The school door opens, the kids trot out and my eyes search the stream for the faces that I love. It makes me smile the way their faces light up as I collect them from school.  My son beams and runs towards me, then slows down with feigned indifference just before he reaches me, and I scoop him up into my arms despite his pretence at not caring.

Then my daughter comes out.  Her smile illuminates up her face and she says “mummy!” as if I have been away, as if I haven’t been there every day for three years.  I get hugs, kisses before the predictable question: “what’s for tea?”

As we potter home, his hand in mine, they gush and stammer over their day at school, at the jobs or tasks they have ticked off, the stickers they have earned, the new grazes or plasters on their knees and the classmates who said or did nasty things.

Best Friends

“I invited Annabel to my birthday” announces my daughter.  A birthday that is still just a date in the diary and has no plan or booking or venue.  I don’t “woah” her or “hold on” or “what birthday?” for I have learnt that these invitations are as fickle as their love of their fidget spinner.

These invitations are scattered like sprinkles on a cake, and then taken away seconds later. They’re playground shorthand for “today I like you, but tomorrow I might not.”  I can barely keep up with the every changing nature of who is in and not invited.

My son’s list is pretty constant.  He has a little entourage of nice boys that he likes and plays with and he knows whether they have a spinner, how many Lego cards they have and their favourite superhero.  No-one too loud, too brash, too physical, no-one who bites or spits or hits.

It is my daughter’s list that saddens my soul.

They Were Inseparable

In pre-school and her first year full-time, Bubbles had a best friend, Izzy.  They were the youngest in the year (born a few days apart), both small for their age and they stuck together like dried on Weetabix on a cereal bowl.  They did everything together and since Izzy’s mum was fun, we had plenty of playdates.

Then before Year One, her best friend left to be home-schooled.

I thought it would be okay.  That  Bubbles would quickly make new friends.  Upgrade her friendship with Izzy 2.0.  But despite my hopes, things haven’t turned out like that.

One day she is best friends with Jessy, but the next she is mean.  She flits from friendship to friendship, and I don’t know if I am overreacting, or if she is over exaggerating when she says she has no friends.  But my heart goes out to her.

I love my little girl so much.  She is inventive, creative, playful, fun and I want the world to love her too.  When she comes home and says that “Mary wouldn’t let me play with her today” or “Rhianna stole my friends” or “Chloe insists that I am always the baby when we play, I don’t want to be the baby” I feel so helpless.

I wrap my arms around her and tell her that she is loved, that she is amazing, that if only her school mates could see what I see. I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter but I know that it does.

I was lonely at school, bullied at times, lost and afraid. I wanted friends more than anything in the whole world and when she shares that no-one played with her today, I imagine her sat, lonely, on her own in the corner, perhaps in the shade of a tree, wondering why she is alone.

I remember how that felt.  How empty and confused I was by their rejection of me. What was wrong with me?  I used to ask myself. I played on my own, but it’s not the same as playing with a friend who gets you.

Bubbles hasn’t found a friend like Izzy.  Someone who adores her and is adored in return.  Two years on and she still asks to visit Izzy, loves Izzy to the moon and back, talks about her with that wistful love in her voice.

There is no Izzy 2.0.

Why Can’t They See?

Bubbles is loving and compassionate, inventive and perhaps a little silly sometimes, but then she’s only six.

I am so confused.  I don’t know what to do, or say to make her popular – I don’t even want her to be popular, I just want her to have one solid friend –  or how to mend my own heart that yearns for her to be happy and loved.  I remember so well the aching loneliness of not having friends and yet I cannot save her from it.

I cannot be her best friend in the playground. I cannot fight that battle alongside her.

My lovely, kind, thoughtful, creative, compassionate girl is lonely and I don’t know what to do to make things right.