To think it must be my daughter's fault that she has no friends

[persianpeach]

I have a 20 year old daughter and a 10 year old daughter (I also have two sons but this hasn't happened to them).

Since middle school both of my daughter's have struggled with friendships, this I know is normal to some degree but I'm really starting to believe that it must be my daughter's faults or the way I have brought my daughter's up that has caused this problem. I feel absolutely gutted for them.

They are alike in the respect that they are both lovely girls, mature, kind, good morals, witty, funny, genuine, honest and maybe a little shy. I would have thought that these were great qualities for someone to want in a friend but not so.

They can't seem to keep friends and friendships that start really well seem to end abruptly with no explanation and they are then outcast and totally ignored like they don't exist.

This is making me so sad. We invite girls over for play dates, days out and occasional sleepovers but still this happens.
I'm starting to think I must have raised them in a way that makes them seem unattractive to friends but I just can't figure out why.

My 20 year old daughter still suffers now not having girls to hang out with or holiday with and what's so awful is I can see this pattern repeating itself in my 10 year old daughter.

Has anyone else experienced similar, if we knew what was going wrong we could try and put it right but we are clueless. I'm wondering if they are socially inept, if they have some sort of undiagnosed autism or similar. My eldest has had counselling but they couldn't see why she would have a problem and thought it was just a self esteem issue.

They are lovely girls I just can't see why this is happening but it's heartbreaking please help. I don't think I can go through it all again.

What are the friends like whom they do make? Are they trying to be friends with people who have similar values and interests or are they trying to fit in with a perceived 'cool' group. My dc aren't the coolest kids on the block and I imagine if they tried to integrate themselves in to some groups they might experience rejection.

My dc though don't seem to want to be in that group. They do though make a number of close friends who when you meet them are like them. I can almost always see why they are friends and those who I can't really see why they are friends tend to not remain friends. So I guess I am asking whether when you meet their friends when they do make them do you think 'yeah I can see why they get on' or do you think 'oh that's an unlikely pairing'. If they came home with someone with loads of make up, handbags, latest on trend clothing etc. then I would be surprised because I know that it isn't a realm which they value. I wouldn't have anything against the friend and indeed if my dc decided to be like that then would be fine with it, but at the moment I couldn't see a friendship like that enduring.

I think not being able to fit into a 'Cool' group and hence feeling rejected is one problem. Having a few close similar friends but always falling out with them is a slightly different issue.

I wonder if they push people away by being too uptight.

To have good friends you have to be a good friend.
Friendship is like all relationships about give and take, meeting in a middle ground. For the 10 yo its about "you want to play that game ok, then can we play this game" similarly with the 19yo not always wanting there own way.
Make sure they initate contact with others too. If you leave others to do all the calling they will get fed-up.

I don't have many friends but thinking about ones I've dropped or let drift over the years, realizing that I'm the one who's putting in all the effort. I quietly think I'm not calling them, they can call me, and the call never comes. Being let down at the last minute a 'friend' who makes arrangements, I can say its 50/50 if it will actually happen. I only keep talking making arrangements because I worry it might be depression or domestic issues thats the real problem.

I am mid thirties now and have a brilliant group of close friends who I met when I was pregnant with my first, as well as a couple of other circles. I have 2 not very close friends from uni days. And no friends from school. Don't worry about it too much! There is so much pressure about uni being the best days of your life, for me it just wasn't. I am much happier being an adult and it just took me a while to find 'my people'. I hope it's the same for your daughters, who sound lovely.

Principled can equal preachy and judgemental. I wonder does she turn her nose up at people who don’t behave the exact way she considers to be correct. University will always bring together from various backgrounds and jist beciase someone smokes or does something your ds doesn’t agree with doesn’t make them a bad person to be a friend with. Sounds like she is just too choosy rather than has a diagnosis.

Ilovealexa I was extremely shy as a kid and struggled with friendships. I loved drama but was never encouraged in it (never ever picked for parts in school play as too shy!). I think if my dd is similar I'd encourage her to go to drama classes as they do wonders for self esteem/confidence which was what I was really lacking in making friends so maybe that's a good idea for your dc?

Op she may not be asd but you mentioned your dh is? That may have had some influence maybe on how she socialises? It certainly did with me (my mums asd and dad has mental health problems) - I really struggled with communication as these are the people I first learned it from. Took me ages to realise simple stuff like you need to ask other people questions about themselves so they know you're interested in their lives!

I have an 18 year old and 15 year old dds who both have a circle of friends, they are not the most popular girls but have plenty of friends they are happy and haven’t been socially outcast.

I described your daughter to my 15 yr old dd and she said that she sounded boring. My dd especially always like to have fun and has a good sense of humour. She said there are girls at school who consider themselves “good” morally and socialize together and my dd says she avoids them because they are boring and never have anything to talk about. My dds are not sexually active and we are a close knit family. I feel that we have also passed on good values and morals to our kids but they don’t perceive of themselves as more moral than others. You and your dds seem to making judgement calls over very large groups of people.

