A 4-year-old struggles when friends won’t follow her rules of play. A 3-year-old is reserved around other people. Another preschooler is routinely excluded from a group of friends. Janet weighs in on these issues and explores how parents may be playing a bigger role in these dynamics than they realize, and what they can do instead to encourage their kids to build confidence, resilience, and healthy social skills.
Transcript of “Peer Play. Using Our Power to Help Kids Thrive Socially”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be responding to three different messages I received from parents. They seem very different. You’re going to hear one about how respectful parenting approaches bullying. You’re going to hear another one, the subject line in this parent’s email was “Help! Pretend play disaster.” And then finally, a very brief one that came in on Instagram when I did a Q&A reach-out. That one simply asks about “Helping a reserved three-year-old be comfortable around other people?”
I want to thank all of these parents for reaching out to me and to talk about the through line in all of these, which is helping our kids to succeed in social situations. Helping them develop their social skills, helping them play with others well and connect with others. Many of you know that the relationship that we’re building with our child is a model for them for other relationships that they’re going to engage in. So a lot of the social skills that we teach, we teach directly through the way that we interact with our child. This makes sense to us, right? If we’re kind to our child, our child learns kindness. If we’re generous, they learn generosity. If we’re gracious and thank them, then they learn to feel gracious. They can bask in those experiences that we give them through our modeling.
But often when our children seem to be in some way struggling socially, as in all these situations that I’m going to bring up today, it’s often because this process isn’t as direct as we might think it is, in terms of we model it and they just do it, or we teach them how to play with other kids and so they’re just able to do it. It’s not direct instruction. Most of parenting, I guess, is not direct instruction, but especially these very nuanced skills that kids need to learn experientially.
There are two other ways besides our modeling that we could support our kids to learn to be with other people and how to relate to them successfully. One is the way that we assert our boundaries with our child and follow through with that. The other is maybe one of the hardest things for us as parents, which is to trust our child’s process.
Mostly I’m going to be talking about those two ideas—boundaries and trusting our child’s process—and how we actually have a very strong influence on our children’s development of social skills through not only modeling, but also through boundaries and trust. What that looks like, and also how understanding our power can help us. Because oftentimes when our kids are struggling, there is something that we can tweak in our relationship with our children and the way that we’re handling boundaries and trust. So it’s not only understanding our power, but it’s knowing how that means we can actually help them.
Whenever I talk about how much power we have to influence our children, sometimes when we’re feeling insecure as parents, we maybe take that as blame, like, Oh, everything’s our fault. And it’s not true. There aren’t a lot of books about this, how to do this, there isn’t a lot of information. And many of us are forging a path to a respectful and authoritative approach that maybe we didn’t receive as children. It’s forging new territory, so don’t expect that you’re supposed to know all these things. But try to give yourself grace so you can be open to looking at where you might be able to help your child over these humps.
Here’s the first one, titled “Help! Pretend play disaster”:
Hi, Janet-
Your work saved my parenting journey when my first was 18 months and starting to show anxiety. Thank you. I’m in a pickle on this one.
Four-year-old loves pretend play and lives 80% of the day in character. She doesn’t do much screen time if that’s helpful. This is coming mostly from books, podcast stories, and Tonies. The pickle: She loves to direct play and she constantly says, “Okay, you are Anna. You say X, Y, Z, then I do X, Y, Z.” But the problem is, if you say even a word off, she stops you and starts over. Again and again. I’ve tried to explain every way that I can think of that this isn’t fun. I’ve tried to model just playing together in character, but that’s not what she wants. She seems to really not understand why this isn’t fun for the other person playing.
It’s one thing with her dad and I, but the problem is with friends. This has spilled over to most of her interactions with friends. She has a lot of close friendships, neighbors and a core group she has known since she was six months. She gets so angry or sad when friends don’t say exactly what she’s asking them to. Sometimes she can move on and play their games, but very often this ends in tears. I can tell the friends are annoyed or want to play but just don’t understand her very specific directions.
I thought the best thing was to let it play out with her friends, and them rejecting this kind of play would be hard, but she would move on. It’s been a year and that’s not happening. What am I doing wrong? What am I not seeing?
Additional info: I’m a full-time parent with two little girls, four and one. This started well before the baby was born, but of course could be related? I’m at a loss.
