My only never plays out is he missing out

[nimy]

He is now 9 and I am aware thats boys of his age are out and about on bikes, down the park etc with mates.
My ds doesn,t have anyone to go off and play with in our neighbourhood.
There are children in our street but either you don,t see them out or they seem to just be playing with siblings in thier back gardens.
My ds did for a short time make a small circle of freinds but it brought nothing but problems with falling out and ds always seemed to bear the brunt of it all.
He does have a fair few mates home from school but that takes alot of effort on my part and I am mostly the one doing all of the inviting.
I have no idea how to introduce ds to local children and ds can be expremely difficult and stubborn anyway but is fine once he gets to know someone. However all of the past problems we have had as sort of left me feeling unsure about neighbourhood friends.
He has always had lots of friends at school but for some strange reason it has never worked out for him with neighbourhood children.
Please I am getting increasingly paranoid that this isn,t normal for ds.

What about something like scouts?

The only thing is that it simply just takes up 1 hour a week I know they do activities along side of that but ds is still on his own a awful lot and the children he sees there are just people he sees for 1 hour once a week.

I actually think this may be personality or circumstance rather than the fact that is an only child, because if he had a sibling how would that make a difference to making neighbourhood friends?

The pivotal question here is whether it is him that is unhappy with the situation as it stands or you? At the risk of sounding harsh, if it is you then you need to drop it and back off.

If it is him that is unhappy then I agree with compo's suggestion, he needs to get himself out and about more and understand that making friends takes effort and it can be a very slow process etc.

I'm 29 and I don't have neighbourhood friends. I have friends, but they don't live locally. I'm not sure this really matters much for adults or children.

I think cubs or something like a swimming group could be the answer, too. Otherwise, persevere with the invitations to school friends.

But, as others have said, do keep this in perspective. Not every child has a separate set of friends out of school and it does sound as if you are more bothered by this than your son is.

check out your local council website and see if they have play rangers, these are people (usually teenagers) that go into parks to encourage kids to basically play in them

have seen lots of only children making friends with others during these sessions.