How to help 5 y/o make friends?

[Adyna]

My 5yo boy is very confident and energetic, but struggles to make friends for some reason. Looking for any advice as it’s breaking my heart taking him in to school every morning, watching him run up to other kids to join in their tag game etc and for them to just look right through him. I can’t see anything odd or unusual about him myself so I have no idea what’s going on.

Ask school to help? They can scaffold play at breaks, introduce him into games etc.

It might be that he's just not great at picking up non-verbal cues around what the others are playing etc so just needs a bit of support with breaking into other kids' games. You can role play with him some strategies - just basic stuff like saying to the other kids 'what are you playing, can I join in?'

This exactly. Does he do any clubs out of school? Both my DD and DS were similar (DD is autistic, my DS is not and sounds very similar to yours!) and scouts was fantastic in scaffolding friendships, it's much easier for them to form friendships in structured groups and activities I find.