No, you can’t force it, but in the mean time, she wants to help her daughter, who is miserable.
And no, you can’t force kids to be friends with her. But you CAN force them not to harass her.
Although I think many of the ideas like martial arts or art/music classes are good, I’d make sure it’s something she wants to do before enrolling her in one. I’d hate for her to think that she was displeasing you in some way by not being popular. Then she’d feel not only friend;ess, but that she was letting you down in some way. Make sure she knows that she’s fine just the way she is, but that you’d be glad to do these things if she’d like to try them.
My youngest niece is almost 12. She’s always been a popular kid, but she usually only likes to play with one friend at a time. By the time she was 6 she said, “2 kids can play together, but if there are more someone gets mean.” So if she was playing and things got ugly, she had no problem going indoors to play by herself, or telling the other kids she wasn’t going to play with them if that’s how things were going to be. She never lacked for children to play, and at this point my sister complains that she never sees her on the weekends because she’s off from one sleepover to the next. I think it’s important for your daughter to feel like it’s okay to be who she is, even if she’s different. In the 6th grade, as a straight A student, my neice still plays with her baby dolls and her legos. She’s not into wearing the slutty clothes so many pre-teens wear, (“Mom! Why would anyone wear thongs?? It would be like having a constant wedgie!”) She is happy and confident being herself.
StG
StG