My Unpopular Child

[LunchBoxTeeth]

My 7 year old DS isn't exactly disliked by his peers, but he isn't particularly liked either. If ever the kids are asked to choose someone to be with, he is one of the last to be chosen. Even when we have friends round our house, when there is more than one child, the other children are constantly calling "hey x, look at this" or whatever, but they never call out to my DS to look at things or join in. It's not that they purposefully leave him out, they just always choose a different child as a first choice, when one is available.

He gets invited to whole class parties, but very rarely gets invited to other parties. Now that whole class parties are becoming less common because the kids are older, he simply doesn't get invited at all. I asked him who he wanted to invite to his party this year, and it was heartbreaking to hear him talk about the people he really liked, because I know that they have already had a party and DS wasn't invited.

I spoke to the class teacher about it and she said that I could try having more play dates, or doing more clubs. But we already do that. Every week he invites someone over, but increasingly they turn down the invitation. He does some clubs, but hasn't made any friendships through them. I watch him play and if I see him doing something that I think might not be helpful, I talk about it to him afterwards, but nothing that he does seems such a big deal that people don't really want to be around him.

Absolutely! DS1 was the same in primary. Met friends like him in year 7.
Now he's in sixth form and he's definitely found his tribe.
He wasn't disliked he just never found that peer connection in primary.

I haven’t read the whole thread sorry but I have always actively made sure my kids have other friends outside of school. They regularly socialise with children of my friends/ children they were in baby groups with/ kids from the activities they do (if they share a love of an activity this obviously helps to bond them)/ their cousins. In fact I prioritise these friendships over school ones as after primary most will go their separate ways. Do you socialise much like this? Maybe if he hasn’t seen it much he isn’t sure what to do. I think it’s also important that they are happy with their own company as there won’t always be someone to play with. I also discourage my kids from having ‘best friends’. There is a person in my child’s class that has found it hard to keep/make any friends inside or outside of school and the reason is because they are very boastful of their own achievements and talk about themselves a lot with very little interest being shown in others. I have always encouraged my kids to be interested in what other kids have to say and to show that interest by asking questions.

7 is still very young though. I would say that by 9 hopefully things will have changed for you. Hope that’s helpful. We all want our kids to be happy. Help him to be happy on his own first.

I forgot to ask, is your child an only child?

I am a teacher and this is a fairly familiar worry for lots of parents.

I know you spoke to the teacher and she suggested play dates and so on, but there are things that she could do to help too.

I usually identify a similar child, or another child with friendship issues, and encourage a friendship by sitting them together or giving them tasks to complete together.

Many teachers won't want to offend you by being too honest but, if you ask, and make it clear that you are happy for her to be brutally honest, then she is best placed to tell you what he is doing 'wrong' in the classroom.

IME children who struggle with friendships, if they are neurotypical, are either aggressive, bossy or arrogant. Little children don't use those words but they instinctively don't want a friend who hurts them, tells them what to do or makes them feel rubbish by bragging all the time.

As your updates suggest the latter, there are things you and school can do, working together, to boost his self esteem and support his understanding of behaviours that will repel other children (and their parents, as it is they who primarily sort parties and play dates at this age).

I do also see parents who are worrying unnecessarily though. Their child says they were alone all playtime when it was actually only about two minutes of playtime. They don't have a bff yet but they do have friends and are liked.

I was a loner at school (due to always missing school) and found it hard to make best friends because of this.

I think the friends at school maybe have become closer with their peers rather than your son, or perhaps your DS is not sharing, etc?

I would suggest placing your DS in a sports lesson, maybe swimming? That way he can learn to make new friends, build friendship with other kids.

In the adult world, not everyone wants to be friends with everyone, it's about seeking people like you in other places.

This thread has been comforting and heartbreaking at the same time. My ds1 has always struggled with friendships. He always seems to be on the edge of everything never actually actively included. I thought things would improve at secondary, but it's much the same. He has always 'danced to his own tune' a little bit. We 100% accept him for who he is but have always tried to teach him resilience as not everyone will. It is heartbreaking though.

It was his 13th birthday yesterday and he had arranged/tag along with some lads from school to go ice-skating last night. He was really excited to do something with some friends. However he texted from school yesterday to say everyone had dropped out so wasn't going 😢. It broke my heart a little. We made the best of it with him last night, he doesn't seem overly upset today. I just hope he finds his place eventually.

I wouldn't take it personally regarding play dates. For some it will be that the parents are busy with after school activities and work and life juggle. I very rary manage to arrange play dates for my children as life is so busy. Nothing to do with the children not liking eachother.

