If your child has ever said "Nobody will play with me" you'll know how heart-wrenching it is to hear your child struggling. Especially when you remember what it was like for you at school.

So in today's episode I share what I did when my son (6) said that to me and how I helped him.

This episode is a powerful one because social struggles are a big reason why children don't want to go to school. And when you can help them feel more confident socially, they feel more relaxed and able to learn better.

If your child is struggling with school - either because they've just started, or they just don't want to go - join me for a special interactive workshop:

Overcoming School Anxiety

• Discover simple, powerful & fun games to help your child become more confident away from you
• Receive a script of what to say
• Learn what to do to in the morning and when they get home each day
• Realise the #1 significant factor to make it easier for both of you

This is MORE than just an information workshop, YouTube video or podcast episode.  

• Receive personalised support
• Explore your own school experiences so that you can better help your child with theirs 
• Feel more confident knowing you have practical, effective strategies that will help your child

"WE SAW RESULTS INSTANTLY" (Sara)

Click here to secure your spot

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Helena Mooney is a Certified Parenting Coach dedicated to helping your family AND you thrive.

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Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Parenting with Play.

I'm Helena Mooney, and I'm so pleased you're here

because how many times has your child come home saying,

mommy, nobody will play with me.

If they have, how have you felt? It's heartbreaking, isn't

it? My mom has told me the story

of how I used to do that. I used to come back from infant

school as it was then. And, so it'd be years

kinder, year 1. And, I'd come home and say, mommy,

nobody would play with me. And she was heartbroken.

She was just so She found it really painful. She said that was the

hardest thing I would say to her because

She remembered how painful it was to have nobody playing with her.

And so that's what I wanna talk to you About today

is how our own

anxiety, our own experiences,

They impact how we can then support our children.

So have you ever experienced nobody playing with

you? Whether it's a small child, maybe when you

were older, maybe even now. Goodness. You know? Sometimes rocking

up at school to do pickup, it can be a bit like, Who's gonna

talk to me today? You know, it can be really awkward.

And that's the thing with school is when our children go back to school

or they start at school, A lot of those sort of

politics that we thought we'd left behind in our

own playgrounds, they come back.

And so we can have that similar experience of

standing there, feeling left out, Feeling the new

person, not really sure what to do, feeling really awkward,

seeing other groups of moms, you know, having hilarious

Chats and time together, and you're like, oh, hello. Will

nobody play with me? So as ever

with parenting, When we encounter

difficulty with our child, it's so helpful to

work on how it was for us. So how

was school for you? Were you one of those

amazingly popular people who always had a 1000000 friends,

or did you find Playground and playtime,

hard. That you're sort of there standing, going, oh, I don't

know where to go. Maybe you'd hang out with the teacher just because

You didn't know what to do, and you found playtime

really hard. The problem when we

find something really hard is that our we

can't help our children in the way that they need us to help them. Because

what our children really need is when they come to a problem, is

then We have the confidence in them, in

their situation, in our ability to help them. You

know, when you're little, You go to mom, and mom makes everything better, doesn't

it? Doesn't she? But there's times when we can't. And when

our children are away from us, that's a really hard thing for

us to navigate. Because you can't go into the playground at

playtime and demand people play with them, kids play with

your child. You can't be with them even to sort of hang out with

them if they are sitting on their own. Our

kids going to school brings Brings a

whole extra level of anxiety for us, doesn't it? Because then we go,

okay. There's a limit to what I can do. And,

we can feel that you can end up feeling really powerless and helpless yourself.

This is made doubly worse If you have

unhealed hurts that is similar to the challenge that your child is going

through. So If you were one of those

children who struggled at playtime and, actually, you

know, e I've talked to loads of parents about this, obviously. And, you know,

even the Parents or the kids who were popular,

who did seem to have lots of friends, they would still have moments of

going, oh, Nobody's gonna play with me. It's such a universal,

painful experience that pretty much every single person has

had. So But it can then

bring up you know, your child going through something similar can sort of

I don't wanna use the trauma word, but, you know, re traumatize you. It can

make you bring up those Feelings are just like, oh, awkwardness and inadequateness,

and it's really yucky. And then sometimes, you know, when you go back

into those feelings, you can it can spiral and go, oh,

gosh. You know, nobody played with me. I was so friendless. I'm not worthy.

