11 yo DS and new friend group

[LongStoryLong]

Hello all, looking for some perspectives and advice please. My 11 yo DS went to secondary school in September and is settling fine. He has a group of friends, most of whom I don’t know well yet, one of whom I do know very well, and another who was at his old school but DS wasn’t particular friends with him, mainly because this boy was too cool for my DS.

Since going to secondary school he’s wanted to basically behave like a 15 year old: wants to get a supermarket meal deal for lunch, hang out after school whenever he likes, the other day school finished early, I said he could go to the high street with his friends and I called him and he was in fucking Wetherspoons! (I’ve seen another thread about similar recently, and I’ve also had other parents tell me this is normal, but I genuinely don’t understand that.)

He’s also doing some other things that make me pretty uncomfortable. E.g. a couple of weeks ago he slept over at a new boy’s house (big house, older brother, loads of tech) and they kept their phones all night (DS has a dumb phone but the others don’t) and sent text messages to other kids in the middle of the night. Last week they were all going back to this same kid’s house and one of them wanted to go to the shop on the way, and the others left him in the shop and ran off, so he ended up calling his mum to fetch him. What little fuckers, I’m so disappointed. We know the parents of this boy so we texted his mother to apologise, and she was very nice about it, but said her son was upset. And yesterday he was fielding messages from this group about organising to play poker for money. WTAF. They’re 11 FFS.

I dunno, it just feels like I’m constantly saying no to him at the moment: no you can’t play poker for money; no you shouldn’t run off leaving a friend behind when you had plans; no you shouldn’t be texting people in the middle of the night and on and on and on. I thought he was heading in the right direction in terms of making good choices, but now I’m not so sure, and it feels like he’s slipping in the direction of this group that does stuff I think is unacceptable. The good news is that at the moment he tells me about all this stuff (I actually think he knows it’s wrong and he’s looking to me to confirm it but he won’t admit that) but I worry that my reaction means he’ll stop telling me soon.

This is long, I know, but does anyone have experience of this secondary transition and can help me navigate it, preferably without alienating my son?! He’s SUCH a good kid most of the time, but he’s not blameless in all of this, and I can see his compass is wavering all the time. Thank you for any support!!

I’ve never heard of 11 years hanging out in Weatherspoons (how does that work?!) but the rest of the stuff sounds like fairly standard stuff for his age tbh. He is starting to want more independence as he transitions towards teenage years and the move to ‘big school’ and new friends is part of that. DD is year 8 now but a few weeks after starting secondary school she wanted to hang around with her friends in the high street (Costa Coffee seems to be their hangout of choice🙄). I put her pocket money on a payment card each week and she knows once that money is gone, it’s gone. So if she wants to blow it on Cinnamon buns in Costa so be it.

I’m actually really impressed you’ve got him a dumb phone and wish I had done this with DD! I’ve set time limit controls on her phone so she cannot use it before and after a certain time, it’s placed in my home office from 8pm onwards and I monitor her chats. Would suggest this if you want to keep an eye on who and what he is messaging?

Obviously Poker for money is a no but sounds as if he is testing boundaries here and he is telling you about it which is good. He’s 11 so you get to control whether or not he has money to do this. You might want to mention this to his form tutor if you think this is something he might do at school.

I don’t really understand why the boy left behind in the shop had to call his mum? Sounds like the boys were unkind to leave him but unless I’m missing something this doesn’t specifically seem like evidence your DS is going off the rails, just engaging in silly 11 year old behaviour.

It all sounds quite normal apart from running off from his friend which is shitty.

We used to go to cafes at this age, I would say going to Wetherspoons is not too different to this, they also have cheap food.

I don’t see the problem with having a meal deal at high school.

Running off from his mate is shitty but not out of the realm of ordinary
I would be disappointed and say it's wrong too. But not overly concerned

Meal deal expensive but fine, he needs to pay extra out of his own money otherwise he can have bog standard packed lunch from home.

You can't really police what he does at night on a sleepover too much

Poker for money, I don't know, I would be impressed they want to play card games together and maybe would suggest him hosting a card or board games evening at your house. For money, ok no, but maybe chips. There's lots of funner card games than poker.

Could he join some groups to expand his social circle? Or encourage days out with other lads.

Thanks all for your thoughts, I really appreciate it. You’ve come up with some great ideas to mitigate all this (and reinforced what I felt about running away from the friend: a shitty thing to do).

I guess I’m experiencing the meal deal (occasional- he has school lunch) as a rejection of a lovingly-prepared packed lunch- like, fuck it, we’ll pick up a meal deal
on the way- and yes, it’s expensive. So you’re quite right, he can have that occasionally but he’s got to pay for it himself.

The poker: my husband is a board games guy and often has several boys round for a complicated board game on a Sunday afternoon, so I don’t know why I didn’t think of that! DS has himself come up with the idea that they could play for sweets (and with chips - we have a proper set with green baise and everything :)

In this new phase, I realise I need to move away from “no” towards “not that, but what elements of it can we do?”