To be so frustrated with shy child?

[LolleePopp]

What do you do with shy 12 year old boys???
My 12 year old DS is sooooo shy with other kids.
He says he's desperate to make friends at his new secondary school.
But he's too shy to engage with anybody.
So he's not making any friends.
He really, really wants to be friends with people. He's not a loner who prefers his own company. He's a loner who looks at everyone around him and wants to make friends but doesn't know how to.
He started secondary school in September saying he was really looking forward to starting a new school and making new friends.
8 weeks in, he's made no friends at all.
There's 1 boy who he'd like to make friends with. So I've encouraged him to invite this boy to meet up outside of school. I helped him come up with ideas to suggest. I texted the boy's mum to try and help organise something. She said her DS would be up for meeting but that she is trying to encourage her DS to be independent so she said could they sort it out between them rather than us mums organising it. I explained this to DS and encouraged him to invite this boy to meet up. But he just will not invite him, even though he wants to meet up with him. After a few weeks of me trying hard to encourage him, last night he said "I'm not going to invite him out mum, I'm just too shy to ask him".
So that's that then.
Another new boy from new school invited him out for a bike ride with him and 3 others. My DS went, and came home 3 hours later full of smiles saying he'd had a great time. But since then, the mum of one of the boys has told me that the other kids all said my DS was really quiet and didn't talk at all or engage with the rest of the kids who were all chatting and joking whilst on their bikes. She said the other kids said my DS was too quiet. Yet my DS thought he had a brilliant time with them and asked them to let him know when theyre going again as hed like to join in, but meanwhile this other mum said the other kids probably won't invite him out next time because my DS was so quiet they thought he wasn't having fun with them. When in fact he told me he had really good fun, so I relayed this to the mum, but she said "Well they've met up a few times since then but didn't invite your DS because he was so quiet". DS has seen them out cycling round together without him and looked crestfallen.
There's another boy he likes, so I've texted that mum and she told me she leaves her DS to arrange his own social life now he's started secondary. So I've told my DS this and encouraged him to invite this boy over to ours or to meet up, but again, my DS won't invite him.
He's been going to an out of school club for 1 year and hasn't made a single friend there.
He hates competitive sports, so he will not join any football or rugby groups (much to my DH's frustration - DH is not sports mad but he insists a team sport would be good for DS's confidence, but DS refuses). He tried cricket but dropped out after 2 months. I've suggested judo at my DH's suggestion - flat no, he absolutely hated the look of it when I showed him kids of his age doing judo on YouTube.
In primary, he had 5 friends but the dynamics between them in year 6 were awful, constant fall outs and unpleasant behaviour on a non stop basis, a lot of horrible behaviour aimed at him (as well as at each other) so they've all fallen by the wayside now.
DS is a brilliant person. He talks loads at home, really makes us all laugh, has amazing insight into things (insight that is superior to his age), understands people really well, has very high levels of emotional intelligence - there are so many situations on this level that he just 'gets' and can talk eloquently about things on an emotional level that other mums tell me their kids of same age can't do or don't get at all, he has lots of interests (but none them transfer in to clubs). He gets on brilliantly with his sister, who is not shy at all.
It's really weird - when he was a little boy he wasn't shy at all. He ran around with a big bright happy open expression on his face, he was born with a "Hello world!" temperament. Then around the age of 10, shyness kicked in, and 2 years later it's much worse. He's getting more shy as he gets older.
I can see that this comes across really badly to other kids.
We were out at an event the other evening, and throughout the event, several boys in his school year that know him smiled and said Hi to him on individual occasions (not a group of boys, but 1 boy, then 10 mins later another boy, etc.) and DS didn't smile back at any of them. He did reply to each of them with a hello, but he came across as so stand offish. I talked to him the next day about how he came across to them, but he just said "I'm so shy mum, I freeze and clam up when they speak to me, I hate it but I don't know what to do because I can't help it".
I've encouraged him to join clubs at school but he won't because he doesn't know anyone. Obviously I've explained that no-one knows anyone at first, but you go and then you get to know people. But he will not go.
I'm at the point where I despair.
I can see him spending 5 years at school not making any friends.
If he didn't care about friends and was happy in his own little world then I'd think fine, that's just how he is. But he tells me he really, really wants to make friends.
I've talked to his school about it and asked for their support, and they said he needs to join school clubs. That was their only solution and 3 different staff members have all said the same thing. But he won't go to these clubs.
So what do I do?!?