You know? I'm not enough. I'm, you know, we

whatever it is, that familiar story that you tell yourself, it's actually

very easy to go back in there when

that, when that deep wound is

charged and opened up again by your

child's experience. So

the best thing that you can do when your child is having a hard

time is for you to go, okay. I'm having

a really hard time with this. I need to go and get support

around my feelings so that I can best help my child.

Now you know I talk a lot about listening partnerships, also recommend having

sessions, booking time with me, you know. And

Sometimes we can want to minimize how how we

feel, don't we? We go, oh, you know, I felt this, but, you know, it

wasn't that bad. I did have friends, you know, or First of all, problems

or, you know, I wasn't as bad as other people or you know, we

can really minimize Our experiences

and our sense of pain and hurt and shame and

that doesn't help it doesn't help you. It doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help the

people who were worse off and you for you to minimize your

experience. It doesn't help anybody, so I invite

you to stop doing that, to know that

your experience is it matters. And it

matters even more than just for you because It mat it

impacts your child. When you feel underconfident

about something, your child can't then work through those

feelings resting in your confidence because you're all

activated. So don't minimize your own experiences.

Journal them. Call a listening partner. Book time with

me. Work through those or if you have a

therapist, Say those tiny minute things that you might just

go, oh, that feels awkward, to work through it. Because when

you do that, you can then Reassess

even the situation. You know, I I I still talk about

my childhood playground experiences sometimes when it gets very painful for

me. You know, feeling left out, feeling that I

can't do things that other children are doing. You know, I've got real key moments

that I remember from when I was, like, 5 or 6. You know? And I'm

50 now, so there's an element of like, come on. Get over

yourself, Helena. Move on. But those early

Hurts and painful experiences, they shape us because

we then just we make nonconscious decisions going, oh,

well, I'm not that type of person, or I'm not lovable, or I'm

not in the cool gang, or whatever it is that you've told

yourself. Those those Deep beliefs that

we create about ourselves, they're formed from those childhood experiences.

So it's really, really beneficial that you then go And address them

and work through them for your own benefit. It will have

such an impact on you now and also for your child's benefit

too. Because I had a similar experience.

My my youngest, George, who's, you know, he's

he 4th move, very confident little chappy. And he

came home one day saying, nobody would play with me, mommy.

And, of course, I immediately had a flashback to my own experience

and and also then my experience of my mom telling me how hard it

was for her to hear my Me saying that because of her own

experience. So, you know, when we work on our own experiences, we

stop that being passed down or we at least reduce

The severity of it being passed down through the generations. My mom's

experience impacted my experience, which could

Impact my son's experience. You know? And we do this all subconsciously. We it's

not, consciously knowing that what we're doing.

So it's so beneficial to work on your own stuff. So, yeah,

George came home to me crying his little eyes out.

I hate school. Nobody would play with me in the playground,

and, you know, would name these friends of his that he hates

suddenly because they wouldn't play with him. Nobody

would play with him. And it's heartbreaking. He was

sobbing away, and I'm like, Oh my god. This

is so hard, this poor little thing. You know?

Why is nobody playing with him? What's wrong with him? Gosh. Those

children, they must be mean. You know, all of these childhood thoughts

started to come through my head. Why are they not playing with him? What's wrong?

They're horrible. I never liked them in the 1st place. You know? All of those

things would start to come up for me. And

I had to really consciously go, hang on. Let what I

need to do right now is I just need to listen to George's feelings

because I can't fix it. I can't make let's call him James, for

example. I can't make James play with my little boy.

You know? We can't force people to like our children or

to play with them, so we can't influence them. What we

Can do is help our child. So I listened to

George without saying, well, what about so and so? What about so and so? You

know, trying to fix it because I couldn't. His experience was

nobody played with him. His world felt like it was falling

apart. It was all awful. He hated school. Didn't wanna go there. And I'm

like, oh god. Here we go. So I listened and I listened.

