Question About Almost 4 Yr Old

From my preschool teacher perspective, I think your daughter needs a little more help from you. That's why she came to you, right?:)

In my experience, children at this age come to us precisely because they need help. At four or so, kids really don't know *how* to play fair. This is what I would have done:

Go to all the girls. Tell them what you see. "I see you two are playing with these toys. Are you having fun?" (Give them a question to address *them* before continuing. Get their attention. Wait for an answer, then continue.) "(Daughter's name) would like to play with you. Could you please show her which toys she can play with?" This puts the children who are not sharing in a good spot: they are getting information that they need to share the toys, and you are asking them to be specific, so they do get to pick.

Exclusion is very common at this age. Working as a preschool teacher, a great deal of my work is social coaching for kids. We have to be present and tuned in. One wise woman said that when you let very young children 'work it out for themselves', it's often the bully that prevails.

It's good to narrate (using descriptive language to talk about what's happening), to offer options (such as "can you find the toys so-and-so can use?) and then, yes, to help our own kids move on when the other players are not going to budge on not-sharing. At almost four, your daughter doesn't understand the idea of 'taking the high road' and finding something else to do. She just knows she wants to play with the toys, is being excluded, and feels sad.

Your daughter will eventually learn how to 'handle' situations like this, but it doesn't come organically. From my experience, it comes from repeatedly giving them help, giving them language to ask for what they want, helping them problem-solve. Kids this age really cannot do this on their own, for the most part. I think you explained the incident with the video/dog pretty well ("Do you see that the other kids are watching a video? I think they want to do that, and you can play with the dog if you want, also. That would be fine.") I want to be clear that I'm not advocating 'helicopter parenting'. However, from what I've seen with my preschoolers, when they are asking for help and we tell them to go figure it out on their own, kids tend to get very confused. They usually have tried to solve their own problem, and now need a bit of extra help. So the next time your little girl comes to you in this situation, take that time to teach her what she needs to say/do to reach her objective.

Of course, as I said, there are some kids that are not going to play nice, no matter what, and then you can help her to move on to something more pleasant. But do step in and help her with the language around her requests to play/share. She needs this a lot, and will likely need this for quite a while. I've seen 6 and 7 year olds who need help figuring out how to ask those "can I play" questions. Your daughter is not alone in this-- very age-appropriate!

I think you're handling it fine. Sometimes playing with friends works; sometimes it doesn't. But, if you are your own best friend, then the times friends work out is a bonus and the other times...well, you still have you. I always tried to teach my boys to enjoy friends but enjoy being by themselves, too.

Plus, too much intervention on your part can lead to learned helplessness and lots of angst later on.

Last but not least, negative experiences are not always a bad thing. If our children never face adversity (within reason, of course), if they are never challenged by life or never have things NOT go their way, how can we expect them to handle what life will throw at them as an adult?

Good luck!

It actually sounds like normal behavior on the part of all the children. I would just keep telling her when someone turns on her or gang up on her to just walk away, i wouldn't encourage her to keep trying to get them to play (why set her up for more hurt, you know?) They'll come around when they want.

And as for the incident today, SHE chose to stop playing with the others to play with the stuffed dog, that was her choice. She asked the others if they wanted to play, they didn't, and when she said that no one wanted to play with her I would have pointed out that she was the one who didn't want to play with them. She went on to play and that was good, she didn't continue to dwell on it.

This is going to happen from time to time, even when kids are "best" friends they will sometimes suddenly shift gears and go on their merry way with new friends. It happens, it's part of life, just reassure her and let her deal with it so she can learn to handle the situations as you want her to. She will likely get upset more throughout the years, just be there for her.

Sounds to me as if you're doing what should be done. Things happen and kids are not always going to want to play together and your daughter is learning that at this point which is a good thing. She can be happy in having her own independence and being happy to do her own thing.

Sometime around 4 years old children move from the "parallel play" stage (when they play with the same toys next to one another but not really playing together) to the "cooperative play" stage. It may be that your daughter is ready to play "with" other children, but they may not be there yet. Hazel is right on that you need to give your daughter the tools for what to say in these situations, but you also need to teach her that sometimes other kids won't want to do what she wants. She can either choose to go along with the others or do something by herself. When this happens, make sure she knows that she can always come talk to you about it, because they learn so early whether or not Mom is there for them.

Don't worry, she'll be fine - of course, she is still very young, but at some point it's good for them to understand that not everyone is going to want to play with them and if they find someone else to play with, that's all that matters. In other words, they can't take it personally.

It's really common for kids to play together well when it's just 2 of them, but then not know how to handle it when there are 3. So it's really not that unusual that the 2 girls wanted to play together and didn't want to (or didn't know how to) include your daughter. Plus there is an age gap, and I'm guessing that the 6 year old was more apt to play with another 6 year old than an almost-4 year old.

My daughter is very sociable too and just wants to be friends with everyone, and I've had to teach her that not everyone is going to want to do the same things you want to do, or want to play with you all the time, and that doesn't make them "mean". For a while in preschool, there was one little girl that she seemed to glom onto that of course could either decide to be DD's friend one day, then be a total snot to her the next. I started just telling DD not to worry about ____, because she had plenty of other friends in school she could play with that were nice to her all the time. I also told her that sometimes _____ could just be in a bad mood but that was her problem, not DD's. She's turning 5 in August and she's starting to understand better now.