I may be way offf here, but I wonder, if you only see your friends every few months, if you haven’t modelled the general kind of small talk women often do? (Because you say your sons have no problem, and ime men don’t do the same kind of social chitchat). The school gate/ supermarket queue/ gym changing room stuff- the weather, shopping, Christmas, moaning about men! I wondered if your girls are going straight to the deeper level of friendship chat, as you may do as you see your friends less often; and so have not seen the getting to know/ moving from acquaintances to friends stage?

This sounds like me at the age of 20. I just didn't really fit in at secondary school, and I was badly bullied at university. Bullying can happen at university.

When I look back I realise that there were some things I was doing that made me far more vulnerable at university.

1. Trying to hang out with people who were not nice to me. I was too scared to move away because then I would have no friends, but I realise now that a) no friends are better than bad friends, and b) my so-called-friends were preventing me from meeting other, nicer people.

2. Being attracted to confident, socially forward people (because I was shy) first and foremost rather than deciding whether they were actually good for me at first.

3. Trying to control people by being 'really nice'. I don't know if this is your daughter's problem or not, but having good morals is a personal choice (and a good one) but it shouldn't be your one defining feature in relationships.

Once I left university, my self-confidence was rock bottom. However I got a job I loved, suddenly found that I had lots of friends through that who seemed to (gasp) like me for who I was, and I started to notice that my university 'friends' made snarky remarks whenever something good happened to me. I ditched every single one of them and I haven't looked back.

What is "middle school"? Is this a regional thing? It's just primary and secondary round here! (s yorks)

OP I feel sad for your DDs but they will learn as they grow that they need to find their tribe. 99% of the people they meet will be boring, shallow fuckers. So when they do come across someone they click with, they need to hang on in there and understand that fellow prickly pears may be wary of friendships because they've experienced the whole discarding thing too.

I have a friend, more of an acquaintance really, who sounds similar to your daughters. She comes across as nice at first and she's a well educated person, so she's fun to talk to.

However, after a short while, her extreme sense of morality makes her come across as arrogant. Like she's superior to the rest of the world and therefore has a right to judge them.

Consequently in the last 4 years she's fallen out with almost every friend she's made. We don't tell her why, but I can see that other people, just like me, pull away and eventually stop calling her. She's too much hard work and I don't want to come back home feeling shit after I've seen her.

Could your daughters be in a similar situation?

And being too bossy can put people off. For both dds you could encourage more clubs and activities then they'll have a ready made thing in common with the other people.

Christ, I hope you never tell either of them it’s their fault.

Just focusing on the 20 yr old for a moment, how long do the 'new' friendships last? if a few months or even weeks, it sounds as though she does have the skills to make new friends - and that is very encouraging because a lot of 'friendship' problems are difficulty in getting even that far.
Then something happens to the friendships. You mentioned you thought she might seem aloof or superior - have you asked her if that might be a possibility (very difficult I know because you don't want to make her feel worse!)
I tend to agree with a pp that of the attributes you mentioned, witty and funny are the ones that gain and keep you friends - in general you have to be very lacking in the others for it to lose you friends. I don't agree that being 'moral' loses you friends, but it may depend what you're moral about. Many young people are fervent about not damaging the environment etc; some other kinds of moralising though may lose you friends. The safe way is not to do any of that!

Just to add, I think bullying yes can easily happen at university, often in the form of exclusion but also 'banter' etc. Often see accounts on mn about the 'flat shares' in halls, for instance.

People are generally not great at being objective about their own children. Especially as a lot of personality / behaviour traits are also in the wider family. Maybe ask one of your friends or the younger girls teacher for their opinion?

hmm, how much is this affecting them? In the last school we had issues where DD literally had no friends, she really struggled, there would be 5-6 children who would come to the cinema with us on a saturday, but ironically on a monday no one would want to play at school. my daughter was perfectly nice, polite, happy and children seemed to enjoy her company, but one teacher told me, that she didnt seem to excite the other children.

we moved, the difference was like night and day. My daughter is in year 6 now, she is popular among her peers in her class and year, but she is also really liked by children in the years below...honestly the best thing we did was move. She does have the odd issue here and there, because 10 and 11 year old girls can be so bitchy, but she isnt abrasive, infact shes quite happy to just accept other peoples behaviour without retaliation. How secure are your girls in themselves though? the biggest thing that makes a difference is my daughters feeling in all of this, shes become quite secure in herself and really doesnt take it too personally when people arent as nice to her as they could be, she knows itll pass, and she also knows that sometimes she prefers her own company to some of the other, more attention seeking girls.

