Teenager Social Anxiety/friendship issues

[Karin12345]

My daughter is 15 and ever since starting secondary school at age 11 has been really anxious about friendships. She feels quiet and awkward around her peers and says she is weird. She is lovely but this probably doesn't come across as she is so nervous! She sees her peers having a social life and thinks she never will. She is also scared of shopping and other social interactions.

Sometimes she seems so depressed. Does anyone have experience of how best to help?

I haven't great advise but just wanted to say I was a very shy anxious child.
I found starting a different college and then university and then a job very liberating as I could reinvent myself at each one to who I wanted to be taking bits from other people I'd met.
By the time I was 18 plus I was a different person confidence wise.
Are you close? Maybe take her shopping to a different area where she wont bump into people she knows so she can feel more relaxed? Do other activities together. It doesn't have to be only with friends. Don't pressure her or ask about friends too much or she'll just feel bad. I've seen my sister do this to her child and it's painful to watch.
Make sure to keep cuddling her and telling her you love her so she gets positive feelings too no matter how old
There are many people like this so she isn't weird x

Also we watch box sets with my teenage DS - it's a nice routine and shared experience and nice company each evening.

No advice but I could have written this post word for word re my 14yr old DD
Very anxious, always in the perimeter of friendship groups, seems very brittle at times

I wish I could improve things, but we just rely on DH and I trying to do something with her so she isn't tucked in her room all day.

Thank you @Cuddling57 @SallyTimms I was also shy and quite anxious, I still am sometimes but don't really mind anymore and have some good friends and husband. I feel for her so much as I know how she feels and feel so sad for her, at least she talks to me about it but I struggle with how to help. Thanks for the tips, I am trying to think of ways to get her out of her comfort zone - not easy in these covid times! Social media is so unhelpful due to constant comparison!

She is wondering whether to leave her current school for a different sixth from but this could be good or bad! I do think more experiences out of her current school would help, just trying to think of something else she want to do.

Aw it's hard isn't it. Are there any hobby/craft groups she could join on insta or Facebook or whatever it is they are using nowadays so she can have chats and feel connected? Obviously safely with your supervision.

Yes it is hard, I'll have a look at online groups. I think she uses snapchat too but I have no idea about that! She had a better day today but this never seems to go away.

The problem is worsened by social.tjings like amateur drama groups, clubs etc on hold so not much that is new to explore, and school after school sessions aren't happening. One art teacher is running a catch up session for each year group on separate nights and I told DD she has to go, but otherwise it's a blank. Are there any after school catch up sessions that might be in where your dd is with peers in a more relaxed setting?

It is tricky with lack of things going on! I will have a think about extra after school stuff. Thanks and hope things improve for you too. x

i don’t know if this might help, but at the same age (and when having some fairly knotty friendship issues and some social anxiety) my DD had to do some volunteering for her DofE Bronze - it was compulsory at her school and not welcome! Anyway she volunteered (reluctantly) at Brownies and it was absolutely transformative for her. The 7/8/9 year olds thought she was just amazingly cool - they used to shyly come up to her and tell her how much they liked her hair/what she was wearing etc. One evening they had to do a game when they wrote a nice thing about someone on a post-it note and stuck it to them and DD came back with all these funny badly written post its saying how they loved her hair/make-up/trainers but also her smile/how helpful and kind she was etc. Plus Brown Owl was v nice to her because who doesn’t like an extra pair of sensible hands, plus she met a nice other helper the same age as her at a different school. It was literally the best thing that she could have done - outside of the school arena with an uncritical and appreciative audience and a different perspective.

It was v easy to organise - we sent an email expressing interest on a Saturday evening and she was helping on the Monday evening at a Brownie pack about 8 mins walk away ! I suspect we had a larger dollop of luck with this, but I would genuinely recommend it as a way of building esteem (while helping out at the same time).

I don't know if this will help but I was just like your daughter. I went on exchange to France for a year when I was 16-17 (I'm in Australia so a little further away than you guys). It was a massive shock to the system and a traumatic to be a shy teen in a place where I knew no one and the culture was totally different and I couldn't speak the language. I did learn to speak reasonably fluently after about two months and sort of had to reinvent myself to survive. I learned social skills at the most rapid rate simply because it was either that or spend the next 11 months curled in the fetal position weeping.

When I came home I was a totally different person. Outgoing and funny and made friends at my new school quite easily. Not saying that you need to send her to a foreign country for a year (not that you can do that anyway due to covid) but she needs to get a massive shock to the system and be completely out of her comfort zone for an extended period, to be forced to learn social skills. Otherwise she might end up as a shy adult which is a hard and lonely existence.

Thanks @TawnyPippit that is a great idea, I think something like that would really help. I will look into it and see what is available.

Also @TigerQuoll that does sound like a massive shock but again a great idea to find something like that to get her out of her comfort zone. I don't think I can get her away for a year due to A levels but am thinking a few weeks in the Summer on a volunteering programme might help. Then a gap year before uni as she is already worrying about that!

Thanks both. x

A gap year travelling on her own sounds great! Hopefully covid will be settled down by then. University is so much fun especially living on campus, if she can be just socially developed enough by then to talk to people, guaranteed there will be lots of people she'll get along well with as there is such a huge diverse mix of people there - there's every type you can imagine. When I was sad and lonely as a kid my mother used to tell me, don't worry, you'll be fine at uni - and I was. Funnest couple of years in my whole life. I was friends with loads of people where I lived who were shyer than me, and they all came out of their shells over the first term or so

Best of luck for your daughter

Hello I'm Nanny not Mum,
My Granddaughter is nearly 13 & is on the whole a good girl. She has a group of friends though that the same can't be said of. The thing is my Granddaughter comes home & tells us what her friends get up to, the latest things include vaping in the school toilets & stealing from shops. Here's the problem we definitely want her to tell us about these things but our instinct is to then stop her hanging out with these girls because of being guilty by association etc but that also feels like we are punishing her for telling the truth. What do we do?

Hi @kabakalli you might want to start a different thread of conversation for your topic as this is a different issue.

But in any case I would say be very careful to keep on listening to her, try not to stop her in case she then shuts you out but try to get her to make her (hopefully sensible) decisions about what to do.

Best of luck.

Thanks again @TigerQuoll that's really encouraging :)

Thank you Karin12345. Yes I realised my mistake & did start a new thread. Thank you for your advice.

I’m struggling with the fact that my 15yo DS doesn’t go out or talk to anyone, he doesn’t even go on his Xbox he just sits in his room watching Japanese Anime. It’s so hard when I hear about his old friends going out and doing normal stuff with their friends and all he wants to do is stay home and not talk to anyone. Should I be worried??