11 yr old with no friends

I don’t know your situation obviously but my first question would be does your son seem concerned about his having no friends? If he is then mabey he’d be open to the idea of learning what’s socially appropriate for his age group. I once worked with a child that went to a kid’s group much like 4H. It was for all the kid’s that wanted to be there and she wanted to go and make friends her “own age” Every time we left to go to the group I would remind her about things she needed to work on-she liked to talk about her favorite color and if you had a different favorite color you also just had to love hers. So we talked about how she could fit in better and for the first year I took a book and sat in after explaining to her group teachers that I would not be helping her and that I just needed to be there to observe, after leaving we would talk about weird moments she had where she felt out of place or was getting odd looks and what if anything she wanted to do about that. She grew so much over that year! She was able to attend the next year by herself with only a few complaints about being “different”.

There are also social stories that I have heard about being used but I don’t know much about them. If you do a search on the internet for them you should be able to find them though.

I hope this helps, Just remember all children are gifts given to us-the stretch our boundries and help us grow, but then that’s just a part of the fun :)

Pretend play is fine. As he plays with others his own age, he may ‘play pretend’ less. My 5th graders still do ‘pretend play’ even though they don’t call it that.

It might be good though if he could find a friend or two and establish other ways of playing. You could consider fostering such friendships through organized activites or inviting other children over.

whew! I feel a little better- i guess i just get tired of the pretend play.
He is involved in scouts and is receiving social skills at his school-
but no one hardly ever has invited him over to play- after awhile it
starts to bother me.

With my own ld son, we found we had to be the ones to extend the invitations. To be invited over to others’ houses to play, he had to give invitations of his own to ‘get the ball rolling’ so to speak. We started with very ‘safe’, easy to get along with children with accomodating parents and structured those first few play dates by taking the other child along to see a movie or watch a rented film at our house.

Good luck.

We took this approach also for our son who falls on the autism spectrum. We even took it one step further with the first invite being for the family so we could all meet and talk. This approach worked out great. After the parents were able to see the children playing and getting along together it was not an issue. They would always instist we join them the next time. After that we would take turns on who would have the kids over. This resulted in my son having some “normally” developing peers as role models not only at school but at home also. His friends at school are there to help him and they find he helps them to understand each other better also. It is very mutually beneficial.

This is the first time I’ve been to this site and yours was the first p0ost I read. My son almost 10 years old, has virtually no friends although he plays with a couple of boys at school. He never wants anyone to come over though. He also is into pretend play alot. He has a speech delay and he will talk to himself for hours at a time in his cute unintelligible speech and I have no idea what he is doing. He plays alot of pretend games that pertain to things he has just done that day like school or church. Tyler has had one sleepover in his life a few months ago and I think it so stressed him out that he won’t even invite this friend over for a couple of hours. He does play with one kid, the son of a friend who doesn’t go to the same school although there is never any guarantees that they will get along. This other kid is kind of a pain and very hyper. I am worried also about his lack of friends and more so the fact that he doesn’t seem to care. He is happy playing with his sister and her friends when they let him or playing alone. I have heard of social skills classes for kids but I think the kids were much younger and I just moved to Okalhoma and I am sure they have nothing like that here. Let me know if you get any good feedback on helping our kids become more friendly. It is really weird because my older daughter is the opposite and so social never wants to be alone. It’s good to find this site. Hope to get alot of good info.

Karen

How old is your son and what do they do in the social skills class. I know they had classes for social skills in L.A. but now I am in Oklahoma and services are sorely lacking. My son is almost ten and lives in make believe land and doesn’t seem to care if he ever has anyone over again. He had his first sleepover several months ago and I think it so stressed him out that he refuses to have anyone else over ever since. Go figure

Karen

I’m trying to be non-judgmental since I don’t know you but don’t you mean has ld, not is ld.

Depends what you mean by LD. IS learning disabled or HAS learning disabilities.

Beth

What I meant was that a person CAN’T be disabled!

This “non-judgemental” comment derailed the discussion. Grammar lessons do not contribute any supportive value to the people who post items on these boards.

My son is 11 and has ADHD and is also learning disabled. We live in a rural area and now am homeschooling him so he too has no friends. Even when he was in school he stayed away from kids his own age other than the five that were in his special ed class, they were less judgemental I believe. He either likes to play with kids 7-8 yrs old or kids alot older and I believe that is because the same reason. My son too has a grand imagination, but as he has gotton older he spends less time in fantacy land, he now loves computer games better.

I don’t think it was a grammar comment.
What you *are* is very different from what you *have.* It means something fundamentally different.

