Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Intro - dealing with social issues

Hello all! I'm very happy to have found this group. It's reassuring to see other people struggling with the same problems that we've been having with our DS. Now 2.5 y/o, he has developed into this little person who loves to have complex conversations about the solar system, food chains, and how things work. He has always been ahead of the curve, but now that he's getting older, more verbal, more interested in building friendships, his giftedness is making it difficult to make friends with same-aged peers in his day care/preschool class. I have had discussions with the teachers about his "social problems," but they seem to think that he is simply a loner, rather than struggling to connect to peers that don't share his interests. I know many others have encountered these issues as well. What are some tips for talking to your child about building friendships? Or ways to talk with the teacher about how help him to integrate into the classroom? Until a couple of months ago he had been in a different room where he had made a friend and was happy. With the change in the school year he was moved to an older kids' room and has not made friends and complains that he doesn't like the other kids and dreads having to go to school. (He used to love it!) How do I help improve the situation?

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Welcome!

Just a few random thoughts:

1) Can you arrange a playdate with your child's friend? Possibly the families could go to a park, museum, kid-friendly restaurant, etc. While the children play or enjoy each others company, it would be your mission to learn whether your son's feeling of friendship is reciprocated by the other child, and whether the friendship is welcomed and supported by the parents.

2) If the friendship is reciprocated, welcomed, and supported, you may wish to ask whether the preschool can group the two children together... whether your child moves back to the old group, or whether the other child moves to your son's group.

3) If the daycare/preschool is open to donations of any books or toys, supplying some which are of particular interest to your child may act as a magnet for children with similar interests.

4) Books such as "The Unwritten Rules of Friendship" may be of interest to you as a parent, for coaching your child if you perceive that he may need direct teaching about building and maintaining friendships.

I would not worry about it too much. He is still very little and will be doing a lot of parallel play at this point. Give him opportunities to interact with other little ones his age, but don't expect it to come right away. I have an older one that took until kindergarten when she developed more true friendships and younger one the same age as your little one who interacts with "friends", but that is about it.

Thank you for the feedback. Things have gotten naturally better since I made this post. I had a chance to sit down with one of the teachers, and I think he's getting along better than he had expressed to me. He seems to have reached a story telling phase and enjoys telling me that he has no friends and is always getting into fights, but his teachers tell me that this doesn't reflect reality. I'll just have to keep fact checking him.

How can preschool teachers think a 2.5 year old is a loner? Many kids that age are still parallel playing and oblivious to the fact other kids are their own people.

I think part of the problem is that his teachers are always forgetting how old he is. On top of being intellectually advanced, he's also 99th percentile for height. So although he is the youngest kid in his class he is also one of the tallest. I've found that in their evaluations they seem to be expecting his emotional IQ to be a year ahead of his actual age.