11 year old doesn't have any friends with his interests

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the things he likes to talk about?

The gallipoli campaign duhh

This doesn’t strike as that odd. Lots of kids like talking about historical battles be it WWI or Roman Empire. There must be something about the way he’s communicating about battles that’s turning people off.

I say this as someone with an elementary daughter who loves fantasy books and she still manages to find others who share her special interest.

The only other problem I see is that your son seems fixated on this specific group of friends. When my daughter wanted to talk about fantasy books she had to find the quieter kids who she might not have interacted much before. Her regular group of outgoing soccer girls were not interested and she had enough social skills to not try to force the topic. Obviously, you have to be open to meeting new people for this to work.

I wouldn't say he's fixated. He's at a private school with only two classes per grade in elementary, so there just aren't a lot of kids to hang out with.

[Anonymous]

This is not what you want to hear. He needs to up his EQ, unless you want him to go through life without friends.

I grew up with someone like your son and she has very few friends. You are giving the same vibes - no one is teasing your kid for being smart at a private school. They are interested in other things. He needs to learn to find common ground. You pursuing the fallacy that he is smarter than the other kids at his school will not be helpful in the long run.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not what you want to hear. He needs to up his EQ, unless you want him to go through life without friends.

I grew up with someone like your son and she has very few friends. You are giving the same vibes - no one is teasing your kid for being smart at a private school. They are interested in other things. He needs to learn to find common ground. You pursuing the fallacy that he is smarter than the other kids at his school will not be helpful in the long run.

+1 teaching social skills is very important (said from someone whose parents gave zero help with this and had to learn everything on my own)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the things he likes to talk about?

The gallipoli campaign duhh

This doesn’t strike as that odd. Lots of kids like talking about historical battles be it WWI or Roman Empire. There must be something about the way he’s communicating about battles that’s turning people off.

I say this as someone with an elementary daughter who loves fantasy books and she still manages to find others who share her special interest.

The only other problem I see is that your son seems fixated on this specific group of friends. When my daughter wanted to talk about fantasy books she had to find the quieter kids who she might not have interacted much before. Her regular group of outgoing soccer girls were not interested and she had enough social skills to not try to force the topic. Obviously, you have to be open to meeting new people for this to work.

I wouldn't say he's fixated. He's at a private school with only two classes per grade in elementary, so there just aren't a lot of kids to hang out with.

The school is the problem - those small schools just don’t have groups for kids like him. Hopefully his MS will be bigger next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not what you want to hear. He needs to up his EQ, unless you want him to go through life without friends.

I grew up with someone like your son and she has very few friends. You are giving the same vibes - no one is teasing your kid for being smart at a private school. They are interested in other things. He needs to learn to find common ground. You pursuing the fallacy that he is smarter than the other kids at his school will not be helpful in the long run.

Like I said, he's gotten better. But his interests haven't changed, and that's where the issue is. How do I convince him to watch YouTube videos on Roblox instead of military history? I created a more appropriate playlist of video game videos last week and he was pretty angry about it.

I do not think he is smarter than the other kids. He does, because they tell them so. I don't know how to stop that until they do.

[Anonymous]

OP again. So I guess the other question is, how do I make him interested in "normal" things? He says he's bored at lunch now because he doesn't have anything to talk about anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again. So I guess the other question is, how do I make him interested in "normal" things? He says he's bored at lunch now because he doesn't have anything to talk about anymore.

You can’t make him be interested in “normal” things. You can, however, teach him to be (or pretend to be) interested in other people.

He’s bored because he literally doesn’t know how to talk about anything other than his own interests. Teach him to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. So I guess the other question is, how do I make him interested in "normal" things? He says he's bored at lunch now because he doesn't have anything to talk about anymore.

You can’t make him be interested in “normal” things. You can, however, teach him to be (or pretend to be) interested in other people.

He’s bored because he literally doesn’t know how to talk about anything other than his own interests. Teach him to do that.

He does ask questions and hold conversations - we've practiced! But he's just pretending, though he does it really well. He needs to actually be interested, and he's not.