From what you've said about your ds I'd also suggest looking at Air Cadets.

My eldest two went there and didn't like it...because it was classroom and discussion based, with some drills amd activity but nowhere near enough sports for their liking. They switched to Army Cadets which was far more sport based and they preferred...but for a kid not particularly into sports, Air Cadets would probably fit better.

OK.....
I am taking this on board.
How do you teach resilience from damaging text messages?
There is so much talk on the mums WhatsApp group about phone bullying amongst the year 7s, some mums sound really distressed about it and are saying their kids are refusing to go in to school because of horrible texts.
Some mums have screenshot the messages their DC have been receiving, and honestly, I've seen them and they are really psychologically damaging.
One screenshot was of a yr 7 texting another Yr 7 with details of how to commit suicide and telling them to do it, by someone she'd only seen around school and didn't even know. Other mums have shown texts their DC have received that involved abuse, racism, hatred, personal insults, humiliation, threats.....honestly, it's horrific. These are 11 and 12 year old kids.
The school is saying there's nothing they can do about it because they're not being sent during school hours, other than give assemblies about safe use of phones and 'being kind'.

I agree with others that he needs a phone. It's much easier when you're shy to put something in writing, than it is to ask to someone's face

How long do you plan to withhold that from him?
If you say no this year because he's too vulnerable, and next year you still deem him too vulnerable - what then? Will he be 15/16 before he has access to a phone, and a way to connect to his peers?

Even if he does face some issues, as harsh as it sounds, he needs to learn tenacity whilst he's young. You can't shield him like a baby forever. The longer you leave it, the longer he stays naive. With no friends or support system. No way to relate to others

My niece started secondary this September and is constantly on WhatsApp. It's all she talks about - I'm planning matching hair with the girls tomorrow, we're planning a McDonald's after school etc. I picked her up the other day and the last thing they all said is 'we'll do a group video later'. They do EVERYTHING online

Encourage him to attend clubs (find a way to incentivize it?) and get him a cheap phone

And everyone is sharing numbers of others.
So kids are giving out numbers of people in their contacts to other kids who ask for them, without asking permission of the person whose number it is.
One kid I know in Yr 7, known them for years, really lovely kid, has had a tirade of bullying messages from a kid at school they've never even had a conversation with. Really cruel messages. This kid, who received these messages, has radically changed from confident and outgoing to having anxiety and not wanting to go out. But because the messages were sent at night, the school say they can't get involved.

My comment will echo some pints already mentioned.

My DD had selective mutism up until year 2 and would say “I’m shy” which became her excuse to not speak at all despite being frustrated at herself for not making friends etc. It annoyed me.

She’s out of it now, and it pretty social but I have noticed that she will not approach new children since turning 12. I’m not sure if it’s puberty related - that can also play a role.

we came through it by having the teachers intervene. Also hobbies. What is he into? What makes his face light up? Can he enter competitions?

'I'm really interested in scouts. To me it sounds great.
But DS says he has heard kids in Yr 7 saying "The dorks and misfits go to scouts".
Is this how scouts is seen??
Can someone educate me on scouts?'

Scouts is great, my son has taken so much from it. I don't know how it is seen by others, but I will say that my son and other scouts have confidence about their interests and what they enjoy. His school does appear to have a culture of celebrating the uniqueness of each person, but this may be for most schools and maybe your son is striving to get things right/ be right in the eyes of the popular kids. It doesn't matter how scouts is judged, does it really, as long as it brings the social interaction he wants?
His comments from the walk show a lack of resilience, the comments weren't nice and I am sure it was a horrible experience but I would focus on moving on from the experiences rather than sitting with the negative feelings.
I hope you are ok with all of this, it is so hard with things like these, as we really are powerless to change things for our children. All you can do is equip him to be able to do this himself.

