So I have a 16 year old daughter who for the last few years has been struggling to foster and maintain friendships. She is truly a wonderful, honest and kind soul, but she is also shy timid and lacking in confidence.
Throughout primary school her class all got along as one big group, but with moving to secondary school you could see the first splintering of friends into groups as you would expect. At this time she played Gaelic with some of the girls in her class but strong groups started to form and she was on the periphery. she was struggling with the physical aspects of football and camogie so was getting left out of matches and this was where we started to see her confidence start to drain. her friends who were better at sports stuck together more and more, especially when some of them were getting moved to the older age groups.
In school in first and second year she was on good terms with one or two long term friends from primary school but this started to wane as well. She made some new friends initially, but this ended in disaster as the new friend was really leading them astray and there was a shoplifting incident that put an end to that.
In second and third year she became close friends with a sister of our youngest daughters friend. this seemed to be going really well, they were both a little timid and shy and they clicked. We done as much as we could to foster this as she lived in another town, but as there were two sisters as friends, it seemed to click nicely overall. This soured in third year and really we’re at a loss on it. The younger of the sisters took a dislike to our youngest and then the elder sister was visibly bitchy with our eldest. In my mind what happened was she saw our daughter as a crutch in school and at some point once her confidence was up saw it as easy to disregard her - at pone point messaging her to have a cruel dig about our daughter not having any other friends.
In TY we thought things had started to change, she was hanging around with a mixed group of boys and girls and they seem like a lovely bunch overall. Towards the end of the year however we started to see some red flags. driving through the town one day we seen the group hanging out and our daughter went red instantly when she saw them. Casually asking her why she hadn’t asked to go hang out we found out she was being left out again and that there was a new WhatsApp group and she was not included on it. We tried to push her to be vocal and say to one of the friends to add her, but she continually avoided the conversation. It turns out the group had been extended to almost the full TY class, with only some (but not all) of the foreign kids who kept to themselves and the few kids with autism that are part of the group.
After she was left out of a party invite, we convinced her to say it to one of her friends about adding her and it ended horribly in that the friend openly laughed at her to her face and just said ‘as if’.
At her TY graduation we sat in pure agony for her as she looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her up. Not one of her previous long term friends were engaging with her, snd she was totally ignored by all of the more recent ones. I even have a knot in my stomach thinking back on it to see how pained she was trying to put on smile and act like there was nothing amiss with it. As other kids were jumping into group photos with each other, standing on stage with teachers and enjoying themselves, she raced over to us and just asked to leave. She sat in the car on the way home and kept the facade up until we got home and then she was a flood of tears.
Fast forward to 5th year now and we are two days in and I can’t see how she is going to make it through school at all. She is not sleeping and is a ball of anxiety. Any attempt to talk to her is met with ‘I don’t want to talk about it right now’. I can see she is trying to put up barriers to insulate or protect herself but she is going to turn her self inside out.
this isn’t about me, but I just feel so helpless and unable to help her. It took me until later in my thirties to realise I had crippling social anxiety and lack of confidence, and how much it affected me (and still does). I managed to have friend groups in school and after with playing sports, but realised quickly that if I wasn’t chasing people or including myself, people were not bothered to stay in touch with me. I feel ill-equipped to guide her when I merely winged it and was a ‘hanger-on’ of sorts.
I always knew my daughter was quiet and timid, but always hoped that confidence would come as she got older. I think we are at a critical point with her now as the pressure of school and study and not wanting to be in that environment. Her confidence and trust is totally shot.
If this sounds familiar to you I would greatly appreciate your stories, experiences or advice.