(Also, asking basic questions about Roblox is another way to get bullied, as we unfortunately discovered.)

[Anonymous]

put him in a big public school so he has more kids to hang out with--why spend money for him to get bullied?

Ask him what group activities he'd want to do--he can still read about military history, but if he takes an art class or does a sport or martial arts or church youth group or scouts or robotics or something, he'll have a group of friends and a shared background.

Lean in to summer programs too and facilitate connections to the friends he makes there. Smithsonian camp, sleepovers at the National Archives, see if Society of the Cincinnati is offering Revolutionary War camp again, CTY, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is not what you want to hear. He needs to up his EQ, unless you want him to go through life without friends.

I grew up with someone like your son and she has very few friends. You are giving the same vibes - no one is teasing your kid for being smart at a private school. They are interested in other things. He needs to learn to find common ground. You pursuing the fallacy that he is smarter than the other kids at his school will not be helpful in the long run.

Like I said, he's gotten better. But his interests haven't changed, and that's where the issue is. How do I convince him to watch YouTube videos on Roblox instead of military history? I created a more appropriate playlist of video game videos last week and he was pretty angry about it.

I do not think he is smarter than the other kids. He does, because they tell them so. I don't know how to stop that until they do.

My DS is a lot like yours, he LOVES military history, but for whatever reason he never talks about it school. However, I finally let him have Fortnite specifically for social reasons. In just 2 weeks it's made a HUGE difference. I am glad we held off (he's in 5th, almost 11), but also glad that he is able to fit in more because of this. Flame me if you will, but I figure there are way worse things he could be doing.

[Anonymous]

He may not be smarter than other kids, but he's definitely more interesting. My kids think it's dull af when kids start talking about video games. Because it is.

Find a home school group he can be part of. Don't send him down the video game hole, what a curse.

You lucked out and he's a thoughtful, interesting kid who is somehow immune to the gaming virus.

[Anonymous]

My kid is ASD with low support needs (10 years ago would have been Aspbergers). This sounds exactly like her. The "faking it" you refer to could be masking. Read up on it. The spectrum is wide and deep. The struggle is real. Start with "Is This Autism" by Donna Henderson.

My kid's special interest is Avatar the Last Airbender. Seems to be a common interest of kids with this profile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is ASD with low support needs (10 years ago would have been Aspbergers). This sounds exactly like her. The "faking it" you refer to could be masking. Read up on it. The spectrum is wide and deep. The struggle is real. Start with "Is This Autism" by Donna Henderson.

My kid's special interest is Avatar the Last Airbender. Seems to be a common interest of kids with this profile.

OMG with the ASD. Please. Unless your kid is rain man it's not a disorder. They're just interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From K-4, his classmates made fun of him for "being smart." Really, it was that he would bring up topics that they didn't care about - they wanted to talk about video games and would call him names when he changed the subject. We finally convinced him it's not ok to change the subject when a group has made it clear they want to talk about something. And that kids his age don't want to hear about the failure of the Gallipoli campaign or how insulin is produced.

Now in 5th grade, his classmates have stopped teasing him, and he's learned to talk Roblox (which he doesn't particularly about), but it bores him, and he wants to be around kids who talk about different things. How do we find other kids like this? Neighborhood searches haven't panned out. A few summer camp last year were helpful, but it was just a few weeks. Advice?

Does your kid have HFA? I don’t intend to diagnose him & have zero credentials for doing so, but this sounds like textbook HFA… especially changing the subject to a niche subject of interest & not following/understanding the social cues to not do that without help.

I was wondering about autism and saw the same red flags.

But, OP, he finds kids with common interests through activities based on those interests. You haven't given us enough information about what he's interested in, but outschool is a good place to find kids all interested in niche topics.

Np Why is Autism seen as a "red" flag? To me, a red flag is ignoring signs that your boyfriend/girlfriend is controlling or narcissist. How is being on the Autism spectrum a red flag?

[Anonymous]

Maybe life’s better on Saturn for him