What age do kids start choosing their own friends instead of who their parents choose?

[Anonymous]

My 3rd grader is happy to do things with kids I pick and coordinate with the parents. My kindergartener has a list of requested play dates that will take me until May to work through - and he orchestrates these at recess and tells me “call Jamie’s mom. I told him he could come to our house on Sunday.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids clearly clicked with particular kids, and not others, by age 3 or 4.

Yep came here to say this. 3/4/early preK for my DD. So I am also thinking that gender may play a role here.

[Anonymous]

Since preschool, I've always let my kid make her own friends. (Most of my friends have kids at least five years older.)

[Anonymous]

3rd grade

[Anonymous]

Kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

I think kids start asking for specific friends early, but parents often ignore it. By the time they are in 5th/6th grade there is more independence and often kids are able to hang out more with friends they choose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think kids start asking for specific friends early, but parents often ignore it. By the time they are in 5th/6th grade there is more independence and often kids are able to hang out more with friends they choose.

+1 - I feel this is the age where they are starting to balk at hanging with kids who are the kids of the parents’ friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PreK. This is when my kids started saying certain kids were their friends and they wanted to have playdates.

By 2nd or 3rd start vocalizing more if they didn’t like certain kids in group setting when the parents hang out.

By 4th grade I completely stopped taking them to hang outs with my friends and their kids. We had separate friends. They had their own and I had my own.

+1

[Anonymous]

My daughter and her friends are doing this in K. She gets invited to play dates and she requests play dates based on the girls she’s connected with herself, not because the moms are friends. I’m not friends with most of the other moms except one who is a neighbor - but I am friendly with them for the sake of having to be involved in organizing the play dates outside of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids clearly clicked with particular kids, and not others, by age 3 or 4.

Yep came here to say this. 3/4/early preK for my DD. So I am also thinking that gender may play a role here.

+1 I also have a girl and she chose her own friends at 3ish in daycare. I happen to be friends with some of the moms but that didn't drive which kids my DD clicks with.