Parties

Joshua is such a funny child in general, let alone to take to a party. I think he gets invited to most of the parties in nursery because I am friendly with a lot of the mums and chat a lot to them while collecting and dropping off the kids. Josh is really anti social, he gets really awkward around people whether they are adults or children of his own age. He likes to stick to my side and is really cautious of joining in with games or dancing or any form of entertainment at a party. 

I will say to him aw look Josh there is so and so and he just looks at me and looks away, or if I tell him to go and say hello or happy birthday to whoever's birthday party he is, he will run away and refuse to do so, not because he is rude, as he is such a loving child he just has no confidence. It takes him a good half hour to warm up, today at a party he was watching a little boy play with his cars and I could tell he wanted to go and join in, and when he finally did he had so much fun, he kept asking me if he could go and play cars with this little boy again and he was really happy. He just hates big crowds of children. 

He will come home from nursery and tell me all about these different kids and what they play with, so I think he just sits and watches everyone play wanting to join in but is just to nervous.  Spiderman came to the nursery a few weeks ago, and told them to run round and he would chase them, every other child (39 of them) ran around and Josh stayed hovered behind his teacher, and when I asked him why he didn't run around like everyone else he just said 'well mum I could of fallen over or hurt myself' He has lots of friends outside of school and he's the same with them, he takes a good while to warm up and join in, but once he does he really has a lovely time and I wish he could be a little bit more confident in himself as he would enjoy himself so much more.

I love the fact he is a little mummy's boy but his attachment issues are getting really bad at the moment and I wish they would change, as it really effects him and he gets really upset if I leave the room, he wont let me leave when I put him to bed, and he wont let anybody else do certain things with him unless its more or I am with them! 

I hope that by the end of nursery he will be even more confident and will socialise a lot more than he does now, but he has always been around kids and that hasn't seemed to change him, I think its just something we need to work on together! 

What would you suggest?