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

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First, I would talk to him about balance.  He needs to learn some things (like Roblox) that are age appropriate so that he has exposure to and socialization with other kids his age.  Tell him that he needs to learn how to interact with kids his age so that he learns some social skills interacting with others.

That said, he also needs to be able to explore his passions, like military history.  There are a number of chat rooms out there that discuss historical battles and you or he can find them via Google.  Sign him up for an account on one of those chat rooms and monitor the account, his postings and his interactions.  But he'll find other military enthusiasts who will enjoy talking about historical battles with him.  And he'll learn more about a subject he is passionate about by talking about the subject with other enthusiasts.  Just monitor his interactions because most of the other participants will be adults.  I have two sons who are very involved in online gaming and communicating with their friends on-line.  One side benefit is that this has helped their typing and they type faster and more accurately now.  And that has helped them in school as so much is done on the computer.  With the increased speed and accuracy, they get less stressed about the time it takes the input their work into the computer.[/quote]

This is really odd advice [/quote]

Not the PP, but this worked well for my autistic child. She was never able to make friends in school but when things shut down for covid, she found an online community focused on a niche interest. This became her lifeline and she was socially successful for the first time ever. When things reopened, she was able to take that confidence and learned social skills and make friends at school, although her online friends are closer, because they share this intense special interest.

Yes, it required lots of conversations about internet safety and monitoring and trust. But I would do it again in a heartbeat.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics