Those of you with lonely teenagers - how do you spend the weekend?

[loopylocks]

After another somewhat miserable weekend with my lonely DD14, I’m looking for any sage advice on how to fill her weekends up a bit.

She’s 14, no close friends. A few casual friends at school who she will have lunch with but no one she texts / meets out of school / has sleepovers with. She has had close friends in the past but they moved away. She’s quite shy, anxious and pessimistic so finds it quite difficult to make new friends or make the first move. She has tried a few times to arrange things with the casual school friends but it never comes to anything and she’s basically given up trying now.

This weekend has been yet another weekend of her feeling bored and lonely at home, needing me to be her companion all the time - which I find a bit draining . Plus she can be quite unpleasant and tends to lash out (verbally) when she’s lonely and stressed which I also find hard to deal with.

We go for walks, sometimes shopping (tho I hate shopping!), cinema, occasionally the theatre. Or we stay at home and watch TV or cook. What else could we do to the pass the time? She point blank refuses to join clubs of any sort.

Truth is though whatever we do she’s always sad to some extent because she’s lonely and not hanging out with friends like it seems every other teenager does. We went for a walk yesterday and saw lots of groups of girls around her age hanging out in the sunshine and it made her so despondent (plus embarrassed to be seen with her Mum).

I feel bad for her and, selfishly, feel a bit drained by having to fill the gap. I’d like a weekend to do my own thing. And I’d like her to have a normal teenage social life and be happier. Sigh.

@TheRealMagic I can’t speak for the OP’s DD but I know that when mine was in the doldrums friends wise, her default was to hide in her room. She really didn’t want to go out and it was only me dragging her out

on pretext of needing company or her help with an errand that worked. It always perked her up to go out despite her resistance, so I persisted. But sending her out alone simply wouldn’t have worked.

Where the dad?

What, why? Seems a strange thing to be “horrified” by. My twins have been volunteering and coaching their sports since that age and have been paid for it since age 15.

OP I don’t think at 14 she necessarily needs to be out all the time but she does need some interests and she does need to see you socialising.

We are out with or seeing grandparents or siblings or cousins etc at least once a fortnight. It was the same when I was growing up. In fact when I was 14, which is a really tricky age for girls, I was very close to my cousins and was really grateful to have them when I had trouble with friends at school.

Clubs or volunteering are going to be her best way out of this. What about volunteering or joining something yourself, OP? You also sound to be vaguely dissatisfied with your weekends. Maybe it's time to take up something of your own and lead your DD by example?

My DD was in this same situation it made me very sad to see. Like yours she had a few girls at school she was friendly with but no friends as such and often ate lunch alone.
I booked a session at a Karaoke place that does kids parties- told her to invite these girls she knew and we framed it as a “weekend treat”. They set up a WhatsApp group to discuss what songs they would sing etc and the “treat” gave them common ground. She’s not really friends with those girls anymore but it gained her admission into a wider group and she now has a solid little group of three or four friends and she’s happy with that.
So it cost me a couple of hundred quid and was definitely a turning point.

I do think that physical activity will help with so much of this - I take my DD swimming, the gym, canoeing etc and she also enjoys Scouts. From this she has several groups of friends which means not reliant on school friends which have been up and down over the last year or so…

Ah I do agree that if your DD is unhappy with being alone then a club or hobby would just help so much.

14 is a bit young to be giving up. I think that often we get friends when we stop 'trying' to make them. Can she get into an activity and finding friends is a by product of that?

There are plenty of places looking for volunteers, maybe being part of a team might be helpful as well as learning a new skill.

You must be at your wits end. Just remember we all change, grow and evolve, and she will be doing just that in the future. Who my DH and I were as teens is very different to who we are now!