We have and still are going through this, my son is now 12 and although all the boys in his class in primary school were nice to him he offered didn’t get invited to smaller parties but he did have a few hood friends who he did get invited to, now he’s 12 and in secondary school things are worse for him. He’s with a few friends from primary but the new boys are awful to him, and he’s often upset he doesn’t have a best friend. We are waiting on a diagnosis of ASD and he gets called weird by these other boys and very often has meltdowns when they torment him on the computer. At the moment all is good as I’ve had to contact the school and they have all had a talking to. Sorry I can’t offer much help but your not alone x

My son is 7 and there is one boy in the class that does seem to be left out. It’s not intentional or done out of spite. I asked my son why him and his friends didn’t include this boy but he struggled to articulate it. I said do you like him? He said yes we all like him.

I think this boy is quite immature and he wants all the games to revolve around him and his rules. He’s an only child and I do think he gets what he wants a lot of the time at home. Now I’m not generalising onlies as my kids have friends with onlies and it’s never been an issue.

If he doesn’t get what he wants he cries and he “tells the teacher”. I think playing with him is more hassle than it’s worth.

Popularity is such a subtle thing. A popular kid can do something and everyone thinks it's great; a less well liked kid does it and everyone thinks it's silly.
Same with adults I suppose.

So, he’s a bit bossy, a bit fond of controlling what is going on and likes to educate his peers. No one is being directly unkind, but his peer group is gravitating towards more egalitarian children.
Perhaps he needs to try a few things where he doesn’t feel he’s an authority, and where others could take the lead.
I realise you don’t want to dent his confidence, but perhaps that’s how other parents and children are feeling about their confidence and enjoyment of an activity too.

Is your son on the autistic spectrum? I ask because I had problems with making friends at school and so did my son. He was diagnosed aged 9 and it took many more years for me to realise that I was on the spectrum too. As a girl I was good at masking but boys find it harder. If I could go back in time I would have homeschooled my son because he found school so difficult.

If he’s knows the bragging isn’t pleasant but still does it I’d be inclined to not be too critical of him. It seems he can’t help it at the moment for whatever reason- possibly insecurity about his popularity. I’d focus on bolstering his confidence by recognising when he’s a good friend and saying well done whilst ignoring the other unwanted behaviour for now. In time you could perhaps talk about how his behaviour might impact on others both positively and negatively.

I don’t like the idea of bright kids helping less smart kids at 7. I don’t think they have the maturity to manage the responsibility without coming off as a know it all and a bit tedious- I doubt this set up is doing his popularity any good. My DD would be on the less smart end of things and she would hate this and actively avoid anyone given the job of helping her.

Someone rightly identified up thread that parents have the most control of party/play date invites at this age and that’s definitely my experience. If you ever go out for drinks/coffee with any school mums it wouldn’t hurt to mention that you’ve recognised some of his character traits are a bit off putting and that you’re working on it. I’d be more inclined to give a child an extra invitation if I knew they were struggling with certain elements of friendship.

I wanted to add, OP, that I was very much the loner in primary. I was one of those kids with a very vivid inner life/fantasy world, and a precocious reader. Other kids only ever wanted to play skipping games or ‘It’ which I had no hope of enjoying as my co-ordination was rubbish and I couldn’t run to save my life. And even if they had wanted to join in with my games, they could never understand my ideas let alone share any of their own. My attempts at getting my pretend play ideas across often came over as bossiness, or wanting to control the action, but in my experience it wasn’t about control and power, just the sad result of trying to share something the other party simply cannot comprehend.

Now and again I met people who ‘got’ me. I was best friends at 7 with a boy who left a couple of years later for prep school. And at 10 I met a girl whose ideas for make believe really caught my imagination. She moved on in her friendships, as they do, but these were tantalising glimpses of how ‘normal’ people make friends. No social skills classes, no social engineering, no behaviour adjustments necessary. It just happens. And it made the process all the more puzzling (and painful) from my point of view.

I’m not convinced that ‘social skills’ workshops or similar actually improve the odds of making friends. They might help you not antagonise others, or get along with people who aren’t your ‘type’, but finding your ‘tribe’ is a different matter, and before adulthood, very much down to luck.

I'm quite late to this but just wanted to add to the big tide of support and solidarity. My child is 10 and for years I have worried on and off about this. It got especially bad in year 5 (last year) when he told me he was alone every break time. I was heartbroken and he was being brave and saying 'it's okay, I don't mind' which made me feel worse because I very much knew that he did mind. Anyway, something happened and it has changed. I don't think he'll ever be the super popular kid everyone wants to be best friends with but somehow this year has been different. He is playing as part of a big group every day at break and is more confident. He's sort of settled in to who he is. He is very open about the fact that he isn't the most popular but is cool about it. He's got friends, including a beat friend and he is included, even if on the periphery. What I'm trying to say is that things change all the time with kids. Don't despair. He could just grow in to who he is.

