Desperately sad 15 year old

[Blueuggboots]

My DS is diagnosed AUDHD. Medicated for his ADHD for the last few months. He is also medicated with sertraline for anxiety which ramped up following a car accident. He’s seen a private psychiatrist and counsellor as well as the psychiatrist for his ADHD.

He moved schools at the beginning of year 10 due to bullying that was making him miserable at his previous school. Loved the new school when he had a taster day. He has been in private school since reception and is academically very able.

Socially he can be a bit much - talks a lot and can get a bit fixated on his specialist subjects but he’s kind and funny and a very loyal friend.

Initially, he was getting on really well but has slowly been excluded by his new friendship group and we are now at the point where no pupils in his year group speak to him at all. He finds this really difficult and has come home this evening and sobbed.

I have spoken to the school at least twice over the last year and nothing has changed.

I can’t home school him. I work full time and then some to pay for his school fees.

any ideas how I can support him to get through the next 6 months? I have emailed the school again and asked them to contact me so they are aware how much this is impacting him.

I feel like a useless parent.

@anonymoususer9876He’d like some friends and not to be ignored….

And what steps do you feel the school should take to achieve that?

(For my daughter, their solution was to place her in the lunchtime support group, but that didn’t help her grow any friendships with her peers. It’s not an easy one to solve as I feel it’s the culture of the school that is important here.)

I don’t know @anonymoususer9876but I’ll sit and chat with my partner And look through the policies and see what we can come up with.

I don’t think they can solve the wanting friends thing but I’m sure they can put things in place to make him feel less isolated.

The difficulty is giving him a special place at lunch etc isn’t going to make him feel less depressed and alone. In my case they used to let me sit in the staff room at lunch, playing on the PC, but I was - and everyone else was - acutely aware this was because I was friendless and hopeless (to them, in their minds). It didn’t actually make me feel any better.

I don’t really know what the answer is when things get this bad except changing schools - which I know you’ve already done but maybe consider moving to a completely different, non private school as previously mentioned. A fresh start, again.

This type of bullying is really hard to break because
its so nasty and sneaky.

I really hope he can find some support at school.

I see your meeting is on Friday, is he ok to attend next week? Just watch for too much distress, poor boy.

@EasternStandardwe will take it day by day. He knows we will pull him out if required. We are communicating with him and checking in regularly.

That’s good, it sounds like you’re doing everything that you can, and really supporting him.

Sadly it doesn’t necessarily come from hostility towards him.

Like a PP said, you can’t force people to be friends with him (and I believe that that is more harmful if he knows they are only being nice because they have to).

Obviously you can probably make them speak to him and include him but if they don’t want to, then it’s potentially worse than ignoring him. That is where active bullying can start.

Is there a way to work on his comfort levels with being alone? I know that may sound odd but I’m AUDHD and was always perfectly happy on my own which meant I wasn’t reliant on others for friendship or company. Admittedly it was something that I had naturally but it’s a massively valuable thing to have.

When you say about investigating the blanking, what are you hoping for? You can’t make people include others or be kind to them and they will likely resent him if the teachers try. Teens are very good at seeming compliant but stepping it up behind the back of the adults.

The ‘not his tribe’ is absolutely true but I get that he doesn’t find any consolation in that. I didn’t find my tribe until I was in my 40s - but conversely I didn’t have to deal with the friendship dramas of my peers because everything was on a superficial level.

You sound like a brilliant mother, and just the mother my autistic (and imho ADHD, although not diagnosed) DH would have benefited from when he was friendless and bullied at that age. It absolutely wasn't him, and fwiw he was at a large comprehensive but his tribe was nowhere to be found.

He found sixth form completely different and then at university he found lifelong friends. He now has a wife who loves him and children who idolise him. His 15 year old self would be utterly amazed to see where he is now.

None of which is of any immediate use, of course, but you have so much good advice here already and you have a plan and I'm sharing in case it helps reassure your son that it's not him and he can have hope. And because it is such a good sign that he is talking to you. My PIL have no idea even now what DH went through. You are such a good mum.

@Anarchy99- we have tried to explain to him that sitting watching his old friendship group interacting with each other but not him is almost like scratching an itch. We’ve advised him to sit elsewhere and not engage but he really wants to be included.

I’m not expecting the school to miraculously change the situation, I just want to make sure they are aware of it AND find out exactly what they know about any reasons so I can also talk to DS about this if appropriate.

But even if there is a reason for the initial issue, its not going to turn the clock back and will probably make him feel worse. The school may be able to
make them include him to this face but it will cause more issues.

He obviously won’t take your advice (we ND people are stubborn!) but ultimately he is the only one who can come to terms with this. He will come across people in his adult life like this as we all do.

I feel your frustration that you can’t just sort it out for him though! 💐

Oh yes, I'm not necessarily going to tell him exactly what the school say but I’d like to know how much the school have actually looked it the reasons for it?!

They probably have the time nor the resources to conduct some kind of inquiry as to why your DS thinks his friends are ignoring him. Your expectations of the school are far beyond what they should reasonably be doing.

Again though, even if they went through it in detail, what would be gained? Even if they could tell you exactly what the issue was, it won’t help going forward. You can’t make people be inclusive.

This isn’t usually acknowledged but people often do treat ND people differently. Im lucky that I am one of the stereotypical ‘unemotional’ ones so I am fine with that but he’s clearly a sensitive soul and as he moves into adulthood he needs the tools to deal with this for his own happiness

@Apotofrealcoffee- advocating for my distressed child. That’s what I’m doing.

And it’s not just his friends, it’s the whole year group????

Then there comes a point where it may be him who has inadvertently caused people to react like this. Or it could be that a couple of key people have taken against him and influenced others. Nobody is going to tell you that though.

It is shit and I feel for all of you but he, like everyone else, has to learn to handle his own reactions as we can’t always ‘fix’ problems.

I realise that sounds harsh especially when you are dealing with this situation but it’s something that may come up again in his life and it going to be easier for him if he is able to navigate through it

You may feel like you are but practically speaking it will have no effect. You can’t force people to like or acknowledge your son. What you can do is seek out spaces outside of school where he can make friends.

I doubt it’s the whole year group. That’s probably his perception. I doubt 100+ kids are in on some kind of plot to blank him. I just think socially it’s obviously not right for him.

Wading in like this will make it ten times worse.

I agree. He’s 15, not 6.

I cant believe that, if classes are as small as you say, the teachers havent noticed any of this? I would absolutely be finding out why they havent done anything to address this. A teacher should be able to spot when a child is being ostracized in a class so small , especially when it is happening all day everyday.

My heart breaks for your son OP. He sounds like a smashing lad.

This is bullying by social exclusion.

Have you made a formal complaint?

He'd be better off in any other school. Bullying can be tackled less well in private.

If a private school it's likely the year is much smaller than this.

@Apotofrealcoffee you clearly haven’t read the thread. There are about 50 children in his whole year group.

I agree that he will have to deal with things like this through his life, and we are helping him to do that to a point, but when your 15 year old comes home from school SOBBING what would you do?! Tell him to suck it up? Tell him he needs to build resilience? We’ve been saying that to him for MONTHS. This is not a new development. It’s been going on for MONTHS. I don’t think approaching the school at this point is unreasonable.

And what do you do when your child is so broken by the bullying that he does not have the confidence to go to new events and make new friends because he thinks they will bully him too??!

I’m not wading in. I’ve asked for a meeting with school so we can try and work together constructively.