Playing with other children?

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Who here has early memories of playing or not playing with other children? All I can think is from 8 onwards I was very much a loner and into solitary activities. I have no recollection of playing with other children before that age . Is that something you could just forget ?

I preferred playing with people older than I was when growing up. I would even skip participating in other children's games in favor of sitting with the adults and listening to their conversations. So no, I was never really into playing with other children.

I had a meltdown in preschool the first day my Mom brought me there. I apparently had no issue with her dropping me off there, no separation anxiety, and I was apparently enjoying myself at the outset, perfectly contented by playing with some toys by myself.

It was only when the teacher thought I should join the other kids in group play and her insisting on it that I strongly protested.

The teacher shared her apparent concern and my behavior with my Mom. My Mom told her to let me play alone anytime I wanted to. Go, Mom!!

I did not like playing games with groups of kids at any point in my childhood.

I certainly have early memories of playing with neighbors, and very few playing with schoolmates.


At school, my playmates are usually older especially during my days at daycare. Heck I was a 5 year old girl, and they're like 7-11 year old active boys. I don't approach other kids to play -- I just let them invite me.
I just happened to be good at physical play, would be picked first or fought over during PE -- but not as fulfilling. They just want me because I'm good at something. Just a wild card of sorts.

At home, it's almost always girls of various ages. They happened to be more mature than kids of their age -- or comparatively kids at my school.
From play pretends, quizes, physically active plays, and even crazy ones. They fulfilled me. They know me well, and I get to know them enough. Of course I couldn't forget.


Very much a loner or a drag-along at school, but more sociable at home. It's consistent in my case during my entire childhood.
And been that way even after my household moved when I was 8, and transfered schools trice -- it's always the friendly neighbors for playmates/friends, and less schoolmates for playmates/friends.

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I played with other children as a kid. There was other children my age in my neighbourhood and I would spend hours playing with them without any issues. I remember coming in from school, getting out of my school uniform, and going back out to play with friends until dinner was ready.
I played with classmates in school but I never seemed to see them outside of school except at birthday parties. Well I remember when I was 4-6 I sometimes had a little girl in my class come back to my house after school but that was because her mother worked shifts. But we got on well and played with my toys in my bedroom. Also I was often invited round a little boy's house for dinner, he was a year younger than me but our mothers were friends.
Socialising seemed much easier as a child.

At about the ages of 12-16 I was lonely. I drifted apart from my friends and spent every evening in my bedroom, craving for a friend.

I had a couple of close friends who I played with, though not at the same time. I lost both because of families moving away and were followed by significant periods of loneliness, which have had a lasting affect on me.

As a child I greatly preferred playing in solitude, out in the woods. In my experience, schoolmates and neighborhood children were more often than not dangerous; sociopathic, predatory, and vicious in a primal, animalistic way. In general, my social interactions with other children closely resembled the final chapters of 'Lord of the Flies'.

It's a psychodynamic of mine which became so deeply ingrained that it has remained largely unchanged for over 50 years.

I always had few friends as a child, and preferred females. I was also more interested in my friends' parents than my friends.

Pretty much all my report cards from elementary school say, "Does not interact with others students." I spent most of my time alone in my room or alone on long bike rides. I never understood why other children wanted to be loud together.

i had a few, when i was younger i was more of a "i don't understand when people don't like me and i don't understand when i'm being inappropriate/when i should stop talking" type of kid. My dad described me as a pretty sweet kid and i would often approach strangers saying the exact same thing. I was very anxious and angry though, and usually waited for others to approach me because i didn't know what to do, but if i did approach them, i would use a script that my parents taught me (and i had used that exact same script up until recently because people would tell me it's annoying and childish) I was bullied, though. kids thought i was weird and rude, because i got easily annoyed and was very blunt and talkative and had strange interests.

I played mainly by myself but at school i felt the pressure to be a part of the group so I followed other children hoping they would accept me. i had a good male friend. i saw myself as a boy.

It depended.
If a kid was nice to me and the game was one of my choosing I would play with other kids, but I found most kids games stupid and had a hard time keeping a friend for more than a few months at most.

I hated most adults but when I did like an adult I tended to prefer talking to the adult.

I played with my neightbor. I did not go to kindergarten, our moms let us play together. When we started going to school, she found other friends and I stayed alone. I always wanted to play with the others, but nobody wanted play with me.
I did not understand much with older siblings. Like older I played a lot with my eight years younger brother.

When I was a child, I often played with other children. It was games like hide and seek, tag, monopoly, clue, card games, cowboys and indians, pirates (I had my own pirate chest filled with treasures), marbles, musical chairs, tree climbing, kite flying, water gun fights and other games. I had a lot of brothers and sisters, a large extended family and a few neighbor kids.

I could only play with one other kid at a time. If the chance to join a group or even one other kid came up, I would panic and try to get away.

I was often known as 'clingy' in school.