"Nobody Wants to Play With Me": Helping kids through rejection and exclusion

0:06Dr Cathryn:Welcome to Toddlers Made Easy. I'm Dr. Cathryn, a pediatrician with 40 years of experience, a mom of four, and a proud nana. I'm so glad you're here. Can a three-year-old really have friendship problems? That's a question I often get. Most parents assume the answer is no. We think loneliness, rejection, and hurt feelings don't really show up until elementary school, but they're often surprised to discover those first painful social moments can begin much earlier. A grandmother recently shared this story with me. I picked up my three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter from camp twice a week. Her face always lights up when she sees me, but one day recently she climbed into the car unusually quiet.

0:50Dr Cathryn:So I asked, how was camp? Nobody wanted to play with me today, she said, and then she added, I don't want those girls to come to my house. Why? I asked. Because they said I couldn't come to their house. Later, I watched a video from her day and the children were playing a music game where everyone had to choose a partner, but no one chose my granddaughter. My heart broke for her. In that moment, I remembered exactly what it felt like to be the child who was left out. I just never imagined those feelings could begin at three years old. That story really stuck with me because I think it captures something many parents don't expect.

1:27Dr Cathryn:We tend to think friendship problems begin in elementary school or maybe even middle school, but they don't. For many children, the very first experiences of rejection, disappointment, and being left out can happen during preschool years. So today I want to talk about what friendship actually looks like at this age, why friendship problems are so common, and how we can help our children build the skills they need to make and keep friends. Now, before we talk about friendship problems, though, we first need to understand what friendship looks like in the preschool years. Around age three, children are moving beyond parallel play, where they just play beside one another, and they're moving into more interactive play.

2:11They're beginning to communicate more, negotiate, pretend together, solve simple disagreements,

2:18Dr Cathryn:and understand that another child has thoughts and feelings that actually may be different from our own. That's a tremendous amount of social learning happening all at once. And one of the biggest misconceptions is that preschool friendships are kind of cute, but they don't really matter. Well, we know now that's not really true. Two, even very young children form meaningful friendships, and those friendships give them companionship, comfort, and countless opportunities to learn important social skills. And at the same time, preschool friendships don't really look like adult friendships. Young children don't become friends because they have deep conversations or share life stories.

3:00Dr Cathryn:They become friends because they see each other regularly, they enjoy the same activities, and they have fun playing together. Repeated opportunities to play with the same children are what make friendships stick. Friendships rarely develop after one play date. They grow through many shared experiences, especially during unstructured play where children can create games, solve problems, negotiate, disagree, and make up again. Researchers have also noticed something interesting. Young kids often imitate one another during play. One child starts building a tower and the other joins in. One pretends to be a veterinarian and the other child all of a sudden is a vet too.

3:44Dr Cathryn:This back and forth imitation is one of the ways children connect and build relationships. Now, once we understand how friendships develop, it becomes much easier to understand why friendship problems are so common during the preschool years. Three-year-olds are still learning how to take turns, share, wait, cope with disappointment, join a group, and repair a disagreement after someone gets upset. Those aren't skills children are born with. They're skills children learn by having lots of interactions with other children. And that's why friendships at this age can seem wonderfully intense and completely unpredictable.

4:24Dr Cathryn:One day your child tells you someone is their best friend. The next day they're saying they'll never play with that child again because they both wanted the same truck or they couldn't agree on who got to be the doctor during pretend play. You might hear, nobody wanted to play with me today. Or she said I couldn't come. Or he's not my friend anymore. As heartbreaking as those moments are, they're usually a normal part of learning how friendships work. Kids are learning how to handle disappointment when they don't get picked. They're learning that another child might want to play with someone else some of the time.

4:58Dr Cathryn:They're learning that conflicts can happen and friendships can recover. They're learning that sometimes they have to wait their turn, compromise, apologize, or try again tomorrow. This is the work of early friendships. As parents, it's incredibly hard to watch because it often brings us back to our own memories of being excluded or rejected. Our instinct is to fix it all. Call another parent. Make the hurt disappear. But our job isn't to make sure our child never experiences friendship problems. Our job is to help them discover the skills that friendships require. That means giving them opportunities to play with other children.

5:37Dr Cathryn:It means noticing, encouraging the behaviors that strengthen relationships. It means teaching them what it takes to be a good friend, how to recognize a good friend. You may say things like, that was thoughtful of you to help your friend clean up, or you shared your markers and that really made it easier for everyone to play together. Simple comments like that help children connect kindness, cooperation, empathy, and problem solving with being a good friend. Most importantly, we don't need to panic every time our preschooler has a difficult day with friends. Learning to make and keep friends is a skill.

6:15Dr Cathryn:Like language, reading, riding a bike, it grows through practice, experience, mistakes, and support from caring adults. The bumps along the way usually aren't signs that something is wrong. More often, they're signs that your child is learning exactly what friendship is. So what do you do when your child says, nobody will play with me, or I don't have any friends? Well, the first step is to gather some more information. Talk to your child's teacher or camp counselor and ask what they're seeing with regards to your child's social skills. Sometimes what you hear will surprise you. Parents are often told, oh, she's playing with the other children all day long, or he always has someone to play with.

6:59And this can leave you wondering whether your child is exaggerating or making something up or whether they just misunderstood the situation. But here's something important to remember. Your child and the teacher may both be right. The grandmother who shared the story at the beginning of this episode eventually learned that her granddaughter usually did end up playing with other children. The problem was what happened first. She would ask to join two girls who were already playing together and they would tell her she couldn't play. Eventually, she'd find another child to play with, but the rejection had already happened.

7:33So from the teacher's perspective, she played with other children. But from the little girl's point of view, nobody wanted to play with her. And both experiences were kind of true. That's why it's important not to dismiss your child's feelings simply because the teacher reports sound a little different. Your child's feelings are real, even if their interpretation of the entire day isn't completely accurate. So before you reassure, explain, or try to solve the problem, first listen. You might say, oh, that must have hurt, or tell me more about what happened. Often what children need most in that moment isn't for us to convince them that everything was fine or that they have lots of friends.

8:17They just need to know we understand why it didn't feel fine to them. Avoid responding with something like, don't be silly, your teacher said you play with lots of kids. Even if it's factually true, it doesn't address the part of the experience your child is trying to share with you. When children feel heard, they're much more likely to keep talking. And when they keep talking, we have a much better chance of understanding what's really going on from their perspective and helping them figure it out. The little girl at the beginning of this episode wasn't really saying she had no one to play with.

8:50She was telling her grandmother what it felt like to be rejected. That's the part we don't want to miss. We can't protect our kids from every friendship disappointment, but we can make sure they never have to face those feelings alone. Now, if today's episode left you wondering whether some of your child's friendship struggles are actually typical for their age, I have something that can help. It's a free checklist called, Am I Expecting Too Much of My Three-Year-Old? It highlights the developmental skills and the milestones every parent should know, including many that aren't talked about nearly enough.

9:24You can download it using the link in the show notes. Thank you for being here. Keep up the good work, and I'll see you next week.