girl that she is friends with who talks about my daughter at home as well her mom told me, so I just wish she would concentrate on being her friend instead and forget about this other girl.

I do genuinely mean this kindly but you need to calm yourself a bit as your daughter will be picking up on your huge anxiety about this. Kids do this, it’s not a big deal… it’s seriously normal. And kids do get upset about going into nursery, if you’ve not had tears before now, I’d say it was going unusually well.

My daughter is also three and has just started nursery this term, though only for one morning a week. Last week, she came home and told me that a girl with a pink hairband wouldn’t let her share the computer and said she couldn’t play with her.

She didn’t seem massively upset about it so I played it down and just said that it was a shame and that the other girl would learn to share nicely eventually just like she does, but on the inside I was absolutely crushed. It’s awful to think of your child being excluded or rejected. You want every interaction they have with another child to be positive and for all the other kids to be kind and friendly. But the world just isn’t like that and they have to learn to be resilient and to have strong enough self-esteem that these inevitable knock-backs don’t hurt too badly.

What’s important is that she knows that you are her friend and that she is very deeply loved and treasured and that someone at home always wants to play with her and loves spending time with her. My daughter and I sing this stupid song every night at bedtime about how special and fun she is so I hope she knows that these social rejections aren’t about her.

I’m sorry to hear that about your daughter, it is really upsetting when you get told these things.
Hopefully our little ones find some lovely friends that always want to play with them.

I have two young daughters and always tell them it’s ok if somebody doesn’t want to play them, there’s always someone else to play with. I point out that sometimes THEY also don’t feel like playing with anybody and it’s ok for others to feel that way too.

Also, children are not always accurate when they tell you what has happened at nursery. My DD was telling me X didn’t want to play with her at nursery. Then we bumped into X and her mum at the playground and played together for a while. Later on, she told me again X didn’t want to play with her - but because I was there I knew what she meant was X wanted to go on the slide and not the toy car that my DD was playing on. It wasn't true that X didn’t want to play with her, just that they both wanted to play on different things.

OP, respectfully, I remember your other post, very recently, about struggling with your daughter starting nursery and how you couldn’t bear being away from her and were dreading her starting school even more and couldn’t cope with the ideas of being away from her that many hours per day five days a week — you need to sort out your own anxiety and depression and what sounds like isolation.

It’s not good for a small child to feel she’s responsible for her mother’s happiness or being her main source of human contact. It’s awful having been bullied in your own schooldays, as I know, but you’re a parent now, and you need to find a way of coming to terms with it, for your daughter as well as yourself, before you start projecting your own insecurities about being disliked onto her. Therapy would help, as it would with your anxiety.

Your DD, to absorb healthy ideas about her own worth, other people, navigating friendships etc, needs to see you modelling confidence in engaging with the world and other people, modelling friendships (does she see you around multiple friends, for instance, doing things with groups or different people?) I had shy, socially-awkward, withdrawn, anxious parents, neither of whom had friends of their own , and my siblings and I absorbed the most unhelpful ideas from them about other people being always more powerful and never to be trusted, and that it was normal to have to run around buying friendships with services. We all spent our later teens and twenties unpicking those scripts. With effort.

The best thing you can do now for your DD is to work on yourself so that you’re modelling healthy relationships, social confidence and that having friendships with multiple people rather than over-relying on one, is a good thing. All the Peppa Pig in the world isn’t going to outweigh what you show her by example. If you start catastrophising about her potentially being bullied or disliked, that’s really not helpful for her. The opposite.

She’s three. At three, my child was still doing parallel play and barely noticed other children unless they took a toy he wanted. He played with different kids every week or two for months if not years after starting school. Lots of children did. For years to come, your DD is likely to be shifting friendships frequently. I don’t think DS’s settled down till he was seven, and then we moved countries so he started all over (and very quickly found a posse in the new place).

But focus on you now. That’s what you can do for your DD.

I don’t have depression but I do struggle with anxiety. I was on sertraline for about 18 months and that helped massively but I can’t be on it at the moment due to trying for baby number two.
I am not an isolated person either, I have a small group of friends and one of them has a child the same age as my daughter (born the same day) and we meet regularly so she sees me interacting with them.
I am not unconfident when talking to new people and she sees this herself. I just worry about her, as I think any parent would, but my worries are just magnified due to how I was made to feel in my early years at school. It’s not nice hearing that your daughter was upset and telling her teacher she needs friends. It brings up a lot of sad memories for me, but I am trying my best.

Who told you that you can’t be on sertraline if you are ttc? Your MH is important, I suggest an appointment with your gp!

The GP told me when I discussed it with them before ttc, they told me it can affect fetal development and can cause heart defects.