What do your teens do socially?

[notahincheratall]

We live in a village
Have ds 15 y11 so we are trying to wind down any extra curriculars with exams coming up,
Does a bit of sport outside of school.
But has no social life. Has a couple
Of close mates at school, but no love interest and hasn't been asked to any parties or anything.
I feel sad for him.
He is kind funny and clever

Mine is 14 (yr9). Alongside organised sports he'll go to the local footy centre for a kick about or park to play cricket. He meets friends and goes for a wander and to get burgers / chicken. Or he'll go around to friends houses and game.
But he also stays at home and games in his room, chatting to friends through the Xbox.

My Year 10 spends all Saturday at music school. It’s structured but she’s made friends there. She is a keen Scout and sometimes sees her Scout friends socially or to work on a project. She sees school friends in the holidays, for a film or potter about the shops. Occasional sleepovers. She has friends from the school bus whose antics provide an endures source of excitement and drama.

She doesn’t go to school in our village, so doesn’t do much in the way of just meeting up and hanging out. To be honest, she doesn’t seem to miss it and it’s a relief to me. She can easily access our local small city so would be more likely to do something planned with friends there.

Is your son happy with his current situation? Not everyone wants huge groups of friends or to go to big parties. DD would hate a big teenage party ( she goes to parties with teenagers with us, but I guess you mean house parties etc.) and I don’t think she’s socially mature enough to manage those just yet.

Ds is 16 (Y12)
He plays football, does athletics and music outside of school. He goes to the gym with friends after school sometimes too.
In Y10 & 11 he had a couple of friends he would go to the cinema with and have sleepovers, but his social life has really taken off since October half term, now he is in sixth form. He has had a couple of gatherings at our house with around 10/12 people and is starting to attend parties at other houses too. I was wondering when this would all start and he is really loving life right now!

@ViolaSmart I think my ds will move for y12 and may find himself like this
His school has short lunchtimes so I am not sure he has made that many mates. Makes me sad.
I am wondering what he can do that's more "hanging out"

i wouldn't dial down the extra curricular for exams, keep them going, they need something else to focus on.

My DS is same age. He doesn't really go to parties as he's a bit geeky and not keen on that kind of thing. He has like minded friends, they go to each other's houses and game or go out to play footie. He also rides horses and helps out at the stables (he wants to be a vet).

My DS 18 is very focused on getting into a top uni barely ever socialises and doesn't care. He's content.

DD 16 socialises all the time, constantly till all hours.

They are complete polar opposites

DD says she sees him with friends around college but he does not go out after school or at weekends with them or even tries to make the effort.

Extra curricular activities will set up better for the future and keep him out of potential mischief more than "hanging out" and parties will, I wouldn't dial them down in the run up to exams unless he's really struggling to make his grades.

Honestly I think this is a side effect of quiet village life. In a city there are more people, mores choices, more tribes to find. You are also much more able to be independent at a younger age without requiring lifts / driving everywhere.

DD16 swims once a week and often goes again at the weekend with friends. They go ice skating or to the cinema. They go to each others houses to watch movies, have sleepovers, do homework, just hang out. A few of them are talking about joining the local leisure centre gym.

DS13 goes into town with a little group of mates (boys and girls) most weekends. They go to the park and take a football or basketball. They hang out at each others houses and play Xbox or watch football.

all of this is organised by them and they walk round the neighbourhood / get buses as required. Very similar to my own teenage years in a different but similarly sized city.

I think that when DS goes to uni next year he'll go a bit wild and will get drawn into social situations whether wants to or not

That'll be his time

Is he sad or is it just you? If it is the latter, I think you should just let him be without creating a gulf between how you think his life should be and how it is.

I also never ever bring it up with him ever.

It's his choice no matter how I may feel about it

I have a 15 year-old DS. He spends a lot of time at home gaming, but also plays football and tennis for local teams and goes to Explorers. Outside of that, he and his mates often book an astroturf pitch and have a kick about on a weekend. He also goes to the gym, mountain biking (we live within cycling distance of the South Downs) and goes fishing when he can afford it. The cycling and fishing are both with the same one friend and the football/gym with a larger group. I don’t worry about him really as he seems to have a good balance of stuff going on in his free time. He never goes anywhere just to hang out though- there is always some sort of physical activity involved.

Also- we live in a town- DS could easily go and wander around the town centre if he wanted to or go to parties but he isn’t really a party type of guy and doesn’t see the point in ‘hanging out’ without a focused activity. That’s just who he is, and I’m quite a similar character so it doesn’t worry me. DH and DD on the other hand, could easily chat to anyone and love parties!

Mine is Y11 just 15 in July. He has plenty of friends and they "hang out" mooch around the town, go to the driving range, occasionally cinema or a Nandos.
Sleepovers but no parties, which I'm happy with as the longer he stays away from booze and worse, the better!
No girl friends (fine by me) not really interested yet
He seems fairly normal for his friendship group.

My DD had very limited social life in Y11. Y12 she has changed friendship group and is never home.

It’s difficult to say because villages can be so limited for kids. Are there a lot of other families with similar age children? Does he already know everyone (i.e is there only one school?)

We’re not in a village but mine made many of his friends at the skate park. They have that shared activity then spend time together after, going for a burger, to each other’s house etc.

He also plays D&D. Is there a D&D or other similar group in your community?

At that age (DD now 16 and in year 12) she still did extra curriculars 4 times a week.

She'd been to parties (perhaps 3 in year 10 and 5 or so in year 11)

Then she's had one night out in our nearby city centre after exams.

She met up with friends approx once a week or so, whether that was at their house/ours or for food/cinema. She's never had any boyfriends.

If my younger DS is anything to go by I suspect boys are less bothered about meeting up with friends, but I could be wrong about that.

DD17 was never into organised activities, as hard as I tried. She's usually found in Costa with a friend, or at another friend's house to watch horror films, or taking photos, or is in a museum with yet another pal, or me. Tonight she's going to the cinema with her gang of mates.

She goes out once a week on a Friday night and maybe part of the weekend. She does her studying during the week and reserves at least one weekend day to do study too.

I think that even though kids need to knuckle down and try their best at school they also need their outlets to expend energy and socialise. It's good for their stress levels.

At that age mine had a boyfriend, (still together 7 years on), but she hung out with him and their friends, they often went on long walks together, or went into the nearest city to go to the comic book shops, or the second hand vinyl shops.
They also liked tea cafes, cat cafes and occasional shopping, plus cinema, gigs etc.

Our experience with DS was that up to Y11 it was only really the cool kids who went to parties- probably 2/3 of the year at school didn't really and instead had smaller groups of friends and did quieter things. DS used to really long to be invited to the parties but he very rarely was.

Then Y12 started and it was all change- loads more social things and the majority were suddenly going to (and throwing) parties and we went from really hoping DS would be invited out to having to stop him going out so much.

I think it's really normal to have quite a quiet social life in Y11 and it's definitely normal not to have a girlfriend or boyfriend- again, it was a small proportion of the year who went out with each other in Y11 and for everyone else it came a bit later.