DS (15) friendship issues

[Opihr]

How do I help DS with this one?

He never wants to see his friends outside school and he never gets invited to anything either. He plays in a sports team and most of his team mates are also at his school and were, or so I thought, his tribe.

He always seems happy to go to training / matches and seems to chat away ok to the other kids then, but trying to get him to do ANYTHING in the holidays is like pulling teeth.

After a long conversation of me suggesting activities and him saying he didn't want to do them, he finally said he'd like to go karting. It's costs a fortune but I was so happy he'd shown enthusiasm about something that I agreed and encouraged him to bring a friend, saying I'd pay for them too. Cue lots of avoidance of mentioning a name of who he's like to bring, and now he's said that he's posted on a group chat and everyone's saying they can't come.

It might be true, it might not but it's made me wonder if there are deeper friendship issues going in here. I thought he was just a lazy teen who's got out of the habit of socialising after lockdown but now I'm not so sure.

He's like talking to a brick wall, insisting everything is fine and he's perfectly happy doing nothing all day long but I can't help but worry about him, it's such a contrast to his other siblings who are endlessly out and about with their friends.

What do I do?

Hi - I can sympathise, my DS 14 is the same. He is a friendly kid and has pals who he spends time with at school but he has very little interest in doing things outside school. I have tried to encourage / force it but he just doesn't want to. My DS is dyslexic / dyspraxic and I think he finds school work and socialising at school quite hard so when at home he just wants to switch off.

I have really tried recently to pull back and leave him be but offer to do things with him I know he likes in the house

My 15 year old DS is exactly the same. He seems happy enough though so I leave him to it.

I do remember my mum going on at me about going out / having no friends when I was that age and it really got me down, so I don't want to do that to him.

Thank you both. It's so hard to know where 'normal' ends and a problem begins, and he's always been such a closed book. If he doesn't want to talk, how do I know if he's just happy in his own company or being bullied or worse?

@JacquelineCarlyle you make a really good point about Mums not going on about it, and I have said we'll go karting regardless, whether a friend comes along or not. I'd hate him to think we can only do fun stuff when he has a friend in tow.

Have there ever been particular kids that he's hung around with outside school or has this always been normal for him?

@pancakesandsyrupplease

Have there ever been particular kids that he's hung around with outside school or has this always been normal for him?

He never really got to the stage when he organised his own social life. I organised lots of play dates / birthday parties etc through primary school but you expect it to be parent led at that age. He found this new gang in Y7 but in hindsight it was still parent led or organised activities. Pre lockdown he trained and played for 2 sports teams plus scouts, but then everything ground to a halt when COVID hit.

It's like he's stuck in a lockdown mindset and doesn't know how to move forward and build a more independent social life. He left Scouts and doesn't want to rejoin, did DofE Bronze but doesn't want to do Silver. It's like his world is shrinking at an age when it should be growing and he should be pushing boundaries, not hiding in his room.

I think Covid has hit a lot of young people, and really interrupted that branching out from home stage.

That happened to my DD of the same age. She has always been shy and once she stopped activities during lockdown she never picked them up again and she cries if I try to push it so I stopped. She does appear to have some friends who she interacts with online and possibly at school but almost never IRL. It doesn't seem normal to me but I accept she has a very different personality to mine.
I really worried about her and in the end I relented over the one thing she's always wanted and got a dog. It's been great for her as she walks him every day and takes him training which at least gets her out of the house and gives her a focus that's not a screen. It's less great for me and DH who have to do all the work the rest of the time which is a lot but on balance I think it was worth it
Maybe the carting will be like that for your DS.

I was in a similar position to your son up until i was about 14. The reality was i had no real friends in school and the people i did bother with used to meet up without me (yeah i felt awful about it at the time). Then when i was 15 i started to bother with other people in school and it just clicked and i found “my people” i went on to have a very active social life and bother with a number of those girls to this day.

Anyway the point im trying to make is be careful how you handle this. I remember my mum being very aware that i had no real social life and constantly used to pester me and ask why i dont go out or make plans with friends (as if i didnt want to). It used to make me feel even worse about myself.

Its very likely your son will find his way and will click with his own group of people in time. Just support him and try not to pressure him to much.

I wish your son all the best :)

@Nat94 that's what I was trying to say. My mum was worried and trying to be helpful but it made me feel horrible about myself.

I did find my people at university and later in life when I moved to England and have a very full active social life.

Other than online gaming, my son is very like I was at that age so I'm not sure it's a lockdown thing or just a teenage thing (for some as I do know others go out a lot). He's very studious so I'm hoping that will stand him in good stead.

Op, your latest update could also be my son, even down to the doing bronze DOE and not progressing past that. Mine also doesn't tell me much, but he does seem to have an inner confidence / happiness so I'm truly hoping he's ok. If there were something I could do, then I would do it, but from my own personal experience with my mum, I'm trying to just support him and be there for him. We do watch certain TV shows together and he will go out with us if we insist we're going bowling (or karting!) but other than to go to school, he doesn't leave the house alone! (As we have to drive him to football matches and training etc).

I wish your son all the very best.

My son is the same, I have encouraged him to meet friends and socialise but he just isn't that person. Whilst I want him to go out and have fun, I know that unless he is the driver he can go out but may still sit on the outside of the social circle and not participate. I do what I can, in terms of supporting him with scouts but I can't change him and ultimately he seems happy in his own company!

