Making friends

My 4 year old daughter longs to play with children.  We live in a neighborhood where there are none. She could be described as shy but loves to have activity around her and laughs and plays happily at home with her family.  She does not like to walk into a room full of children and will give any child who looks at her or who runs up to greet her a very dirty look along with pulling away from them.  Even children she has known from nursery school for years.  She will become mute when a teacher picks her out of the group to answer a question or do an activity in front of the class.  She has not made friends at her new school and plays alone on the swing while all the other children play together. She begs for me to invite children to our house - which I do, and to go to other children's houses.  When she is together with these children she gets mad at them if they don't want to play with her(what she wants to play).  She can treat them pretty badly.  Or she will mope and complain that nobody wants to play with her then fall into almost a tantrum funk. I wouldn't want to play with her if I was a child because she can get pretty bossy and who would want to play with a little girl on the playgroud who makes faces at them. Teachers and other parents just think she is wonderful and sweet, but a few parents are beginning to notice a change in her behavior towards other children.  I guess my question is... Is this normal  behavior for a bright, sensitive, shy 4 year old? If shyness tends to get better as children age, when does this start to happen?  Should I get an emotional evaluation on her?  Should I have her medically checked for anything physically wrong.? Should I be worried that my daughter who longs for friendship will never have any? I am really afraid to get her together with other children because they may decide that they don't want anything to do with her anymore and then she will be left with no friends and feeling worse and more anxious than she does already.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Dear Holly,

No, this is not normal behavior, but it is also behavior that can change. An important consideration is to keep your daughter in the mix, so to speak, with some guidance, so that she does not become isolated from peers in the out-of-school settings. It alweays makes sense to run things by your daughter's pediatrician, but there's nothing to indicate a medical roblem. Children of your daughter's age are learning how to navigate the social world. It's a journey of ups and downs, of learning what is helpful and not helpful in interactions with others.

An evaluation by a clinician would be useful, if for no other reason than to evaluate the situation and offer you some guidance. If there's an emotional disorder present, the clinician can discern it and offer approapriate treatment.