Carolyn Hax: Help daughter with tough crowd

Dear Carolyn: My 10-year-old daughter has a very lively and kind spirit. She isn’t afraid to ask her classmates to play with her or if she may sit next to them. She can easily ask to join a conversation.

But many of the girls are not very nice and make fun of her eagerness. They exclude her almost like a game. I am at a loss how to help her. She has a counselor who wants her to try to interact and learn how to network. I am not sure I see the value in that when the kids are so mean. Wouldn’t it be better to read a book than try and assimilate with kids that don’t like you? – S.

If she were an adult, maybe, or annoyed just by one or two peers.

But you’ve got a child in her formative years with a systemic problem. It’s learn now or risk isolation later, when it will be harder for her both to learn new habits and find groups of peers to learn on. Watching a child get shunned is agony. However, you need to keep that instinct in balance with the parental imperative to accept measured risk as necessary for children to learn skills they’ll need as adults.

In this case, yes, heed the therapist on trying to assimilate – but deploy safeguards first to protect her from and reinforce her against the effects of the meanest kids.

Start by asking her to figure out which classmates are kindest to her. Her teachers can be a huge help here. And, role-play with her. Practice not only ways she can approach peers – tempering vs. ingratiating herself – but also ways to extract herself from encounters gone wrong.

And, consider supplementing the one-on-one counseling with a social-skills group or summer camp.

Finally, but most important: Set her up for some successes. When you’re the parent of a child who lacks natural playground cred, the greatest gift you can give is to figure out where your child’s gifts do have value. So your artistic soul joins an art class; your dynamo plays a high-energy sport; your intense thinker takes martial arts; etc.