Please stop He's 15 so after school he will be moving on to different things see what that will bring.
Lots of friendships fizzle out ofter they leave school anyway .
All the go karting offer has done has highlighted to him he has no friends and no one wanted to go with him that must of made him fell horrendous
Our youngest was a loner and TBH think I was as well . He got a job after school and he joined the gym.
fast forward 3 years after he left school he's literally reinvent himself . Friends and girlfriends out all the time happy as .

In the kindest way I'm not sure many 15year olds would want to go karting with their friend and his family.
It's also a bit 'organised playdate' and they're too old for that at 15years old. It will send them running for the hills am sure.
Paying for a friend to come along and suchlike is just cringe. Sorry.

I think I'd be just making sure my son knew he could invite a couple of pals over after sport, or whenever and that you'd keep out of the way, just be on hand to provide pizza. Keep it light.

Does he do online gaming? Since lockdown my son barely socialises in real life, most his socialising is done via Xbox. I mean he does meet up with his college friends maybe once a term but that's it.

@ophir how old is he?
My dd is 15. She was always very social up until covid, always keen to organise things. Recently she's met up with friends for an evening when the other mum had organised it. I've offered to let her have a small group of any friends over of her choice this midterm for movies/pizza etc, but she told me no. She told me possibly for the easter hols but I'll see does she put it off then 😅
I know she does have friends, would say at least a few are good friends bc she's always talking on the phone to them.
I literally think she can't be arsed being social & hosting things. That's all. She prefers to spend her midterm/weekends relaxing in her room.
It could be covid that's put them in this mindset.
She also doesn't do any activities outside of school.
I do think she finds school tiring & she's in an exam year, but I think she just wants to be lazy on her own time.
Could it be their age?!

Does he play with friends on xbox/PS?

My DS doesn't go out with friends but does play online so I hear him laughing and having fun so I don't worry about him not having friends.

Does he seem unhappy?

DS was a bit like this - but partly during lockdown so nothing we could do about it - but has now blossomed with his own social life.

If your DS is ok just leave it. DS doesn't have the social confidence to be the organiser of things- frustrating for me who does just that, but will go to things others have arranged.

Snap! So far I've had to force my daughter to meet her friend, arranged via the friends mum, to meet her again in a few days. Instigated a sleep over with a different friend. That she's cancelled via her phone, because they're just going to hang in the day instead. Which is code for, it's never going to happen. She's like, "why? I want to do nothing!" But then keeps saying that she's bored. But I think it boils down to something she said. She has lots of friends, but none of them are her best/close mates. So doesn't actually want to spend more than a couple of hours with them.

I don't actually think its solely covid/ lockdown - it seems to be a normal phase for some teens.

Dd went through something a bit similar at 12-13 (and she'd been organising her own social life from really early, with my permission - she used to use the land line to call friends with me in the room and their parent in the room at their end right from when she was 5 or 6 years old - that used to be normal where we live but sadly its totally changed over the last decade since families ditched landlines and parents started organising everything over WhatsApp - really unfortunate massive step backwards for children's independence and social and communication skills, really not good IMO).

She came out of it by 14 but 14 year old DS is going through it a bit now - and he used to be effortlessly really popular in a quiet way (when he was 12 he only decided he wanted a birthday sleepover 2 days before do I let him invite 12 boys thinking at least half would be busy but they all turned up). This year for the first time his friends had a party and he wasn't invited - he was really taken aback and sad 😔 and I was secretly too but told him its normal, happens to everyone, things go in phases, part of growing up, things change all the time - in a year it'll be different again.

I did encourage him to keep talking to everyone, be cheerful and unbothered and tell us how he feels, and most usefully for Ds maybe make very low key plans 1:1 in person at school or football.

This has worked and he made plans to go over to a friend's and went over and played playstation all afternoon with an old friend and football teammate at the weekend and gamed online with another.

Low key and in person planning is better than big open invitations on group virtual chats.

I would try to drop comparison of him with your other kids. This is his way. My son is similar although slightly younger. He insists he has friends at school, once in a blue moon he meets them out of school and he does walk in with someone but I don't get the sense they are that close really. My parents endlessly pushed me to socialise when I was young but I just wasn't a social butterfly and I ended up feeling constantly embarrassed that I wasn't fitting their mould of how I should be. That was far worse than feeling left out by kids at school. Maybe work on your own acceptance of him, enjoy go karting and just spend some time together instead.

You're all absolutely right, I can't force him to want / need friendships in the same way that the rest of us do, and I certainly don't want to give him a complex about it.

He should be starting a Saturday job soon which will be good for him I think and he's doing well at school and keen on his sport still, so it's all not all doom and gloom.

Thanks all for some perspective on this

oh gosh my DD had this although at a younger age very popular at school in a general sense but could never get to the core of a group and was never chosen to do stuff by friends outside of school. it was heartbreaking because you knew these "friends" were all meeting up without him. this was all through primary and particularly felt it at the yr6 end of primary it was predominantly a result of parent cliques and a narrow group of classmates who we could never get in with. i used to hate it. but the world is a big place and i am sure your ds will find this whether at sixth form uni or work not all of us meet our life long friends at school plenty of time for him yet. if you can encourage any other out of school activities great.