Social anxiety

I have informants watching Skipper. L and R Blond attend kindergarten at her school, and they go out for recess at the same time as the preschool classrooms. R asked me the other day "Why doesn't Skipper play with anybody at recess?" Skipper does play with R and L, who like her and are nice enough to play with her at recess. She does not play with anybody else. Skipper told me she either plays with the twins, finds a teacher to stand next to, or walks "steadily" around the playground.

Ugh.

Skipper still doesn't know how to engage with other kids. She says "the other kids don't want to play with me!" which appears to mean "the other kids don't come up to me and explicitly invite me to play!" She doesn't know how to (or can't bring herself to) invite other kids to play with her, or introduce herself into playing that's already going on. She is capable of playing with other kids - she and Duchess play together a lot, and she plays with L and R when they're here. She prefers older kids in general, but she'll play with younger kids if they're not too destructive.

Nothing is going to change at school. They don't have the staff capacity or training to do one-on-one social skills training. I'm not even sure that this can be taught. Regardless, it's going to have to be Skipper herself who makes the change, and I'm also not sure she actually has it in her raw ingredients to do this. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a more social classmate will take the initiative to reach out to her.

In the meantime, I'm trying not to feel too sad about it. It's nice to have my informants keeping an eye on her.