What was y7 like socially for your dd?

[RiceAndSomeMoreRice]

My PFB will be starting year 7 in September. What will make it easier for her to make friends? In group dynamics dd tends to be a bit quiet but also fun loving, loyal and kind. She is not super assertive socially and often at the edges of friendship groups but being with a group of friends is very important to her and she ribs along well usually. What was year 7 like for your dd? What are the things that can help her in terms of attitude or behaviour? She will only know 3 other children at her new senior school.

what was primary like for her re friendships?

Every child is different

All I'd say is give it till at least half term or even xmas before worrying.

Those first friendships sometimes don't work out and there is plenty of movement in year 7.

She was in a group of 3 for a few years but got on with most others in her class and year as well. In the group of 3 she was not as 'in' as the other 2 and she was left out occasionally. The other 2 have since kind of fallen out and she is now friends with them both as well as others in a bigger friendships group. She puts herself out there and is sociable but isn't as socially confident as others. One girl did try to bully her but dd tried to avoid where possible and not engage at all.

She stayed friends with her old friendship group of 4 girls and hasn't really branched out at all.

We talked to her about not picking a small group of exclusive friends, but keeping as many groups as possible. She is quite sporty, so spent most of Year 7 lunchtimes and after school doing netball or hockey or athletics. We also encouraged her to sign up for the (back row) chorus for the school musical, which ended up with her painting scenery as well!

She also kept some friendship groups out of school - a few Primary friends and some out of school sports.

I think the trick is to DO lots of things alongside potential friends to build acquaintance, rather than standing awkwardly around in the September lunch hours, worrying about whether they have attached themselves to the right groups!

We both absolutely dreaded it and it has been great! She got dropped by her while group from primary(all going to the same secondary) and was bullied in the summer hols and some incidents after school started too.

She made a completely new group of friends, across various forms and has a good , stable ,varied and (thank fuck!) actually nice social circle.

She did exchange numbers with one girl (during induction day) and we set up a few meet ups during the summer hols so she did start in sept with one friend. Then it evolved from there.

Takes them a while to settle in my experience. I expected ds to stick with school friends but it didn't happen and he has a whole new group of friends now. It's worth noting that there seems to be a massive spectrum of behaviours in Y7. You get some kids who immediately adapt to senior school life and begin acting as if they're in Y11 already. Then you get some who are still very childlike. I found 11/12 a very tricky age for this reason. But it all evens out in the end.

You get some kids who immediately adapt to senior school life and begin acting as if they're in Y11 already. Then you get some who are still very childlike.

YY to this. I can see this in y6 already. dd is in the middle somewhere but more childlike than y11 😂.

It took some time, and some of it felt like huge issues at the time but it has all levelled out now. Coming from a very small primary she had been used to getting along with the people who were there rather than being super discriminating in friends so a lot of this year has been about ‘does this person make you feel good?’ and having worked through that she now has some really positive friendships. She did get stuck in with lots of things - some she still does & others she’s moved on from but probably picked up 1 or 2 people from each and now has lots of people with different interests as part of her friendship group.

I would really recommend the book The Confidence Code for Girls. It helped loads when things weren’t quite working out.

We also monitor phone stuff very closely & I think that’s really important - some of the stuff that goes on is so toxic.

Be prepared for it to be tough at times, and for groups to change quite a few times during that first year. And know that’s ok, it’s all part of the process. But gosh, I wouldn’t be a tween / teen girl again for anything!

My ds was the same. Somewhere in the middle. But it's quite frightening to see just how grown up some 11 year olds become (or think they become) when they start senior school. Relationships, fights, snogging, suddenly wanting all this independence to go out and stay over at friends houses they've only just met etc. Thankfully mine didn't do this but I saw it in many other kids his age.

DS started high school in 2020 so didn’t have a normal experience at all! He goes to a grammar school so only knew 2 other boys but most were in the same position. They weren’t really friends in primary school and none of them really bothered with each other once they started. He met his best friend on the second day and they are still best friends in year 10. At first I was concerned they didn’t really bother with others but now they’ve expanded their group naturally to include a few others.

I purposefully moved my son to a school the majority of friends were going to (my other children were also at the school he went to) and he has made a lovely group of new friends.