One thing we did a few years ago when I was feeling like this, is give him computer games. I know this seems like the shittest advice ever but Minecraft gave him something to talk to other kids about. He isn't sporty and I have now accepted that isn't going to change, but suddenly talking about zombies and endermen gave him a way to bond.

Massive solidarity here. I know exactly how you feel. My MIL told me, when he was a baby, that you are only ever as happy as your saddest child and it is so true. This is as hard (harder maybe?) on you as it is on him.

I want to really just offer some hope, as my son was not neurotypical, and found the whole friendship thing difficult when he was at primary school and into secondary school.

As he got older, he naturally found friends, really at 'A' Level. Then he had a blast at university, because there were all these people on his course interested in the same things, and all the societies he could join with people with similar interests too, so he developed a great friendship group.

It's often just about finding the right people, and life eventually lets that happen.

DD had similar experience at primary school. Wasn’t disliked, but wasn’t best friends with anyone in particular and always seemed to be the friend that got asked last. There was a little boy in similar situation and he invited her solely to his party for two, and they both understood why.

She found her tribe in high school. She’s happy and confident with herself. She still has a wider circle of acquaintances than she does close friends, but who doesn’t 🤷‍♀️

Encourage him to be himself, he’ll be happier in the long run.

This was me when I was a kid.

If it helps at all, I found my people in adulthood and have a brilliant group of friends now, including two "best friends".

is spending time with family friends with children a similar age possible? there is a saying it takes a village to raise a child? Beavers/ cubs great places to form friendships based on shared activities and co-ed.

Try holiday camps .. we’ll not camps but day camps they can meet a huge range of kids and do lots of activities…

I've not RTFT but wanted to post to say my daughter was this kid in primary. I'd go as far as to say she really didn't have any friends. She wasn't disliked she just wasn't part of the gang, popular whatever you want to call it. I tried clubs, play dates etc. Like your son she was invited to all class parties until they dried up. I worried a lot that my DD lacked social skills or just wasn't fitting in. She got bullied a bit for being a ''swot'' as she's quite academically inclined. She felt left out, and isolated a lot of the time. We talked about being true to oneself and learning to love our own company, being proud to stand alone vs than try and change to fit in. Self esteem building I suppose, I didn't want her to believe she was the issue.

In retrospect, I suspect a very real factor in my daughters' lack of social success in primary was that I wasn't what I'd call a ''school gate mum''. I was one of 2 Mums in her class who had a job, the only one who worked full time. I used wrap around childcare, never participated in the Mum's social activities, lunches, coffee mornings etc.. This was where the social diaries got sync'd.... On the rare occaisons I saw the Mum's I'd get the ''I just don't know how you do it - work and be a Mum! I juuuuusst couldn't bear for anyone else look after my child...'' you get the picture..

Fast forward, my DD is now 14 and in secondary school. It's worth noting she went to a completely different school to her primary school peers. Mum's have pretty much no say over who 'plays' with who. Everything has changed for my DD, she found her 'crowd', has a group of great likeminded friends. They all make their plans and we parents are nothing more than taxis..

I suspect a very real factor in my daughters' lack of social success in primary was that I wasn't what I'd call a ''school gate mum''. I was one of 2 Mums in her class who had a job, the only one who worked full time. I used wrap around childcare, never participated in the Mum's social activities, lunches, coffee mornings etc.. This was where the social diaries got sync'd.... On the rare occaisons I saw the Mum's I'd get the ''I just don't know how you do it - work and be a Mum! I juuuuusst couldn't bear for anyone else look after my child...'' you get the picture..

THIS.

My daughter doesn’t get invited to much and seems to flit between friends and I worry, though she seems happy enough in school and when we go clubs is very sociable . I think maybe cool it off a bit like he could be picking up on your concern and starting to feel tense stop trying to force it and see what naturally happens, he’s still quite young. Good luck x

Interesting thread, lots to unpack. Our children are being subjected to a social experiment due to the nature of the modern world. Toys come with apps etc. we’ve got so much to deal with that we haven’t had to deal with ourselves. For me it’s SEND IEP’s etc. A world I never knew about until now. My DS has been biting out of frustration and has missed out on party invites and been gossiped about by parents..as far as I am concerned these are failings of the school because the nursery gave him the support he needed and issues didn’t arise. Schools are so consumed with stopping bullying, fomenting inclusivity and instilling kindness however when things happen they do tend towards secrecy… which doesn’t help.

@Shuvs77 you can’t blame the school for your kid biting others, surely!