Honestly op. He absolutely needs a phone. All the engagement etc is done through Snapchat with joy shy 13 year old. He is far more comfortable texting than he is talking in 'real life'.
All the issues and concerns you have will still be there next year when he is 13 and the year after.

It is not ok to let an 11 year old choose their school. Move him from this absolute shithole now ffs. Even if it means travelling. And for God's sake check the school out for staff turnover etc first.
And get him a phone!

He said he wanders around by himself at lunchtimes, just walking around feeling lost.

Any lunchtime groups or library access - there wasn't for a few years for DD2 but they may be there.

Talk to head of year see if there is any groups or places to go.

Scout groups vary how good they are - wasn't as good as we'd hoped for DS but guides an outside group got DD1 though a tricky patch end of y7/start y8 - showed her it was school friendship group not her.

Phones - I'd suggest upfront monitoring of said phone - talk before hand- and any bad text block or report to school/parents - and not letting your fears make him stand out and isolate him - though that depends on the school here some y7/6 don't have phones but they are a minority and usually have e-mail and teams access.

Having said that I'd look though theses sites for advice - as I think your DS is suffering aftermath of some really bad bullying - that may be ongoing.

https://www.nationalbullyinghelpline.co.uk/kids.html

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/types-of-abuse/bullying-and-cyberbullying/

Its really tough, but he needs to have it gently explained to him that if he wants this to change, he will have to make changes, and it will feel difficult and hard and make him anxious but it will be worth it. There is a place called the Centre for Clinical Interventions in Australia which has a free workbook based on CBT, which is the treatment recommended for social anxiety - its called Shy No Longer and maybe something you could access and work through with him?

That sounds really tough. Unfortunately, I think you do need to let him have a phone pretty soon though. He needs to learn to use one, as well as to be able to contact people, and it will be harder the older he is. Also, you'll lose your ability to supervise his phone use, the older he gets - if he starts now then he can learn under close supervision, and you can establish the principle from an early stage that porn and other adult things will always be blocked.

Why not just quietly buy a refurbished phone, and get a giff gaff sim, and spend a week or two exploring the google family link options and maybe things like Qustodio? You wouldn't have to tell him you were doing that and definitely give him the phone, but if you ended up feeling comfortable with the settings and controls you could then give it to him if you wanted to.

You can restrict access to things like text messages completely during the day if you want to (so he can just phone if he needs to talk to you), so he only reads messages at home, where you could read them with him - but crucially you would have started out the process of making him contactable by trustworthy peers.

You can completely block all social media things and unblock them one at a time. (I would block tiktok indefinitely personally - much less essential for social contact, and can be really pernicious.) It doesn't have to be all or nothing from day one.

You can go through the process of creating accounts with him, and show him how to set up his privacy options and security (no real names!). It takes time to learn this stuff and the kids who do it completely unsupervised later are more likely to leave themselves vulnerable, or with a digital footprint that could be horrendous for them later on.

Basically there are loads of options to be played around with, where he could start out with the basics only and very close supervision. And let him explore some of the other things a phone could give him - some games perhaps, stargazing apps, having a camera with him all the time... there are so many things that are good as well as some that are bad.

There are also situations in which no phone could ironically end up making him more vulnerable. What happens if he is encouraged to go off with kids who are playing nice but want to bully him, after school one day or at a weekend, and has no way to contact you, and you can't tell where he is? A phone can be liberating and protective in lots of situations - it's not always a danger.

If you weren't happy after playing around with the parental controls on a phone, you could return it - there's quite a long return window for giff gaff refurbished phones. (Do check it's not so old it won't run the latest versions of things like whatsapp, but otherwise it really doesn't have to be particularly up to date or posh.)

