I’m sitting on couch crying right now as I just don’t know how to help my 11 yr old daughter. (She has CAPD and a bit ADD). I feel like I’m failing her in the social skills development. She seems to be able to make friends easy, but she can’t keep them and can’t intermingle in a group. We were at a party last night and she just had a real difficult time with the other girls there. Even when she was in Kindergarten, she would happily play by herself at recess and we noticed at birthday parties she would play by herself. I really don’t think it was because the other kids WOULDN’t play with her, I think she just chose that.
The kids in her class are all part of ‘groups’. She’s not part of a group and never gets invited to anything. However, I don’t think she is unpopular either. In girl scouts, there were always girls who wanted to be her partner(but the same girls would not play with her at school). In softball, we would car pool with a couple girls in her class, and they just seemed to get along great in the car and at the game. But at school - she says they are part of XYZ group and they won’t play with her.
I feel terribly guilty because in 2nd, 3rd,4th grade she begged me to have a big birthday party or some kind of party. Time just slipped away and we never got it done. By end of 4th grade I promised she could have a big slumber party. When we started the invite list, she couldn’t come up with anyone she wanted to invite and now she doesn’t want to have a party.
I just don’t know how to help her now or why she has such a hard time at school. In 3rd grade she had a real hard time at recess. I think she played by herself alot. In 4th grade, she discovered 4-square and plays 4-square every recess and that is carrying over to 5th. Supposedly, she is the queen of 4-square and I think very competitive. I’m wondering if this is turning off some of the girls. There are other girls who also play 4-square, and I try to encourage her to maybe invite some of those girls over to play. She will say no - so and so was mean to me today - they cheated in 4-square. I think this 4-square is hurting her socially, but don’t know how to get her to stop or what to do.
She is typically very outgoing (outside of group situations), she’s cute, bright (but has some LD issues) and very athletic(she has some friends she gets together with on her sports teams, but they don’t go to her school and live aways away). I just can’t figure out why she has no friends at school.
Re: Makes Friends easy, but not at school
I’m sorry, I meant dis-ease (discomfort), not disease!
Nancy
Have you ever considered putting her through FastForWord?
CAPD often produces difficulty socializing in group situations. For one thing, the child cannot process the sounds of speech fast enough to keep up with what is going on. Also, the child is confused by multiple auditory sources in a group. Finally, the background noise normally present in groups also interferes with the child’s ability to make sense of what is being said. All of these things combine to make participating in a group very difficulty for a CAPD child. Basically, the CAPD child feels constantly confused and lost in a group setting, while everyone around her seems to know what is going on and can participate effortlessly. I can only compare this to my being in a large group of boisterous people laughing and carrying on, addressing questions to me, etc. — in Greek. I might have a general idea of what people might be saying, but my overall experience would be one of discomfort and disease. This type of experience would explain why your daughter tended to play alone in early years — it was simply much easier for her. Now that she is growing, socialization has become more important to her but she still has the same problem of trying to keep up with more auditory information than her system can process.
FastForWord is not a miracle cure, but it would be very likely to reduce the underlying deficit that is interfering with your daughter’s ability to socialize in groups.
Nancy