Helping child navigate friendship problems

[Poopgal]

Hi mums. I really hope to pick on your collective wisdom.

My DS8 is a lovely, social, outgoing and clever boy who attends a bilingual french English school. He is fluent in both languages but English is his mother tongue.

He has a small group of friends at school - all fairly nerdy and smart who like to read books etc. I noticed recently one of the boys, who has been his best friend for a couple of years, is pushing him away. Telling him he can’t sit with him on the bus or not engaging with him. We had a chat tonight and he disclosed to me that he’s generally the “last” in his group - one whose ideas don’t get listened to, the least “alpha” of the bunch (his word not mine - he called himself the omega 😂). Which I think is hilarious given they’re hardly the cool group at school. He was telling me all this matter of factly and didn’t seem upset by it. In fact he’s never raised it in upset terms.

but I’m sad for him and wonder how to navigate this. I want him to encourage him to broaden his circle but he says he likes his friends. He doesn’t seem bothered by exclusion but I wonder if he’s just hiding it. I don’t want to make a bigger deal of it than it needs to be but I feel so sad for him as I had similar experiences growing up and it really stayed with me. I never talked to my parents about it.

im rambling but I’m just not sure how to navigate this. It could be a language thing - the other boys are all French, or it could be that he hasn’t matured as much as they have. He’s definitely a follower - lots of enthusiasm and energy so he will never be the aloof cool kid. They’re at an age now where there are groups and it’s difficult to break into new ones so I’m not sure what to do. He does have neighbourhood friends and such but so much time is spent at school so school friendships are important.

Stuff like this is so hard, I remember being really worried about my dc and friendship problems.

The things that helped for me were to speak to the teacher, who may be able to either do some work with the class on friendships, or may be able to support your ds build new friendships via pairing him up with likely children.

The other things was to broaden friendships outside school with activity groups and so on, so their friendship eggs aren't all in one basket, if you see what I mean.

I also found that my dc did better building friendships 1:1 so I used to host a lot of playdates, even if these weren't reciprocated, so the dc could build friendships which then carried over into school.

I hope things get better for your dc soon!

My DD was like this. At 12 she joined Guides and then applied to and got selected for the World Scout Jamboree and went to America for three weeks aged 14. It was a huge turning point as she made friends from all over the world. She joined a Lifeguards group in a neighbouring town and again flourished. The girls who’d been a little bit mean saw her social media with friends from outside school and realised that she didn’t need them. She also enjoyed friendships with the opposite sex. There’s much less competition and jealousy involved. I’m a teacher and see a lot of opposite sex friendships in 11-16 year olds that are incredibly healthy and supportive.
I hope things improve for your boy.
Courage, c’est une époque difficile!