What do you do with a child who just doesn't really fit in anywhere?

[LBA]

Its something ive been ignoring for a while but an incident tonight did make me think about it more.

Its not awfully rough where we live but the surrounding areas are a bit dodgy. Our local primary seems to be full of these huge strong children and most of them are not very nice. Ds goes to a school on a nice private housing estate on the other side of town. The school is good, the kids are ok.

I did move him for a while (big mistake) due to lack of childcare, to our local school. I didn't have much of a choice at the time. He didn't do well there, got bullied terribly and when I went in to tell his teacher he would be going back to his old school even she admitted he had never really "settled in" and that their children were a little "boisterous" in comparison to the children who attend the other school.

So that's the history of it.

He's 11 this year. This afternoon he was walking back from his nans house in the next street where he came across a group of kids from the local school who basically took the piss out of him rotten for being a little wimp. He was quite upset when he got back.

Ds is a nice child. Very thoughtful, helpful and caring. Im pretty proud of him tbh. He has respect for others and a good understanding of what's right and wrong. He is sensitive though, physically quite small and weak looking and a prime target for bullies.

I do feel sorry for him. He's not rough enough to fit in with those kids and he's not posh enough to fit in with most of the kids at his school. He only has a small group of friends there. Most of the kids at his school are in the lovely stable two parent families with the nice 3 bedroomed mortgaged semi. They know where he lives, that we are a single parent family etc and dont think he's good enough despite his sweet personality.

Ive had the same problem all my life (yes I was sweet when I was younger!) but when you get into your 20's it really doesn't matter anymore. You choose your own friends and realise that all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds can get on well together if you have things in common, the same moral outlook etc. You dont feel the need to belong anymore. I do remember how horrible it was though not fitting in. We went from being a family on that nice estate, to living in council accomm with no money, to owning a business and having a lot of money. I never really had a proper friend. If I "hung around" with the rougher kids, anyone but my best friend picked on me for being stuck up, the posh kids called me a scrubber. I would hate to think my ds has this coming.

[JossStick]

I don't really have any advice other than to hope he finds his niche.

Bumping for you!

[Heated]

for you and your lovely son. He sounds great.

Has coming up to 11 and presumably secondary school brought this to fruition? What's his choice/s like?

An older acquaintance of mine laughingly describes herself, me, and others like us as the genteel poor. An actually there are a lot of us about but, because by definition we're not flash & have no cash, we don't stand out as much! In fact I'm surprised by what you said about his private school as round here they seem to be made up of ppl who scrimp and save to put their children through.

Cherish his sweet personality and maybe look for ways to give him more assurance. If he has interests then join local clubs etc so he finds like-minded ppl and broadens his social group.

[LBA]

Its not a private school, (sorry for confusion) what I meant by "private" housing estate is that its a nice part of town, all owned houses, manicured gardens with the school slap bang in the middle.

Where we actually live its mostly council properties although we did get a decent street in the middle of a somewhat rough area. None of the kids in this street go to the local school as its so awful. Between us we have them in about 5 different schools a little further out.

[Ripeberry]

Does your son do any sport? or would he be willing to try out martial arts? Because at least then he would be able to handle himself with the bullies.
I've never really fitted in as my parents moved me and my brother to Switzerland when we were young, then when we were 12 we moved back to the UK, but my parents took over 1yr to find and buy a house.
We had to stay with 2 sets of grandparents and went to 2 diff schools in that year.
I was picked on because i had a French accent and did not know the british swear words.
Then we moved to a quite notorious Cardiff estate in the 1980's and it was so bad that buses would not go there in the evening and even taxi drivers would not take you.
The first day me and my brother played outside we had our "space hopper" and the local kids just came up and knifed it right in front of us...lovely street.
It's mellowed a lot now but my parents neighbour is having trouble with her 14yr old boy who is the leader of a local gang and he fell out with another gang last week and they smashed their windows.
Feel it's much harder for kids these days as there does not seem to be any fair play or a sense of "honour".

[littlewoman]

I don't have any answers I'm afraid. I empathise though. My ds1 used to have trouble fitting in because he wasn't into the same things as the other boys on our estate. We're not posh, but not rough as arseholes either. We live on a GLC overflow estate. He solved it by becoming the class clown at school, but he is still afraid of walking the estate on his own, even in the day. He is also physically the size of a 10/11 year old, though he's actually 14. So, like your ds, a prime target.

I have to be truthful and say that I wouldn't let my ds2 (10 yrs) walk around this estate on his own, but I suppose that's not very realistic for everybody, cos I've got loads of teenagers who can walk with him. And of course they have to learn to be independent too. It's very difficult, isn't it?

[gillybean2]

I have a similar concern with my own son who is very opinionated, does his own thing and isn't into football and won't be persuaded to be. He's also slightly smaller than average height and hates war games and fighting so doesn't fit in. We have a new child moved to his school who has already been picking on him and bullying him. The school have dealt with this pretty well, but I have now told them I want the two of them kept apart after this child injured my son when he threw something at him in the play ground after being told three times to leave my son alone by the dinner lady.

I have tried to get him interested in martial arts as some kind of self defence, but he just won't as he hates anything fighting related and sees it as fightning. He's not into rough and tumble and hates being teased which also makes him an easy target as he takes things very much to heart.

It is difficult but ignoring it won't make it go away. You have to help him prepare as best you can for what's ahead.

Are there any interests your son does have that you can try and encourage. My son likes sports such as swimming and wall climbing which don't really encourage interaction between him and the other children. He also is very driven and hates to come second (or worse below second!) so finds competitive sports quite tough as a result. He has no problem going up to other children and making friends which helps, but he still has trouble compromising when they want to do something he doesn't and he'd rather be on his own.

I encouraged him to join scouts last year, which he sometimes enjoys and sometimes doesn't. But he went away to scout camp last year and when he came back he had made a couple of good friends with children in his class at school, one of who made no bones about saying to me they hadn't really liked him till they went to camp and spent time together and now they are friends. I do help out at scouts and at camp though to be sure he has the support he needs there when he needs it, but i don't stay overnight at scout camp so he gets plenty of his own space too.

Most of our afterschool clubs are sport related so my son wasn't enjoying them. I took it upon myself to start an afterschool art club he did want to do, an art and crafts club. The response has been overwhelming and I've had to limit the numbers, get more help from another parent so we can have more children at the club and the headteacher tells me it is the most popular after school club with about 25% of the children in the classes it's open to attending this term! So my son is certainly not alone in wanting things other than sports things, and a lot of the biys at the club also say they don't like football.

The school also tried to get a chess club up and running, which my son wanted to join, but the outside company they brought in to run it was too expensive and so they had to cancel it. I am hoping the head teacher will try this again next term as several more children have come forward now saying they'd like to do it.

I also used to make a big effort to encourage friendships, but found that very few parents reciprocated. So now I stick more to the ones that do reciprocate and spending time with his cousins. While he's at a small primary school and fairly protected he is doing ok, but when he heads to secondary school I worry that problems will arise and that he will get bullied. I know he will not do well at the local secondary school, and most of his closest friends parents have also said they don't intend to send their children there for the same reasons i have worries, namely bullying and intimidation. the school has a very poor reputation, but living in a rural place it is very hard to get the children in any otehr school because of the distance issue to the next schhol along. So I have the added worry of trying to get him into the school of my choice which has a higher level of pastoral care and at which i feel he will do better academically as well as socially. I may have to move to achieve this, but financially i can't afford to move right now.

For you i suggest you try speaking to his teacher and see if there is anything they can suggest to help him now and find out which children are going to the same secondary school he is that he is closer too. Maybe you can encourage him to find friends interested in things he is outside of school, whatever it might be (drama, sport, art, model airoplanes, scouts etc). If you are on WTC & CTC you can probably get help towards to cost of afterschool clubs and activities.

Your son is not alone, you just have to find those other children who are 'different' like he is. And i'm afraid that is something you have to be proactive in doing. You also have to encourage his self esteem and make sure he gets to spend time with other children who have similar interests to him and at things he is good at. Your son needs your help to do this.

Best of luck.
Gilly

[littlewoman]

My son likes rock climbing too. He's also really good at drama. It gives them so much confidence just to be good at something and accepted somewhere. I think you have made the right choice to keep him out of the rough school, LBA. In the long run, I think it's because they're not 'run of the mill' children, and in a way I'm proud of that.