DD 14 no social life

[MN224]

Hello. My DD now 14 has always been a shy introverted child. She has two friends from primary school who she sees occasionally and they are not in her current school. At school she seems to have friends who she has lunch and break with and she was described by her form tutor as a popular member of the class in her report. She is also in 3 sports teams.

However she will rarely gets invited to her school friends socials; cinema, shopping etc. I know she feels it but on the same hand she won’t put herself out there and organise a meet up or invite friends around.

She is happy and content at home and is helpful. Do I just leave all this and let her be? I feel I get too invested with what is going on and end up making more out of it. I suppose I would just like her some friends she can do things with, maybe this will happen eventually??

My DD is the same age and rarely does anything outside school with friends. She has out-of-school hobbies and is in touch with friends from those during the week but the main one of those isn't local so meeting up is more tricky. School friends are lovely but aren't a very sociable bunch; their parents aren't that keen on them going out and about without an adult so that makes it extra hard. Very occasionally, if there's a film DD wants to see locally, she'll message a particular friend and ask if she'd like to come and see it with her. They have a lovely time together when they go but it's all very different from her older sister's friendships.

With your DD, I would say to her that if she isn't prepared to make an effort to invite friends to things then she shouldn't really expect others to invite her to things. After all, how would they know she would like to be invited? One of the advantages of mobiles is that it's easy enough to send a message, even if it's, "I want to see X film and don't want to go with my mum, do any of you fancy it?".

My 14 year old DS is the same - although he seems perfectly happy with not socialising. I'm assuming this might change in time but it makes life very easy currently. He also seems to have a bunch of school friends and is on snap chat groups, and plays a huge amount of sport. He says school and sport are for friends and home is for resting and family and homework...