DS2, age 10, has always been a bit of a handful/character - loud, cheerful, fun loving, disrespectful, attention seeking, self-centred, funny, lovable, infuriating - and as a result has always found it more difficult to make friends than his older, gentler, more sensitive brother. He likes to make people laugh, but if they're not easily amused then he struggles a bit with other methods of getting to know people.
He did have a solid friendship group in Year 4 and in the Autumn term of Year 5, but over the last term seems to have drifted away from them. He says he now spends all his breaks wandering around, and either former friends won't play with him (i.e. say "we don't want you to play"), or else in other cases he's not interested in playing with them. He's one of the older ones in Year 5, so I've been putting it down to a "growing up" phase.
This week he's doing a holiday day-camp. He loved the first couple of days, then by the third he'd decided "everyone hates me". I tried to get more info, but the only rationale he gave me was that whenever he said a ball was "out" everyone else said it was "in" and vice versa.
He's not coming across as upset about any of this - just defiant, resilient and matter-of-fact.
How to respond?