"We don't want you to sit with us"

Why wasnt he tolerated at the Hub?

He wasn't tolerated at the SEN hub either? So what is going wrong with his interaction with his peers? I dont mean this judgementally but does he rub his peers up the wrong way (I've known several fundementally very nice children with asd /adhd do this because they struggled with the rules of socialising and friendship). It sound like he needs support from the school.

It's really sad :( But never tends to work just going to sit with a random new group. Prob need to await being invited to join the group.

Secondary school kids are obsessed though with how cool others are and what not. A shame but a fact of life.

I am sorry it breaks my heart to hear your poor son’s interaction with other kids. It’s so sad he feels he doesn’t have a safe space to perform a basic human function of refuelling his body. In my opinion the school needs to come up with a solution where he can happily eat lunch if the head master thinks it’s ok for other kids to exclude him. What does the senco think about this?
If I was you I would be contacting other parents and asking their opinion. I have no doubt you will find some kind hearted souls who ask their kid to stick up for your son or let him eat lunch quietly nearby. The kid who made the comment is a jerk but it’s likely other kids think he’s a jerk too they just need a push to find their voices.

So it was a one off and theyve asked him to move?That's pretty rude.

You're not explaining what's been happening. Is he literally just taking a seat and being told to move along? Or is he wanting to chat and be part of the group at lunch etc? Does he have other friends?

It was quite a tough area too so no fake niceness if you know what I mean.

Does he want to sit with them every lunchtime? Does he have other options - other places to sit, other people he could sit near?

I was the unpopular kid that people used to say this to. I was quiet and shy and didn’t have the latest fashionable clothes. That was my whole crime. I wasn’t making myself unpleasant or ‘making anyone else feel uncomfortable’. I was just sitting somewhere quietly.

I am shocked by the number of parents on this thread saying it’s fine for their popular children and their friends to be so rude and unpleasant to another child, instead of teaching them kindness and tolerance.

No they should be kinder and more empathetic but there is no way of making them be so. I have a student who wants to hang around with a group of popular, disruptive boys. The student has some SEN. The group don't want him. They are unkind in a similar way. They have been spoken to. They are not going to suddenly become empathetic and inclusive. They have their own problems with bad behaviour and difficult family backgrounds. The student with SEN has been encouraged away from them and paired up with others. He still continues to follow this group around, becoming increasingly upset by being rejected. The best thing we can do and it may be the same in your situation is to work with the student with SEN to find someone kinder to be friends with or to eat lunch with. Yes, they HOY should tell the group that they have no right to tell anyone where to sit but beyond that they cannot make the group talk to your child or be friendly.

Cowbells I attended a small sixth form that ended up well bonded like that. There just weren't enough cool kids to firm a clique!

I do dislike the phrase "find your tribe", it's compulsory schooling where many will not find like minded companions.
If it's anything like our local secondary there aren't enough seats to go round anyway.
The schools answer does show the hypocrisy of any "be kind" mantra. They could at least help kids find someone to sit with.

When I was a teen I became involved in a club which had zero tolerance of cliques. It attracted the coolest kids in school but also a host of social misfits. We all bonded. We had the best times, the best parties. We all went to gigs together, went camping together, hung out at each others houses and all desire to be cool or cliquey just vanished because we had so much fun and a huge, rambling crowd of friends.

We learned to be tolerant and accepting, and we got to know and befriend people who were very different from us mentally, socially, academically. I wish every teenager could have that experience. It was the best thing that ever happened to me in childhood. Encouraging our teens to be closed minded is not a good thing.

Is it possible he has been harassing them, not taking their hints so they have had to be blunt?

You don't know the whole story. His his only demand is to sit near this particular group? It is borderline stalking and not okay. From this it sounds like an issue that has been going on for a while.

These teenagers have every other hour of the day to be alone with their superior friends

Well actually they dont, do they? At school they get break time and lunchtime , the rest of the time they are in class and are told who to sit and work with.

I just asked my ds what he thinks of this. He said it wasnt kind to let someone think they were your friend when they really weren't "because that doesnt help anyone". He also said that if it wasnt someone he found particularly annoying he wouldnt mind sharing a lunch table with them and he didnt think his friends would either. He also said he didnt think the school should be trying to force people to sit together at lunch.

So where are the ‘creepy’ children meant to sit . Is there meant to be a ‘creepy’ children’s table . Maybe you would prefer them to be in a different room?

These other teenagers have every other hour of the day to be alone with their superior buddies . 30mins being friendly and inclusive is surely not the end of the world .

In my day you had table places at school, you sat where you were told and you made conversation with the person next to them whether you liked them or not.