My 8 year old has no friends

[BambooLanda]

DS is 8. He’s lovely. His biggest loves are bird watching and Doctor Who. He has ASD and the older he gets the more he is struggling with friendships. He said tonight that it’s not that other kids don’t like him, they do. It’s just that they don’t think like he does about things and don’t care about the things he does. I think he hasn’t found his “people” yet and I’m worried that he won’t find them in school. We live very rurally and there are small class sizes with not many children. There are limited options for clubs outside of school and we’ve tried them all. He still goes to Cubs but says he doesn’t have friends there.

I’m worried about him and don’t know what to do. Does anyone have any advice?

I just want to say well done OP for still encouraging your DS to follow his hobbies and not forcing him to play football or have interests he doesn’t like just fit in.

Your poor DS. I can really sympathise because my DS is a few years older but our circumstances sound very similar. It's very hard, and living rurally is the problem. I wish we'd never moved to the countryside. Is there any way your DS could move to a bigger school? Or are there literally no other options in the area? As pp said its really good that you're encouraging your DS to be just the way he is and not fundamentally changing to try and 'fit in'. Because no one can try and be something they're not for any length of time and it is completely the wrong message to send out that anyone needs to change to be liked. Honestly I would try and move if you could, but I know it's not always as simple as that

I think exploring the cubs angle is a good one. I think a lot of children that go to cubs tend to be a bit ‘atypical’. If he isn’t jelling with his current pack maybe see if there’s another one not too far away you could look at? Each pack tends to be quite individual in terms of activities - led a lot by the leaders’ interests. He sounds like he’d fit right in in my DS’ pack! But definitely discuss with the leaders and with the school teachers. My ds sounds very similar (undiagnosed but undoubtedly on the spectrum somewhere) and he can be quite rigid about who he thinks he ‘should’ be playing with. And also won’t compromise to do activities he doesn’t want to do, in order to make friends. But I’ve seen him, he gets on perfectly well with most kids when put in a situation where he doesn’t have to ‘choose’ to make the first move himself, iyswim. So the teachers and cubs leaders might have an idea of who he might get on with and be able to engineer some situations where he interacts with them. Is he considering the year above/ below him at school, for example? We’re also rural and a lot of friendships are across school years but if that’s not the norm at your school (it is encouraged in ours) then he might not consider those children to be ones he ‘should’ be friends with.

All of this could have described my son at 8. We worried constantly that he was lonely, barely noticing that he never, ever, said he was.
He’s an adult now, and focusing on his passions has led to amazing things. His strong sense of himself meant that he never cared what others thought of him, avoiding so much common teenage angst!
He has a wide group of friends as an adult, but still really enjoys his own company.
Your lad will find his place in the world, and his people.