What to do about 12 year old ds with no interests other than tech and wanting to just stay home?

[losenotloose]

It's driving me mad. He does no clubs or activities and no hobbies other than gaming. If he was going to different activities I wouldn't worry so much. He also has no interests at home eg art, cooking, kicking a ball around.

What's made me so stressed is that over the holiday it's a struggle to get him to go out. He then just games or waits until he's allowed to game. Or watch telly. My thoughts are that I might have to insist he does something extra just to expand his life a bit.

Opinions greatly appreciated!

And in case anyone asks, he doesn't go out with his friends much either. He had a friend round yesterday and this friend literally sat looking at his phone with headphones on for 2 hours!!

My 14 year old is the same. He has friends occasionally they will have sleepovers and watch Netflix but the majority of the time they communicate via their headphones when gaming. Trying to encourage him to go out be he really isn't interested.

I have nephews who were like this from the age of 10 to 16. At 16 they came out of their darkened rooms to socialise in pursuit of girls and alcohol.

I have a similar 12 year old!
He’s not sporty at all (has hyper mobility so finds some things like riding a bike impossible, also He has mild ASD so hates team sports. He sometimes enjoys going climbing but gets frustrated easily A’s finds its so hard)
He doesn’t like anything like drama or music. A spade is a spade and he can’t ‘imagine’ and pretend to be something else.

We are quite rural so don’t have the plethora of other clubstjar he might be interested in that big towns /cities do eg science club, coding

He used to go to a coding club but it shut down as was run by volunteers in the youth programs and they couldn’t get enough people to help out.

There’s a couple of youth groups he could go to but he hates social situations and they mostly play sport.

He says everyone spends all their time gaming. Well this might partly be true but I know they're also going to drama/football/swimming/cubs/learning an instrument etc which balances it out a bit.

Our children have gone to clubs since an early age but if I left it to them they would take the easy option and give up some clubs but they always come out smiling and happy but would prefer to lie in bed rather than getting up early at the weekend. So I’ve consciously decided not to let their willingness to lie in bed stop them taking advantage of the clubs they go to.

If they were unhappy there I might take a different course of action but just right now I am sure they really enjoy their clubs.

Watching with interest.
When it comes to screen time/socialising do you think there is a difference between private school kids vs. state school? I'd imagine private schooled children are given more expensive gifts like iPhones, xBoxes etc but then they also probably go on expensive holidays and parents are able afford more clubs in order to balance out their interests.
Just curious.

There is a coding club but surprise surprise he doesn't want to go!

I wish I had just made them go to clubs from a young age.

All of the children I know go to state school, have expensive tech and go to multiple clubs. Don't know if area has anything to do with it. I'm in South London.

Can you take the interest outside? E.g. near us there is a VR shop, where you can go & play as groups, have parties etc. It's on town, so people can go there then have a drink/lunch etc. Or get him to try coding club as a condition of playing on his games.

It does seem to be a major interest at this age & I know lots of DC who are similar & don't have other interests particularly. My DS1 is a bit younger, just turned 10, and thankfully still interested in other things (football, reading, model railway, lego) but is turning more & more to his Xbox & I can see it might get tricky to not let it get too much.

Also to me it's more boys than girls doing this. Is it a case of boys going into their shells shutting down their emotions from their hormones etc? I think girls tend to talk more.
Interesting to hear yours are at state. But in terms of area I certainly know a handful of child Londoners who aren't so much on their screens. Social group? Are the parents on their devices a lot?
My DD is only a baby but I'm so worried about how the world is going in this direction. I also work with children (all ages) so it's interesting observing.