My daughter doesn’t have many friends, she’s almost 15, has 2 girl friends (one is a relative) and 2 boyfriends, she fell out with another one a few weeks ago. My dd has Aspergers and can come across as being rude, she’s very passionate about many things including her education so if one of her friends is holding her back in anyway she will ditch them and make it clear why, she fell out with a girl last week because of the girls attitude to not doing homework. I can see why my daughter doesn’t have many friends, if I was a 15 year old I probably wouldn’t chose her as a friend even though she’s lovely, caring and funny. I have always encouraged friendship, we have her friends come over, I drive her places to hang out with her friends and I tried to take her to many things as a child (but she wasn’t very sociable).

I don’t think it’s anything you have done wrong, some girls just struggle to keep friends.

Do your daughters have any interaction at all with their peers? Or are they completely isolated at school/uni and don’t talk to anyone? I had quite a large group of friends at school, there was probably about 15 of us maybe more but we all had a ‘best friend’ within that group. There was one girl who didn’t but she was obviously desperate to have that one friend that was only hers and it meant she just tried way too hard. Every few weeks she had a new best friend that she would cling to and completely overwhelm, she would want to sit only with them at lunch see them after school and on weekends and it was way too much. The friendship would last a couple of months and then end as it was just too much for the other girl to cope with. She left school, then college and then uni with no friends, I’m friends with her on Facebook and see she has no interaction with anyone from her school days at all.
Could his maybe a reason OP are your daughters trying too hard to make friends?

This is such an interesting topic, what is a friend? How much is a " normal" amount to socialise? I think I am fairly sociable, DH less so. But I work ft in a highly interactive environment all week. About once or twice a month I have to do a "work" social thing in the evening. There's the odd church meeting on a week day night. We see my parents about once a month Dh's mother maybe once every 6 weeks. Ds plays football on a Sunday morning so there is chatting to other parents there too, I try to get to church once a month. Honestly that's enough for me, I will occasionally go out on a Saturday night for a special thing but I have no desire to socialise further on a weekly basis. I have a group of 4 or 5 women I have known for more than 10 years, who I will move heaven and earth to see most half terms. Is that really anti-social ?

Even when I was in my 40's my DF would ask if I'd made any friends at mother and baby group. I said no, he asked why not. Quite honestly, if I had anything in common with these people, I'd never have known, because they only talked about babies. My eldest has cystic fibrosis, and it took me mentioning that to find out that one woman had written her thesis on it for her PhD.

I joined the Tolkien Society when I was 16, those are my friends, but I don't see having loads of friends as being important.

Still your experience of socialising sounds very similar to mine - there is so much social interaction in everyday activities with working FT, kids, family, old friends, hobbies etc - that your life is very busy and packed and social life/interaction almost automatic, very regular and structured and the social etiquette very clear in these adult social situations.

However for new uni students or school kids these structures are not in place and there may be hours and hours each day hanging about trying to edge into groups and make appropriate conversation. Fo whatever reason OP your DD is struggling to do this - so she should seek social connection and then build friendships through groups and hobbies that she is interested in, will have like minded people and the social etiquette is already established - eg the hockey club all go for a drink after mid week training etc.

Op, could they lack empathy and come across as judgemental and rigid in their views?

For example, you say they can't understand why kids hate their parents, some parents are shit, and in my experience if a kid hates their parents then generally there is something causing it. However their view is they can never understand it.

Someone who is judgemental., lacks empathy, can just be seen as a pain in the ass at those ages, and often dislikeable. Nothing in your posts talks about their level of empathy, their ability to compromise, their ability to accept others and not judge, and this could potentially be causing them a problem.

To get from acquaintance to true friend, you do have to reveal some insecurities. What is her reaction if a friend is upset about something. Does she sympathise and reveal a similar situation/feeling in her own life? Or does she tell them the truth/judge them, which might not be the reaction the friend is looking for (a typical complaint about men too) Sometimes people don't want the problem to be fixed, they just want a sympathetic ear and to talk it out.

Kids also want to giggle about silly things like to gossip/dissect people and situations. If your dd is quite mature this stuff may not interest her and come across as immature and she might be quite dismissive. She may need to look at other mature, perhaps more serious people like herself. These won't be hanging out in big groups.

A friends dd also tended to be in the middle of falling out. She, and her mother struggled to see why, but as a pp previously said, as an outsider it is easy to see that she is overbearing and inflexible. Kids want friends to give and take. They don't want domineering, even if it comes with good intentions and niceness. Friends dd is very mature and has an inner core of steel (morals/principles) which will stand her in good steed in the future but doesn't help in the short term with friends who are less so and are full of teenage angst and drama.

How were your DDs cast off?

Are your DDs proactive? Do they arrange meet ups/activities? Do they invite people to stuff? Are then relying on others to organise socials?

Are they wanting to hang out with the popular crowd? Best approach quieter people on the outside.