At the parents’ meeting somebody mentions that their daughter has a group of eight friends. You think about your child, who has one, and an alarm goes off in you. It is worth switching it off.
Few friends isn’t the same as being alone
Highly sensitive children usually prefer one-to-one relationships, or three at most. It isn’t a social deficit: it is consistent with how they work. A group of eight requires following eight moods, eight crossing conversations and three simultaneous conflicts. For someone who processes deeply, that is work, not rest.
The measure that matters isn’t the number. It is whether they have at least one relationship of trust, and whether that relationship leaves them better than it found them. A child with one good friend is better accompanied than one with eight acquaintances.
When you should look more closely
There are signs that do deserve attention, and it is worth telling them apart from a preference for the small:
- They used to have friends and now don’t want to see anyone.
- They come home from school with the same account for weeks: nobody wants to play with them.
- Their stomach hurts on Sunday afternoons.
- They have stopped telling you anything about break time.
- They stay in relationships where they are always the one giving way.
That isn’t introversion, it is something else, and that is when you talk to the school.
What really helps
Two-child get-togethers, not parties. Inviting one child over for an afternoon does ten times more than taking them to a birthday party with twenty. In two hours one to one, friendship gets built; at a party, you survive.
An activity in between. Two children facing each other with nothing to do get stuck. Those same two building something, cooking or playing on a console talk on their own. The activity is the excuse that takes the pressure off.
Short, with a clear end. Two hours with a known pick-up time. It is better that they are left wanting more than that they end up wiped out and start associating seeing friends with exhaustion.
Hobbies where the people are alike. Chess, robotics, drama, a choir, a book club. Not for the prestige of the activity, but because there are other children there who work the way they do, and all of a sudden they stop being the odd one out.
Break time, which is where it hurts
The playground is no-man’s-land: a lot of noise, little structure, physical dominance. For many sensitive children it is the worst stretch of the day, worse than any exam.
What you can ask the school for, and usually get, is an alternative: the library open at break, a club for something, helping with something specific. It isn’t isolating them, it is giving them a place with clear rules where they can relate to others without having to fight for space.
What to say to them
What lands worst is “you need to socialise more”. It confirms to them that there is a right way to have friends and that theirs isn’t it.
What helps is naming their pattern without judging it: “you like being with a few people and going deep, and that’s fine. Who would you fancy inviting over one day?” There you are telling them two things: that their way is legitimate, and that seeing friends is something you decide, not something that happens to you.
One more thing, for you
A good part of the anxiety about this isn’t the child’s, it is ours. We project our own scale: if I had had only one friend I would have felt awful. But they aren’t you.
The question that clears everything up is a direct one: are they uncomfortable, or am I? Very often the answer moves the problem somewhere else.
Friendships, social skills and break time are covered in Niños Altamente Sensibles and with practical exercises in Corazones Valientes, Niños Sensibles.