The main thing I want to help this parent understand is how important her boundaries are in setting her child up for success with other children. And this is true with a lot of the notes that I receive. It can be easy to fall into, Oh, isn’t this wonderful? My child is so imaginative and they’re creating these games. And maybe we’ve heard a lot about how we’re supposed to play with our child, how when our child comes home from school and they say, Play with me!, that we’re supposed to do that.
But there are a couple of signs here, even without the way this is affecting this girl with her friends, there are a couple of things that we can look at as parents to remind ourselves that when something seems so unreasonable in terms of the way we’re playing with our child or engaging with our child or what they’re asking of us, then there’s a very good chance that what our child is really asking for is for us to have a reasonable boundary.
Again, it can be easy to get kind of lost in this as parents, especially if we do have an approach where we respect and trust our child and we want to encourage them, of course. But when we’re trying to participate with them and then they’re being so exacting and it seems impossible to please them even though we’re playing with them, that’s something to look at. A lot of times children will just go further and further and further into the ridiculousness of a demand on us, and that’s sort of where this has gone here.
These are things to look at, like, Why am I giving my child so much power over me, that they’re telling me what to do and I’m trying to live up to what they want? I’m not saying it should be the other way around either, to be a respectful parent, but this is almost always our child not needing us to play with them this way. We can get caught up in thinking that, but underneath it all, they’re wanting us to actually set the boundary and just let them be mad at us, let them be frustrated, let them be angry or sad or whatever that looks like. Because those feelings often represent other feelings.
It’s not like our child would get so disappointed that people can’t play in her stringent way that she’s asking them to. It’s other things that she’s already feeling, and children have this healthy instinct to push, push, push so that they can let go of all those feelings that have to do with, well, who knows what else. Maybe the rivalry with her sibling, who’s now one, which does tend to be a time when children feel threatened by that. I don’t know, I can’t say entirely. I can say that’s a common reason, but it could just be a lot of other things. Four is what I sort of think of as a “pushing out” age, where they’re seeing where the boundaries are as they’re pushing even more to individuate from us. Just needing to be able to express those out-of-control feelings, all the areas that they don’t control in life, which are a lot.
So this is one we can help this child with. We don’t let her control us and the way we’re talking and the way we’re playing with her, if we’re nice enough to want to play with her. And I would not make that my job, to play with my child. My job is to give focused attention in spurts throughout the day, to create a safe home where my child can flourish and do the play that she’s doing, which is wonderful play in itself. I believe she’s seeking boundaries around how far we’re going to go with this. And like I said, I would take it all the way back to, This isn’t my job, this is her pretend stuff.
And we can see here how this is affecting her friendships, because we’re the model for these relationships. And if we’re not asserting those boundaries, then our child has to seek them elsewhere. And I don’t think she really wants her friends to do everything she wants them to say or do either, underneath it all. But she’s getting stuck in this mode of, This is the only way I know how to play with people.
We can adjust that so easily by just being aware of this and what’s going on, and by taking a look at our own feelings. Hey, this feels weird. I’m uncomfortable. I can’t please her. What am I doing? And that’s a really good place to go as parents, to take note of, This isn’t fun for me. This is uncomfortable. That almost always means we need to stick up for ourselves and set a reasonable boundary, take care of our needs in the relationship. Which is such beautiful modeling for our child because now they’re learning, Oh, other people don’t do everything you want them to do. We can teach them that through just our own reasonable care for ourselves and listening to that voice of discomfort in us.
But here’s the thing, most of us do this thing where we want to try just explaining it. Don’t you know this isn’t fun? And I believe underneath it all, she does know. And I don’t think she’s having fun either. She knows that we’re not having fun when we’re getting caught up in this trying-to-please-her thing. There’s a boundary missing. We’re the adult model of relationships and she’s the child who is supposed to have all kinds of unreasonable demands sometimes to find out where she stands with us and other people, and also to be able to release all these feelings of uncomfortable power and control and the frustrations that are in her, and maybe the fear that’s in her and the sadness.
This parent used the word “sadness” when she talked about her with her friends, “angry or sad.” Well, under anger is usually fear and sadness. So we want her to get to express that the way that she knows how, which is to express it through other things, through play and then us setting reasonable boundaries.
This parent says, “It’s one thing with her dad and I, but the problem is with friends.” Yes, but the thing is that you and her dad are representing relationships with friends. You’re showing her the way. This is why it’s so important for us to have reasonable boundaries and take care of ourselves because, as this parent noticed:
This has spilled over to most of her interactions with friends. She gets so angry or sad when friends don’t say exactly what she’s asking them to. Sometimes she can move on and play their games, but very often it ends in tears. I can tell the friends are annoyed or want to play but just don’t understand her very specific directions.