I think you have more options than you realise when it comes to him having a phone, and it doesn't have to be as awful as it seems just now.

Oh dear, OP. Poor kid. I think in your position I'd probably move schools, honestly. If that's not an option then relentlessly build him up, do lots with him outside of school, put lots of energy into making non-school friends. Role play what you do if someone says horrible and how he can make himself feel better. Talk about why kids might bully - explain to him that it reflects badly on them, not on him. I know you've probably already done all this - just keep doing it!

Its a fine line OP.. others saying he needs mobile phone, he doesnt. My DGS had a mobile at start secondary school and was bullied so much on it by others from school. We had to take it from him. So much understand about the bullying and phones..we have to protect kids..they can struggle to protect themselves mentally at this age
I was very very shy as a child.. painfully so. I am actually now complete opposite. Hes got hormones starting up atm too which can make them self conscious. Embarrassment comes easily.
Theres not much you can do apart from be sympathetic but supportive. Dont be angry with him... my mum used to force me to do things...put myself forward and it made my shyness worse. He honestly will come out his shell

DD1 had bad texts sent her in Y7 - we took the phone - made it clear it wasn't her - told texter we'd report to school then blocked. We reported it and school actually did deal with it - had them all in for chat with head of year - stopped phone issue and DD1 got her phone back and DD1 moved on to new friends.

Unfortunately school went down hill bit after and with DS we had him block numbers - again stopped issue.

If he's 12 now and this started 2 years ago, I'm guessing COVID didn't help.
Tech became even more important for kids to maintain friendships and relationships then. Does he have access to gaming consoles? One of my DC has made lots of real life friends that were originally gaming friends. I also second the advice re air cadets 2 of mine loved it, the other went to army cadets.

However a massive game changer for him has been gaming. He plays Fortnite or Roblox with his peers and suddenly is being included in more things at school. So it's had a massive knock on impact.

Exactly what I was going to suggest (and I'm not a big fan of gaming). They talk in a group and it's a low pressure environment in terms of communicating as they just talk utter rubbish about whatever game they're playing on the Xbox.

I read your posts and felt sad for your son. It's really tough to watch that as a parent. If the parents are leaving the kids to sort out social arrangements (which is normal), a cheap phone is your only realistic option. I'd suggest he invites a friend or two over at a time for pizza or whatever after school and see if he starts to feel more chatty when he's in his home environment.

If a parent came to me and explained the situation in confidence, I'd be happy to help include their child. But you have to pick the parents carefully by the sounds of it.

Thing is- he was bullied horribly before phones became involved. Now he's shut out from the main way this age group socialise and arrange to go out. I think working out how to make sure his phone is checked by you/tightly controlled is the way forward, plus it's not sustainable for him not to have a phone for the whole of the secondary years, he will just be left out and left behind which is what's happening.

I haven’t RTFT. My DS (just turned 15) is also an anxious and somewhat shy child until he feels comfortable. He’s transitioned from middle to high school this autumn (we’re in the US) and has also been stressing about making friends. His anxiety started around 11 so we saw a counselor for a while, then took a break and went back last year. The counselor was excellent, he taught him techniques and strategies to lessen his anxiety and helped him to understand his tendency to catastrophize situations that weren’t really so bad.

Moving to a new school this year has been stressful for him, but we did encourage him to try out for the soccer team (he was picked) and although he hadn’t made close friends on it yet, it’s been good to feel part of something. He also has AirPods and if he’s walking along feeling stressed, he listens to music to distract him and calm him down. He’s said that if he listens to music to relax, he finds it easier to chat to people. He’s slowly making friends, he now has a group he sits with at lunch and plays soccer with them at break, etc.

As parents, we don’t always have all the answers, OP, so you might want to consider finding a counselor too. 💐

I agree about gaming, although be prepared to invest a little time in security and privacy settings and so on there too, and in some supervision. The question of Discord will likely then also come up, as some kids who game use it a lot. Again, if you can dive in ahead of him and explore it - make your own account, learn how it works - then you'll be better able to make sure he's OK with what he does himself.