Dd is very quiet and none of her main group of friends (group of 3) were in her class, but she did branch out. Her primary friends are still in her main group and they see each other every break and lunch, but the group has expanded from 3 to 6. One of the new friends is in dd's class and I would say is her best friend. She did have a mishap with a couple of girls in the first year, but nothing major and it's all very amicable. It was a learning experience for her.
On the build up to starting we came up with a couple of ice breakers.....basically compliments that she could give to others. I said even if it didn't start a conversation at that time they would remember her as nice and friendly, so at a later time would smile and say hello etc. It was things like 'I like your earrings, where did you get them from?' Or 'cool bag' or 'love your hair, wish mine was a bit longer' etc.
Overall it was a lot easier than we thought it might be

If she is struggling to meet friends I would definitely recommend joining as many clubs as she can. My DS is yr7 and struggled a little with friendships in primary. He has a wide circle of friends now throughout the school because he went to as many clubs as he could find! He also has a tight group of 4 close mates who he hangs out with most of the time.

Thank you for all the lovely comments. I suppose I need to work on my own attitude too, as I am already fretting about it, which can hardly be helpful for this process. I'll need to be more 'chill' about it but it's hard.

How about sleepovers, do you need to offer them lots? Do sleepovers tend to be in larger groups or small or one 2 one? Do the children arrange meeting their friends all by themselves from the beginning of year 7 (I guess so!)?

what was your school experience like in terms of friends op?

I made friends easily in primary and had a small but close group of friends pretty much from year 8 onwards. I was never ever in with the 'popular' groups though, they looked straight through me 😂 I do feel a bit protective of PFB dd🤔.

it doesn’t sound like she’s ever had a “bestie”?

I thinks that's probably true but then I did encourage her to play with lots of children when she was younger rather than just with 1 'bestie'. She was part of a group of 3 of a few years where she had at first been closer with each of them but the other 2 became close over time. The other 2 have fallen out now though. So no, I suppose she hasn't had a bff type of friendship (yet?). She is social but a bit passive and unassertive.

My DD is also quite quiet so I did worry about her, in reality it was fine and very quickly she made some lovely new friends within her classes. For the first term she had about 4 very close friends but as the year went on she made more via their mutuals which ended up forming the big friendship group that she kept throughout school.

A huge proportion of her primary classmates went to the same secondary school. I had expected them to all cling together but the reality was very different. They all quickly branched out which is a good, healthy thing.

DD has a group made up of her bestie from school and a few new friends. I suspect they all don’t like each other that much and it’s not going to last forever, but they all rub along together fine on a day to day basis.

She’s actually picking up her better friends from other walks of life, from clubs, or the friend of a friend she started walking to school with. Those are the friendships I expect to last longer.

It’s been a bit tough. There have been odd periods of loneliness and she still struggles that she doesn’t have a “BFF” but that seems really common for Y7. I’ve told her as long as she has people to hang around with that’s a win, and her very closest friends will come with time.

We did a few playdates first, it's all a bit tricky with everyone living all over the place and not actually meeting parents. Some group bday parties, and I frequently organise big meetups at my house and the girls can then go and hang at the park ,go to the shops etc. We had a few sleepover invites , and it does tend to be 2 or more girls plus the host kid.We can't host as our home is too small, but the other stuff helps strengthen the friendships.

Large group sleepovers were an absolute highlight for DD and were definitely very good in terms of making and strengthening friendships. In Y7 we as parents still typically texted each other before sleepovers/parties but this decreased as time went on.

Year 7 has been a headache to be honest. Massive school, variety of kids from very different backgrounds. It’s taken a while to settle in, find feet, slowly branch out beyond primary and find new friends. Now it’s the end of year 7, it’s getting much better

I have a very "young" 12 year old, still very much into Roblox, cartoons etc. Whereas her older sister was all makeup and gossip at her age.

I'd say it's taken her until now to get totally settled. She's stuck to her primary friends, but does float around with a few of the new groups. They are all her kind of people, so she stays away from the louder, popular girls. She's only JUST started to see them socially outside of school, literally just this weekend. They made plans, but still us mum's had to finalise the details and they didn't quite make it to the bus, we had to take them.

So, I'd say give her time to take it all in. Don't push after school social time either, they will do it in their own time, when they're ready and confident enough.