And then what happened after a little while

is he moved through the storm of the big feelings. And

then we were talking, and he was going, yeah. I

played with so and so on the monkey bars. I'm like, hang on. I

didn't say this. I was like, hang on a second. Didn't you just tell me,

like, 10 minutes ago that nobody played with you? And

then it turned out that he played with somebody else at lunchtime and did something

else. You know, it actually turned out that it wasn't true that

nobody played with him. Feelings are

not always facts. So when your child comes to

you really charged, really full of feelings, you know, about

something that just seems so awful, and you could immediately

believe them that that is actually what happened.

I encourage you to allow your child to express the

feelings, to say everything that they're feeling, to offload,

And then just to see actually what was happening. Because in the case

of my son on that time, it actually wasn't true. He did

have people to play with. He did do things with some of his

friends. Now my interpretation of it is that some of

his key friends Didn't wanna play with him that time. And that is

painful. And but that is also his friend's

prerogative. They're perfectly entitled to to say, no.

I don't want to play with you right now, and they go and play with

somebody else. And that is what I love about Aware Parenting

and hand in hand parenting We're not snowplowing

in front of our children so that they never experience anything

bad or we're not sort of swooping in I'm removing

them from, you know, socially challenging situations.

What we can do is we can help our children so that they can

navigate those situations much, much, much better.

Because when children carry hurt and shame and fear

and doubt, They interact differently with

the children around them. I know that so clearly. You know? I've

been very anxious at times. And, you know, you know when you're anxious at

times And you're with a group of people who you don't know and don't feel

very comfortable with, you start to say the most ridiculous things. So afterwards

you go, oh god. Why did I say that? What

was I thinking? But, you know, when you're anxious, your brain isn't thinking

well. You're not relaxed. You're in stress mode. So you're you're not in

a relaxed state of thinking about funny things to say

or interesting things or just non ridiculous things to say.

So what we wanna do is we wanna help our children offload the hurt

that they might be feeling so that they can come back to

feeling calmer within themselves, Become more confident

within themselves, and then they will interact with the

children around them in a much more positive way

rather than in a fearful manner or in

an overbearing trying to overcompensate

manner. It actually is so powerful just to really hear

your child's feelings. So I listened to George's feelings,

found out that actually he did have people to play with. He wasn't sitting on

his own. I mean, there's been times when he has sat on his own, but

in this instance, he wasn't sitting on his own. He was playing with other people.

He was just hurt that some of the friends that he wanted to play with

didn't wanna play with him. So that was his feeling. So to

him, it did feel like nobody played with him. It was so overwhelming

and very, very painful. And that was his feeling, and that was his interpretation

of the whole experience. But by me listening to

him, it helped to shift that. But he no longer carried

that belief that nobody played with me.

And he could then go back to school the next day feeling more confident he

wasn't carrying that fear, shame, doubt, all of those lovely

things that we carry when we're not heard.

So The next time your child says, nobody will

play with me, allow them to just fully express what that actually

means. It could mean that they hate school and they They slag

off all their friends and tell them tell you how much, you

know, they hate him that, you know, your child and your child hates

them, and Everybody's mean and no. No. No. Because,

you know, often our initial reaction, isn't it, is to move in and to fix

it, to go, okay. Well, you know, maybe I'll call the teacher

And and get them to to buddy you up with somebody and, you know, and,

you know, all of these things we try and fix the situation. You can

absolutely do all of that. And if this becomes a persistent thing where you think,

actually, my child is lonely at playground. Nobody really is playing with

them. Then, of course, speak to the teacher and Ask for their

feedback because, again, you know, when our children are full of feelings, they don't

always say exactly the truth of it. They they Say how

they feel about it. So, you know, the teacher can then observe your child

and go, well, yeah, they did struggle here. But, actually, they

played, you know, with somebody in a different year perhaps or whatever. So it's

and it's it's helpful for the teacher to know what's going on so that

they They can facilitate friendships. They can try and encourage your

child to perhaps do a class activity with a child that they

haven't Don't don't normally hang out with to try and foster a friendship

there. But the first the very first instance

is really to help your child with their feelings. Listen

to them. Allow them to fully express everything. And they're

not trying to counter. Like, I didn't really say to George, oh, you see? You

see? You did have people to play with. Don't be so you know, because you

don't want them to feel like, oh, I'm ridiculous or, You know,

what I'm saying is not true. If you just gently then go, oh,

okay. So you did play. Yeah. Okay. You know?

