17yr old DD struggling badly with friendships

[User1123453566932]

Long time poster but name changed as would hate for anyone I know to see this and link it back. My wonderful 17yr old DD has always struggled with maintaining close friendships. She seems to be able to make friends but somehow is always the one left out, excluded from the group or they drift away to another group. Nothing seems to particularly happen but she just seems a bit invisible. She calls herself irrevelant which breaks my heart. It’s like her friends always seem to just like other people more, she’s never a priority. She reaches out and arranges things and sometimes this works, but it’s never reciprocated and often finds things have happened socially with her friends that she wasn’t invited to.

She went to a fresh college with no one from school and seemed to start off really well and build some good friendships but they’ve either not developed and are still just acquaintances or they’ve drifted off to other people and are now in solid groups. She plays sport to county level and has friends there who are happy to be with her when playing the sport but again anything social she tends to be forgotten or overlooked unless it’s something group arranged with parents which obviously happens less now they’re all nearly 18. It’s like people are happy to tolerate her being around but if numbers are limited they wouldn’t choose her.

Because of her sport I get to see her with her friends in groups and she doesn’t seem to do anything ‘wrong’ as such but I do notice when she speaks in a group it doesn’t land in quite the same way as when other people do. This has become such a vicious cycle of putting herself out there and being rejected that she’s now really struggling and understandably anxious about starting uni in September and making friends there. She has had a boyfriend for 6 months and that seems to be going well.

I just don’t know how to help her, there’s only so many times I can tell her she will find her tribe and people who value her etc she now just says she must be unlikeable because everyone she’s tried to be friends with gets on with other people just not her. Has anyone else had similar and how did they get on at university? I’m so worried about her, she’s such a fabulous girl, funny, bright and caring I just can’t quite understand what goes wrong for her

I read this yesterday and didn’t have the time to reply but I could have written your post word for word about my dd18.

I completely get what you are describing, we have been there and lived it too and it was very stressful and upsetting, for me and I’m sure for dd too. We tried all the same things you tried with the same outcomes.

Dd started uni in September and generally things have improved and she’s doing really well after a slowish start. She has gelled with a couple of her flat mates and a few from her course and sport. She has got a lovely boyfriend who came to visit in the Xmas holidays. She is very happy.

I still have a few concerns, particularly when I see her interacting with home “friends “ as any interactions are always on their terms and dd never seems to have anyone to go out with as when she texts round, no one is ever free.

I don’t think uni is perfect but does seem to be an improvement.

My other dd finds friendships much easier and has a lovely wide circle of friends and plenty of social opportunities. I have no idea why this is and why my other dd has struggled so much. It’s like she gives off the wrong vibe or something. She definitely isn’t bitchy, blunt or mean. In fact I’ve never heard her say anything mean about anyone, not even when friends were awful to her in the past. There is nothing obvious that she does wrong, but friends have always tended to gravitate more to others and she is more on the periphery. I would do anything to reverse this and would love to know why they do this.

i hope things improve for your dd.

A few people have suggested autism but plenty of neurotypical people struggle to connect with people and feel left out.

i dont have autism - i checked with the psychologist who diagnosed my son - i had social anxiety

i had no friends in secondary school and it was a very hard part of my life - but going to university made a big difference - i made a small number of friends and was very happy and enjoyed my time.

i still have a small number of friends now in my 40s and have finally come to terms with it and learned to be happy with what i have.

I have so much sympathy for you OP, it really is heart-breaking seeing your child stuck on their own. I sat with DS17 for about an hour last night, one of many long chats we have, as he was upset that he still has no real friends having started college, and only had one friend at school but never saw him outside of school. He is friends with a girl who he would like to be his girlfriend, but she seems to keep letting him down in terms of being very unpredictable and so he is going through a bit of mental torture not knowing if she likes him. He feels he is 'forgettable' as one time they had arranged to meet and she didn't turn up, later apologising that she'd forgotten. I have tried to convince him that he's definitely not forgettable, but the truth is his name was left off a class keyring that his form tutor made as a present for leaving school, and he was also left off the class list when he left primary school. I felt gutted for him on those occasions, and he must have too. It is so hard as a parent to try to offer encouragement and be positive when your child feels invisible. Would your daughter be open to counselling? My son is not keen at all, but maybe is slowly coming round to the possibility of speaking to someone about his outlook on life which at the moment is not great. He is lovely, he's tall, he's handsome, he's intelligent, he's funny, but he's so sad that somehow this is not enough to find friends. I do hope everyone here finds a way.

I could have written a lot of this about my DD16. It breaks my heart.

Like others have described, she is always on the periphery, never the one that is chosen or fully included. She’s had a group of “friends” at school but it was always a struggle and she was frequently left out.

I curse bloody Snap Maps because she always knows when the other girls have got together without her.

I don’t know how to help her and it’s so hard.

I could written the same for my DD. During her time at school,she was always on the periphery of whichever friend group she happened to be part of. This invariably always ended up with her being excluded from gatherings outside of school and finding out about them through social media. It was so distressing to watch time and time again. As previous posters have written, we had conversations about what makes a good friend, setting boundaries etc but I knew that there was something else going on. Honestly, she is the kindest, most thoughtful DD and would make a wonderfully loyal and fun friend but she seems to misunderstand the finer nuances of friendship. It was after many years of friendship issues, social issues and other behaviours that she received a diagnosis of autism. I kick myself daily that I /or school/ or her doctor didn’t spot any of these traits sooner as I feel that she would have been given better support to navigate friendships in school which would have in-turn given her an happier experience at school and some friends outside of school. Since her diagnosis, we’ve been working through social stories books to help with friendships.

I also think Covid was an absolute disaster for my DD. We had been abroad & she had been quite socially isolated where we were, then moved back for Y7 and boom lockdown & just as this age group started spreading their wings socially everything blew up (or rather closed down!). I think DD would always have struggled a bit but I think this made it much worse.

I think anything mixed agree would be great for your DD.

Community drama, sport for fun (not super competitive), part time job somewhere with a biggish mixed age workforce.

Nobody's entitled to a friendship group of perfect same-aged peers, as harsh as that sounds. And if people don't 'get' her then it will help her to accept that they probably wouldn't make great friends anyway. Friendships and their nuances are, as you say, one of the most difficult things to navigate, and I think a lot of it comes down to luck.

I think just put the sociable activity first (how about climbing? Or regular mixed age volunteering?) and the friendships may come alongside. Also friendships can take a long time to develop to build up trust and shared history.

Good luck to your DD x

Yes, DD really struggled to pick her (limited) friendships up again after covid.

I really hope things improve for your DD soon. Friendships are so hard and it’s difficult to even talk about - who wants to say they have no friends?

I’d be focussing on quality over quantity. One or two good friends.