ASK THE EXPERT:My six-year-old daughter has very few friends. What can I do to help her fit in?
Q I think my daughter could do with some guidance on how to make friends. It isn’t that she isn’t social, she is. She loves to play with other children and she is very articulate for her age (she’s six). In fact, she can really hold a proper adult-type conversation which my friends think is amazing.
But, despite this, she never seems to be able to keep friends. She never gets asked over to other girls’ houses but I know she’d love to be invited.
Her teacher had mentioned to me earlier in the year that she can be a bit domineering with the other girls and that some girls in her class did not welcome this.
Honestly, I just assumed she was being assertive which I think is a good thing and I never really thought too much about it. But I have really noticed this summer that she is on the fringes of the groups of children playing on our road.
Is there anything I can do to help her be more included?
AIt is painful for parents to be on the sideline and to watch our children as they seem not to fit in, or to struggle in some way socially. We can really empathise with their experience of feeling left out, or their feeling that something may be wrong with them when they thing that nobody wants to be their friend.
Sometimes too their experience mirrors our own experience from childhood and so the hurt we feel when we watch them struggling can feel very real and personally meaningful. If we too struggled as a child to fit in then we are at a loss, ourselves, to know what to do to help them to overcome this social exclusion.
The first thing for you to remember is that you can’t live your daughter’s life for her. All you can do is support her if she feels left out and give her strategies and confidence to try again to make connections with others.
You don’t mention it but I wonder if your daughter is an only child. Only children are often very articulate and very comfortable in adult company. This is often most obvious when they are young and their easiness with adults seems all the more remarkable.
However, this makes sense if you think that they probably spend lots of time with adults and their early social learning is often very adult oriented. What they can sometimes seem to lack is the skill to interact with their peers instead.
So, even though they want to be with other children, they just don’t seem to know quite how to achieve this without putting the others off. It is almost as if their desire to make friends means that they try too hard, but equally they try in the wrong way.
Your daughter’s age is also significant. Because she is probably old enough at six, you might think about trying to explore with her how she feels about her friendships or lack of them. How aware is she of how she comes across to people?
Her teacher used the word “domineering” to describe her. If this is indeed an accurate description, then you can take it that others (including other children) may well perceive her to be bossy and self-important.
Such behaviour rarely endears children to their peers. Again the more she is aware of how she is perceived, the more able she might be to change that. Your task then is to try to help her to express herself in a less pushy way. Talk to her about how she tries to join a game. Does she, for example, just ask to play or does she suggest new rules or variations on the game already being played?
While you don’t want her to become a wallflower, you do want her to tone down her assertiveness (or attempts at dominance).
One practical way for you to help her is to invite one potential friend over to your house to play with her. Make sure you have the time to be around and then you can observe how your daughter typically interacts and, more importantly, you can step in to divert her if she seems to be too pushy.
You can also model different ways of saying things so that she can learn new ways of approaching things that take the views, opinions or feelings of the other child into consideration.
At the very least you can give her the feedback she might need to realise that she might need to do things differently with her friends.
By teaching her, in situ with another child, more inclusive and thoughtful ways of interacting, you are giving her skills that she can use when out with the group. By allowing another child to see a less domineering side of your daughter, you may find that she makes a friend and that one friendship can build to be an introduction to further friendships within the group.
David Coleman is a clinical psychologist and broadcaster with RTÉ television
Readers’ queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but David regrets he cannot enter into individual correspondence.
Questions should be e-mailed to healthsupplement@irishtimes.com