And I think the friends probably do understand some of her directions, but they just don’t want to play that way. As this parent noticed, it’s not fun. And children often do sense that that child who’s trying to control everybody and direct everybody isn’t really having fun either. So this is where we can help her so much.
This parent said: “I thought the best thing was to let it play out with her friends, and them rejecting this kind of play would be hard, but she would move on.” I think eventually she will, even without the parent helping her with what I call the “homework” of, Hey, where is the root of this? It’s in my relationship with my child. So we can help her so much here, so that she doesn’t have to keep struggling. She’ll have a much better chance of succeeding with her friends if we can allow her the normal rejections from us of, “No, I don’t want to play that way.” We’re not rejecting her personally, we’re not shaming her. We’re just rejecting that offer to play in her prescribed, over-the-top way.
And then with the people she’s safest with, her parents, she can express all the feelings to the hilt. It’s harder to express that with friends. We’re that safe place where she can learn that sometimes you get what you want with people and other times they have their own wishes. That’s what I would help this parent to see, and I feel like the parents will make a huge change quickly when they can do this.
The next message I want to talk about is titled: “How does respectful parenting approach bullying?”:
Hi, Janet-
I listen to your podcast, and I really appreciated two recent episodes, on playground scenarios and how to deal with grandparents. These episodes were great because they address situations that involve other people, not just the parent-child relationship, as does the issue I would love for you to address on a future episode: how does respectful parenting approach bullying and other unkind social dynamics between kids?
My older daughter is 4.5. Recently, when we are at the playground with friends, the other girls she is playing with will leave her out. They will pretend she’s a monster and run away screaming, or do things that they know will upset her, or just leave her out of their games. They are all a year ahead of her in preschool, and there is a gap in social-emotional development. When playing 1:1 she has good friendships with these girls, but she is an easy target in a group dynamic.
Generally speaking, I am in favor of letting kids work out their own conflicts, and I am there for my daughter to vent about how she is feeling and to offer her alternatives when playing with these girls is not pleasant. The other parents are noticing this dynamic as well, and are beginning to intervene, and we have discussed how we all feel uncertain about how best to manage the situation. Yesterday, the dad of one of the other girls told her that she has to play with my daughter too or they’re going home. This worked for a while! She took my daughter by the hand, explained this rule to the other girls, and my daughter had a great time being included.
Are there other interventions that are more aligned with respectful parenting? Is the respectful thing for me to do for my daughter to find other places to play without this group of girls?
I would appreciate your thoughts both from the perspective of my and my child, but also from the perspective of the other parents, as they are open to ideas. Thanks.
Well, what a lovely group of parents that they want to help with this situation. First, I feel like so much of this is about our perceptions of what’s going on. Because this parent gave the subject line about bullying, I just want to touch on that for a second, that if she’s jumping to this idea that her child is being bullied in this situation, that is not a realistic or helpful perception of what’s going on, in my opinion. This word gets thrown around a lot these days, “bullying,” and I don’t think it applies to children this age at all. It’s quite different from children excluding another child like this. She says they make her the monster and all that, but it’s not like this pervasive picking on her and attacking her as a bully would. So I would try not to think of it that way and to cast my child as a victim.
I would also look at that they’re in the grade ahead of her in preschool. As children get older that maybe isn’t such a huge difference, but in preschool, a spread of a year of age is a big difference. And as this parent said, their social-emotional development is at a different place than this little girl’s is. So it makes a lot of sense that these girls kind of feel like they’re on a different wavelength and that their way of playing together could easily exclude somebody younger. I would go into a situation like this really not expecting that my child is going to be able to play with these girls when they’re all together. Yes, one-on-one is a different thing, but in this group dynamic, that’s going to be a challenging one.
This parent is doing this job of allowing her daughter to vent about how she’s feeling and to offer her alternatives when playing with these girls is not pleasant. But I think I would set this up more for her to understand—and maybe this parent has done this—that these girls are older, so one-on-one it could work for them to play with you, but as a group that is going to be hard. And then rather than being the one to find other things for her to play, “offering her alternatives when playing with these girls is not pleasant,” I wouldn’t even try to fix that for her. I would really allow her to navigate this and share the feelings with you.
