Reply to Sigh. Another lonely weekend for my teen

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a 17 year old and he is still the same. He is a very sweet kid with lots of interests including sports, politics, etc but I think he finds it hard to take friendships to a closer level. He also was very slow to join social media, in fact still does little with it, and I think that is a lot of how kids bonded, particularly in late middle school.

On one hand I do think my son has learned to enjoy his own company, which is great. On the other hand, I think he is often lonely (he is also an only child) and I think it is developmentally appropriate for teens to socialize with each other so find it a little concerning he is missing out on that.

It has given us food for thought as we discuss colleges (son is applying now). Some people have advised that son might more easily find friends at a smaller college, but I actually think he could feel more left out there as not being part of a group would be more noticeable (it is not like my son’s personality will magically change when he goes to college, and all of a sudden find it easy to make lots of friends). So I am encouraging him to apply to some larger colleges, and crossing my fingers he finds a few good friends at that stage of life. [/quote]

This is my son! He's a sophomore in college now, though. But he's commuting to a local college from home. I think he is finally expressing a desire to have friends/buddies. I don't know if the lack of friends bothered him in high school (I think it did. He had a lot of friends until middle school and struggled since then. He just didn't express any concerns about it through high school.)  He also has some anxiety and needs to feel comfortable. It's taken him a year of my promoting the campus ministry to him to finally gather up the courage and coordinate his schedule to finally attend his first gathering. He has met some others through ROTC; but that still doesn't translate to a social life outside of ROTC. Living at home doesn't help and hopefully he'll get even more involved in the campus life when he moves out of here and lives on/near campus next year.

As parents, we tried for years. There's only so much you can do and now we just have to continue being encouraging and hope for the best.[/quote]

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