And allowing them to come to that realization and to feel

that within themselves without us trying to impose a particular

narrative on the experience. But it all in order to

do that, you then need to work on your own feelings

beforehand, if particularly if it's something charged. So now I

have done a lot of work around feeling left out, and that's not to say

I don't feel that. You know? There's still times when I still feel awkward and,

You know? Do people like me? Especially because we've just moved, you know, and all

of that sort of yucky feeling, but it's

much, much less. And I've been able to work through

that. And it's hard. Sometimes it's really uncomfortable to feel that

that shame and that That fear and that left

outness that you would have felt as a child, it's it's you know, it's a

good reason why we suppress our feelings because some of them are

really horrible. And And

not the right word now, but basically, you know, developmentally, to

be excluded from the tribe is used to equate

to death. You know, if you're left out of your tribe, you're not given

access to food, water, shelter, you're not gonna survive on your own

your own. So, actually, those intense feelings of being left

out, of, of not feeling

supported or having people around you, That is

intensely painful for a very good reason

because for so many millennia, it's meant Death, which

now social death, is very painful.

It's not fatal, but it's not It's not pleasant at

all. So don't minimize it from your child. I I don't think you would because

you know how painful it is, but also just acknowledging that it really is. And

so you can often, As I said earlier on, minimize your experience

going well. Actually, you know, it was alright. I was fine. But those

intense feelings, Honor them. Work through

them because you will come out the other side, and you will be able to

be more confident within yourself and to be able to help your child child

better. And, you know, when you're listening to your child just sort of going falling

apart, don't sort of try and interrupt them with

pointing out what is or what isn't true necessarily or trying

to get them to see on the bright side. They will do that naturally, but

they need to go through that offloading, releasing process with you. So just

really hang in tight. Let them do that. They will come out the

other side, and you will you will help your child at

really core level by doing that. Now if you want

extra help with school because, obviously, we have,

you know, we need to help our children with a whole myriad of things like

Homework or separation anxiety or just, you know, even settling in

and having to do what teacher tells them to do. My son does not like

that. I mean, who does? But Yeah. It's hard.

So if you want to help your child, particularly if your child's getting anxious,

and it could be that your child is just starting school now, Or it

could be that they are just struggling. They've been going for a while, and

they're having a hard time. I am running a overcoming

school anxiety workshop. Now if you're listening to this before

15th February in 2024, you can come and join me

live. And I'm designing it so that it's really interactive. It's

not just a information

podcast episode, it's you getting involved, working through some

of those harder parts so that, you know, you're being supported in order

to be able to work through your things to be able to then help your

child. I'll also give you loads of strategies and games and things that you can

do to help your child feel more confident when they're at school. So I really

encourage you to come on over to helenamoney.comforward/school.

And if you're listening to this After 15th February,

the recording will be available. So come on over to

that same web address, helenamoney.comforward/

school, and you'll be able to, gain access to it

there. Alright. If you've got any questions about school, Send them to

me. I would love to answer episodes on about

that. Answer you in a podcast episode. If you

like this episode, I'd be very grateful if you could give it a star

rating, leave a comment, positive comment. If you have a

negative comment, Feel free to email me directly.

And that would really help me just to get this out more to more

people to help them be able to help their children.

Alright. So remember, feelings are not always

facts. Work on things that you have gone

through so that you can then help your child. Because like I said, with my

mum, the experience that she had sort of passed down to me.

And I could easily have passed it down to George, and he could have, you

know, subsequently passed it on and on and on. So you doing the work on

yourself is stopping You're passing it on for

future generations. And then know that you can help

your child. You helping them with their feelings is what's gonna help

them be confident in those situations, to be able to navigate

them better. And what you are doing Is helping them in the

playground, you know, when they're 5 and 6, and it is hard,

you're really setting them up so well for when they get to those teen

years and twenties and having to navigate life. The

this is such an important time, and you can really help your child. So

if you want more help with a variety of other things relating to school,

come on over to helenamoney.comforward/school And join

me at overcoming school anxiety workshop. Alright,

lovelies. Have a really good week, and I'll see you next time.