But what can happen is we feel sorry for our child and we want to, just a little bit, try to fix what’s going on. I mean, this parent sounds like she’s at least 75% with the attitude of allowing her to work out her own conflicts, but she’s also seeing this as a problem, as are all the parents there. Instead of, Hey, this is a challenging situation, but maybe this little girl can handle it in her own way. Maybe handling it means I’m not even going to try playing with them. Maybe it means I’m going to try, but it’s not going to work out.
But it’s that investment that we sometimes have in our heart going out to our children. I mean, everybody feels like this. We don’t want her to get rejected, we want it to all work. And we can get to where we’re feeling sorry for our child in this situation and maybe we’re even projecting our own background into that. It’s really hard not to project and feel sorry for a child in this situation, when she’s trying to do this really challenging thing that shouldn’t be easy at all and probably shouldn’t work.
If she wants to try it, we can best support her by trusting her to figure it out her way and then being there if she wants to vent. But not acknowledging all of that in a way that’s pitying at all or that we see this as a problem. And the dad helping by getting the other girl to play, there was certainly nothing wrong with that, it was a sweet gesture, but also that isn’t going to help this little girl to find her way, that an adult came in and tried to fix it for her, seeing this as a problem. I actually wouldn’t see this as a problem at all.
And you can make it so that it’s a choice. Do you want to go there? I think it’s going to be all the girls there and they might not play with you today. Do you want to do it? And then if our child says yes, we trust that. That helps them to navigate this from a place of strength, therefore probably be able to see more clearly and even make better choices in the moment in terms of how to engage. It still may not work, but this is where our influence, again, could be so positive if we trust her and trust the realities of the situation and trust the other girls too. Not try to push something to happen because we aren’t comfortable with it and our child isn’t comfortable with it.
Learning isn’t comfortable and, as both these families seem to realize, rejection is a really important experience to learn from. What works with other kids? What doesn’t work with other kids? In the case of that first story, What works with my parent if I want their attention? What doesn’t work with my parent?
And that’s where the trust comes in there in that scenario, trusting that it’s okay for this girl to feel rejected in her way of playing with us. Rejection, exclusion, as in this second case, failing in our attempts to engage. Those are all important life experiences that children can learn from and build confidence from, if we can see it all as positive learning.
This parent asks, “Are there other interventions that are more aligned with respectful parenting?” What’s aligned with respectful parenting is maybe just the intervention of helping my child have reasonable expectations and then not intervening further, trusting my child to have their own process.
And with that, I just want to get to this shorter one because it’s very different, but yet what will help this child is the same thing. The question on Instagram was:
“Helping a reserved three-year-old be comfortable around other people?”
The answer is in trusting them to find their own way to feeling comfortable around other people by not pushing them, by not coaxing them to be comfortable, by not trying to make it happen as if this is a problem to fix or a weakness they need us to help them overcome.
Instead, this is a path that a child is on, and some children just take longer or they only feel comfortable when it’s a certain way. That’s not for us to manage. That’s for our child to navigate with the confidence that our trust gives them in themselves. So if they want to sit with us in a social situation, we let them sit with us. If they want us to follow them around while they’re doing things, that I would say no to. I’ll be here. I’ll be comfortable. I’ll have a boundary. I’ll take care of myself, and I trust you to do what you’re ready to do.
So I wouldn’t prompt, I wouldn’t coax, I wouldn’t try to manage this in any way. Because when we do those things, kids feel it. They know, just like when the dad helped the older child play with the little girl. It didn’t help them want to play with her more; it didn’t make her feel more confident in getting to play with them. There was nothing wrong with the gesture, but it wasn’t going to help them all grow together, except maybe to remind those older girls that the younger one could be fun to be with. Kids learn this best when it’s really on their terms.
And that’s hard to do! I mean, when children aren’t comfortable with other people or it’s not working with other people, every parent wants to, on some level, fix it. But that’s what gets in their way, and ours. What we can do is address what’s going on in the relationship between us. Which in that first case was about boundaries; in these other two cases, it’s really much more about trust. Kids aren’t on our timetable, unfortunately.
I really hope some of this helps. I’m sure there’s many more questions that these ideas I’m sharing today are bringing up for you, so please ask them. And again, thank you to these parents for reaching out. This is all within your grasp. You can help your child more than you might think, but maybe not in the ways that we generally think.
Thank you all so much for listening. We can do this.