The fact is, he'll end up doing all of these things anyway, and doing so well before he's a mature adult. Right now, you can walk alongside him, but with a phone he gets later you may not get the chance to help him learn how to use it, or to see what he's doing or the messages he's getting. You have a window of opportunity here to start him off with a phone with support and supervision, one that won't be open indefinitely.

He NEEDS a phone. It's the normal these days and he's more likely to be bullied and excluded because he doesn't have one. They don't "text" each other, they use whatsapp group chats mostly, so he's free to join and leave whatsapp groups as he pleases.

Mobile phones and social media were a game changer for my shy son, for the better. He was a lot more "talkative" in group chats and happily joined in messaging with people he wouldn't have talked to in person. He went to a different school than most of his primary school friends, but kept in touch with his old friends by online chats even though he stopped seeing them in person. Years later, now they've all left secondary school, he's still in touch with them, as well as loads of new "online" friends, and it's turned into face to face meet ups among ever-growing network of people (his old friends and his new friends are in common groups now as he invited members of each group to the other), so he now has a much larger network.

Nothing wrong at all with online "friendships" as he'll feel more included, have more interests, "know" more people, even if online, etc.

Don't let a few bad bullying instances in the past cause more problems and dictate his teenage years for the worse.

Just saw the posts about gaming. I completely agree that it can be a great way for kids to bond in the relaxing home environment.

No, you don’t want them gaming for hours every day, but a bit of time over the weekend is fine. My DS is allowed to game with his friends on Friday and Saturday evenings and I can tell how relaxed he is by the laughter and shouting! They often make plans to meet up while gaming, it’s like being on the phone with your friends while playing a game.

He will almost certainly need a phone for secondary school, i.e. for online homework apps, taking photos of the white board and experiments, taking photos of things they make in art and tech lessons, etc., plus probably his school timetable, maybe even googling for research during lessons, etc. It's the norm these days.

It sounds as though bullying is endemic at the school and the school management are not doing anything about it.

The onus should not be on your DS to 'learn resilience'. Bullying is fully unacceptable, he should not have to learn to deal with it. My child was bullied and I didn't step in right away because she is naturally very resilient. I regret that because it turns out that she couldn't stop the bullying by herself. Anyone can be a victim of a bully.

If your DS does not want to leave the school (but please still keep this option in mind, because it looks very toxic), I think you and the other parents should organise and put pressure on the school - it seems as though you are not alone in being concerned about bullying.

I also think it is important for your DS to see you taking action on this.

They don't "text" each other, they use whatsapp group chats mostly, so he's free to join and leave whatsapp groups as he pleases.

DD1 it was texting but yes that's has changed to whatsapp and discord now but same idea you monitor what happening and step in when needed.

Oh OP my heart broke for your son, reading your posts.

There is nothing wrong with your son and he needs to keep receiving this message, over and over, because it sounds like the bullies have broken him.

It sounds like a really horrible school where nobody has a handle on the bullying issue. I would suggest changing school but see your son doesn't want to.

I became extremely quiet at school myself at age 11 due to bullies. I was already naturally quite quiet and introverted but I think I did develop at least a mild form of selective mutism due to the shame I felt because of the bullies. I hated myself and wanted to disappear forever and I think that's why I became so quiet. Even at the age of 45 I'm still very quiet and think this might be a residue from childhood.

While my parents rarely told me I was too quiet, I could sense their frustration, which made the issue worse.

I know I'm me-railing, but the key thing is to do whatever it takes to make sure your son retains healthy self esteem and doesn't end up with confidence issues long term. Make sure he knows you have his back and keep reaffirming his good points. Stick up for him whenever anyone makes sneery comments about him being quiet (and they will). I actually think the best thing you could do is change schools but I appreciate that's hard if your son doesn't want to.