He’s never been particularly social, our youngest.  I used to encourage (?push?) him to have play dates & friends round for tea when he was younger, and on several occasions I found him hiding from said friends in the bath.  He didn’t mind parties when he was in infants as they were normally at soft play areas, and he could just run around. As they got older, though, and the parties became a little more organised, I used to find invitations screwed up in his blazer, at the bottom of his bag, or they would just disappear.  I thought he wasn’t being invited, when actually he didn’t want to go.

He still isn’t keen on people coming to our house, or on going to other people’s houses. He likes mixing with friends when he wants to, but he likes his own company more.  He has increased his social circle at secondary school but it is still hard for him to let people in, and he has a core 4 or 5 friends who he is happy with.  Because he won’t go to sleep overs, and because he won’t have sleepovers here, I was beginning to worry that he is missing out on opportunities to get more friends and do more ‘normal’ stuff. He doesn’t play online games, so he misses out on interactions there as most of his peers’ parents complain that their kids are never off their XBox/PlayStation or whatever.

Until now, none of this has bothered him, but this evening I have had a glimpse of the frustration that he is having at the moment.  He is on the outside looking in at everyone being social and doing stuff together and I think he wants to want to get a bit closer. There have been a couple of get togethers recently that either he wasn’t invited to, or didn’t ask to go to, and the few words we’ve had on the way home makes me think that he is feeling left out a bit.  I don’t blame his peers for not inviting him at all – there are only so many times people will ask you to go before they almost forget to invite you. I’ve been there, turning down invite after invite because of babysitting issues and then you don’t get invited anymore and other people’s social lives go on without you, but I’m not sure how to help him go from the outside to the inside.

It’s days like these that really highlight how hard it must be for him – so close to being mainstream and ‘normal’, and yet so very far away.