Year 7 dd feeling lonely and friendless

[Notcontent]

I am not sure there is really any solution to this problem.

Dd is in year 7. Her primary school friends went to other schools so she has had to make new friends at her new school. Initially she made a friend but that has not worked out. There are a few girls she talks to but they are not close friends. During the lunch break she sometimes has someone to talk to but she said that there have been a few instances where she tried to join in and felt like she was being deliberately ignored.

My dd is very mature in some ways but she can be a bit quirky and I have often wondered if she may have asd, although nothing ticks all the boxes. I think some people “get her” and appreciate her for who she is but unfortunately not all.... She was so down tonight and I am not sure I can do anything to help.

Her school (an independent girls school) prides itself on its pastoral care and girls are encouraged to be kind to each other, etc. But let’s face it - you can’t force children to be friends, can you? Particularly at this age...

Give it time and speak to school. Your post could have been written by me last year. I shed so many tears.This year I've had to put restrictions on the amounts of sleepovers she goes to for fear of her social life getting in the way of her school work.

All girl situations can be tricky when everybody is nervous,they kind of cling to cliques and compete to look popular. It's hideous.Tell her to be kind,strong,join clubs and try to chat to at least one girl every day however hard,even if it's just a nice comment. Honestly by the end if the year they'll start to value her in all her qwerks and kindness,an awful lot of the girls who seem popular now won't be. Do speak to school too,they will have seen this all before.

When she goes off to uni or wherever further down the line she'll have the upper hand as she'll already have gone through this.

Lots of sympathy to your dd. It's a good suggestion to join school clubs - apart from anything else it can help with the lunchtime problem and also your dd may meet some like minded people there?

Have you talked to the school? They might be able to arrange things so that your dd is thrown together with another girl looking for friends. (Though some schools may say they don't do matchmaking -
not sure why, but in that case you could ask them for other ideas?)

Also, is there anything out of school your dd could join - it can be good to have an alternative social circle (although tbh it can take a long time to establish friendships at out of school clubs, it is still something that makes school seem less 'important').

Could you suggest your dd gets in touch with primary school friends to meet up at a weekend? Doesn't help with school directly, but it might be cheering and that itself is likely to make her more confident at school.

Your dd sounds a bit like my dd (She Dyspraxia and SPD). So far year 7 has been great but primary school was awful.

Does the school have clubs at lunch? This really helps the being on your own feeling. Talk to her tutor or the person in Charge of pastoral care (student manager, head if year). My dds (girls but state ) School understands that happy girls achieve more so perhaps gently point this out.

Out of school activities really help too. Dd does youth theatre and whilst she doesn't have friends she sees out if those classes she has another outlet.

Finally, they may have been ignoring her but they may not have done. If she is feeling insecure it may be how she perceives it. I have bought a few books from amazon which have helped with confidence and self esteem. About to take dd to school but will link
Later.

Thank you so much for all your kind and helpful comments!

She has gone to some lunchtime clubs so I will encourage her to keep doing that, etc. I will also encourage her to see her primary school friends, and maybe speak to her form teacher if things don’t get better...

twofalls Can you recommend any books please ?

Here you go, some we have, some have been recommended but we don't have yet. DD has dipped in and out, they are surprizingly helpful.

Teenage guide to friends link

How to be happy link

A Smart girls guide to friendship troubles link

A smart girls guide to liking yourself link

Friends - making them and keeping them link

And if anyone suspects Dyspraxia, "Caged in Chaos" is brilliant.

I found Summer term is when friendships properly forged with longer daylight they did more things out of school and we were in the same situation as you at this time of the school year. Now at year 11 there are almost too many friends!!!

I write a very similar post last year about my dd in Y7 around this time (although I don't suspect asd)

My dd is very mature for age both in her interests and her appearance. She struggled to find friends up until Christmas/new Year. Then she found a couple of friends and settled. However these friends turned to our to have zero in common with my dd and my dd soon tried to distance herself a bit.

The break through fur my dd was attending Y7 lunchtime Drama club. She'd joined early on it the year but it wasn't until Spring that she really started clicking with others. Towards the end of Y7 she found some solid Friends.

Now in Y8, her friends are still there but she's added in a whole load more. She's close to people she thought she disliked in Y7. It helps that the classes were mixed up for different lessons. She ended up in Science with no-one she knew this year, and again took a few months to find her feet - but she has.

Y7 for us was a bit of a white knuckle ride. The advantages are she didn't have any primary school 'emotional baggage' to deal with when lots of old primary school friendships groups fell out/shifted around Spring time.

Y8 has been really good.

One tip, don't believe all the Facebook hype that everyone else's Y7 child is "having a ball!". It might be true for some but when I dug beneath the surface of old primary mums I knew they were lots of different difficulties.

Thanks again everyone!

And I will look up some of those books!