Daughter and friends. My daughter is 10, and has alwasys struggled with friends. When she started school she was always in trouble for hurting someone, or argueing. Fast forward a few years, we have done councelling, and we have worked hard on her behaviour. She has done a 180, she still at times struggles with her temper, but to what it was, is no worse than any 10 year old. the trouble is, that her behavior has followed her all the way through school, and she still struggles to make firm friends. When looking at the messages on her phone, I see the "friends" she does have ignore her message, or tell her to go away, and then she bombards them with messages, I have talked to her about this in the past and told her not to do this. What advice can you give to help me talk to her. My heart is breaking, we are a small school, of just the one class, so moving on to others is not so easy, Im asking now as the past few days, she said that she has started to play on her own, but its ok, as she has made some imaginary friends. My heart breaks.
6 Replies
Sorry but I have to ask, is there a reason a ten year old has a phone?
She's rejected at school, then rejected at home, she's never free of it when she has a phone.
Her school dont allow them to walk home if they dont have a phone, not something I was in a rush for, but there it it.
Take her to a child psychologist. She may have some underlying issues there. The Dr will give you a referral. Has anything ever happened to her? Seek professional help. I did for my son and it did wonders.
Seems like she has pretty severe social issues. I mean it's normal for kids not to have firm friends but they do form friendships and should be able to get on with people to a certain degree. It sounds like she wants friendship though, which is lovely. I would go to a psych or girls counsellor to work on those social skills, and I would also speak to the school as playing alone isn't ok and they should have all sorts of supported play and activities for those lost kids to join, and usually it's there that they find their connections.
I would also try to frame every thing as a positive, not pick her apart as I guess she feels pretty low about it all.
So instead of saying don't bombard kids with messages, you could say I see you messaged Katie, that's a nice message. Or who do you think Olive said to go away? That's not very nice. Do you think she's a good friend to you?
Prompt a bit of thought and see what she's thinking, and then provide alternative actions and words she could use next time.
We were also told to role play it out, maybe acting with the phones, or use toys, you could switch roles so when you get to the rejection you can speak through your thoughts about it and model what you could say or do.
Has she been assessed for things like autism and add. Girls present differently and often get missed.
I really wanted friends too, but didn’t find my tribe and really put people off.
It wasn’t until I was 30 I was finally diagnosed, it made so much sense.
This is me too. Late diagnosis of autism and ADHD.