Hi,
My son has no friends, we have kept him active in baseball, soccer, school activities, I was even class mom a couple of times, thinking this might help him with friends, it’s not that he doesn’t get along with people, he is a very loving boy, wants to hug all the time. He also gets along better with younger kids, then kids his own age, they won’t play with him, they call him names and all the bad things kids shouldn’t say. He wants to learn to read so bad but gets very frustrated with his self, yells at everyone, throws things and it’s all because he can’t read, he is in 2nd grade, we had him held back one-year as the special education classes also agreed this would be best. He is a very smart boy in lots of ways, he does better in math than reading. He can take anything apart and put it back together. He is real good in baseball, throwing and catching, but doesn’t understand where 1st, shortstop or centerfield, etc. is, so the kids don’t really want him playing. I need to know what to do about getting him to like school even a little bit, he says he hates school, he’s not going, he is going to call the police on me because I’m going to make him go to school. I thought this would pass over after a year, but every year it gets worse and worse, the teachers say not to worry, he doesn’t act like that at school, but I am worried, I would like for him to read, he has a very hard time reading 2nd grade level, he is behind on this and he should be in 3rd grade. Any suggestions would be greatly apprectiated.
Thanks.
Dawn Golden

Has your son been tested for learning disabilities? Is he receiving help in the form of a specific, systematic, direct instruction reading program that will help him read?
I would suggest pushing for an assessment if one has not been done, buying the book Reading Reflex at your local bookstore and beginning to tutor him in reading ASAP. You can hire a tutor if you feel you can’t do this; however, it is a very user friendly program and it works! If you need to hire a tutor, find one trained in Phono-Graphix (the classroom or clinical name for the Reading Reflex program—RR is the parent version). Otherwise, if a PG tutor is not available, look for one trained in an Orton-Gillingham method. It is systematic and multisensory. You can find lots of postive posts about either method by searching on these boards.
My son was in the same boat, but once he was assessed he was fast-tracked into the Specific Learning Disabilities class. Prior to this, though, I was more or less told not to worry my head about it. I hired a tutor (Orton-Gillingham—the Barton program) immediately upon getting test results, before my son was moved into the SLD class.
After just under 4 months of tutoring he was reading at grade level and feeling much better about himself and about school. Get reading remediation regardless of whether your son turns out to have LD—the sooner the better. You can’t count on his getting what he needs at school where the whole language approach generally still reigns. Good luck!

Dawn,

When kids feel that they are not socially successful at school, they do not want to be there and when they are not not keeping up with the others academically, they begin to hate school. When you feel that no one likes you, you don’t bother to put in the effort it may take to overcome even minor academic difficulties, never mind learning to read.

Your mission should be twofold: determine if there are any actual learning disabilities and remediate *AND* seek some social skills training for your son. That fact is (contrary to what my parents told me!) school should be FUN. If kids call you names (SOMETHING THE TEACHER SHOULD PUT A STOP TO IMMEDIATELY!) and no one wants to play with you or pick you for partners in class, it’s a cold, lonely world out there for a little boy.

Just think, if you (as an adult) were in a job that you were just learning and your co-workers called you names, didn’t ask you to have lunch with them or talk to you and you thought that your boss didn’t like you either you would be out of there in one hot minute! Your son has no real choice - It’s up to you. Good Luck!

You mean he has a disability!

Unfortunatly it is the norm. My son is fifteen and would rather be home that anywhere. We have to make him go places with us. I worry that as an adult this type of behavior will lead to real problems. He likes to be part of a group but years of teasing and being picked on has turned him off. He has never been invited to a birthday party.

Amy, you’re wrong.

I’m fifteen too and I love and prefer to be inside so what’s wrong with this?

Are you now agreeing with me or did you mean something else by what you typed?

I have a daughter that has a learning disablity and a serveve speech problem. She in regular class half the time and in special classroom the other time. She was happy going to a new school the being of the year, but now it’s at the end of the year she is very unhappy. (I call out) acting out with me she won’t do her homework when I ask her and crys sometimes she seem to be unhappy and it’s hurting me as a mother I don’t know what to do. I had a sorta personal problem with her regular teacher. Tonight I ask her why she is acting this way she told me her classmates are laughing at her all the time. She has had girlfriends in her classroom ,come over but be her friend for a short time untill the other girls group come in< meaning they ignored her>I had a little girl come over and tell me everyone in there class makes fun of my child. I just don’t know what to do. My child sometimes likes to be alone. I think when girls comes over they think she is boring.because my child likes to watch T.V.And know one ask her over. She is in brownie for social skills but I was wondering if anyone had in respone of what I should do.Does anyone know there’s a social skill class in Ohio?