Ds1 (14) is very bright. Not trying to brag but just stating a fact. He is also quite an unusual child and has an old head on his shoulders. He isn't a loner but never really had a special friend/group of friends at primary and play dates/birthday invitations were limited, though not non-existent. This wasn't helped by us moving into the area in Y1 and me working ft and not getting to know other parents. He was happy though, according to him and his teachers.
At secondary he has formed a small friendship group of kids similar to him. They don't socialise, except online, and don't do that as much as other kids (eg ds2). It does worry me. His drama teacher has described him as 'not giving a stuff what others think,' so he is confident and speaks to a range of kids and walks to and from school with them but this never extends to social events.
Also, he is very inquisitive and loves discussions and regularly seeks me out for this, which is great. But a lot of what he wants to discuss I don't have a massive amount of knowledge about, or not enough for him and I feel like I'm letting him down. Eg, this week he wanted to discuss when the typically English distrust of intellectualism set in and why. I can only go so far with it. I've always taken the approach of 'I don't know, let's look it up...' but sometimes I just feel he'd be happier at a private school where he'd be challenged and stimulated more.
I need to provide more extra-curricular stuff I think and he wants to start at a drama club so we'll do that but it doesn't feel enough. He plays cricket and at one point looked like he was going to be very good, but that has definitely slipped though he's still in the team. I feel like that's because his dad rarely coaches him and doesn't attend matches despite having been the one to get him into the sport, so that makes me feel we've both let him down.
I don't know - this is a bit of a pointless Sunday morning moan but I can't shake this nagging feeling we've both let him down (we're divorced).