# Lonely child - long and rambling!



## bluefish (Jan 27, 2006)

I'm not sure what I'm after here, just rambling I suppose. We have an only child (though not for lack of trying), dd age 8 1/2. We homeschool. The problem is, my DD has no friends.

We moved to another state in November and still don't really know anybody. It's another small town. That's all I've ever lived in really, but they can be hard to break into. Especially for someone like me, who's very introverted. So, we don't 'know' anybody. I put DD in a horrible 4-H to try and get her out and about. She gets along pretty well with the other kids, but really has nothing in common with them. More due to lifestyle, I think, than homeschool vs public school. The other kids get to talking about the last episode of whatever is popular on TV at the moment, who kissed who on the bus, stuff like that. We don't have TV, so that doesn't help. She also has fiddle lessons and such. 4-H is the only thing that really involves other kids, though.

The homeschool community here is not very coherent, and consists of teens and little ones, toddlers. Nobody has any kids my DD's age. Even where we moved from, all her friends were boys. I'm the only person I know who has a girl.:indif: And pretty soon, she'll be to an age where she needs a girlfriend. She's lonely and wants a friend to play with, to come spend the night, etc.

It helped where we used to live that we fostered. We came within a hair of adopting 2 girls just a smidge older than DD, so she knows what she's missing. We'd love to foster again, but at the moment we are living in our garage with plans to start building a house next summer. Nobody will talk to us in that situation.

I've thought of sending her to public school. Not so much for 'socialization', she actually gets to talk to a fair bit of people, they're just all 'old'. But I'm scared to death to do that. Where we lived before was a nice, small town. But, being foster parents, and being acquainted with one of the local therapists, I knew the seedy underside of the town and school. This is a different town, but I can't believe that it's totally lacking in that sort of thing. I just cannot make myself subject my DD to bullying, sexual abuse, drug dealing/using, etc. And this was all in the k-3rd grade! It got WAY worse as one got higher in the grade levels. I've seen enough of this town to know it's got it's bad side as well. And that bad side has kids. I've also noticed towns that most of the kids are already in klicks from daycare.

I try my best to be friend and mom, but it just can't be done, especially as she gets older. She'll need somebody she can rail to about how awful Mom is.

Again, I don't exactly know what I'm asking about? This is just something I worry about a lot. My DD is very social and loves having 'lots of friends'. She's not a loner. I always was, even in public school I never had any friends and was really ok with it.

Anybody have any thoughts at all? About anything?


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## mammabooh (Sep 1, 2004)

I don't really have any advice for you, but I too have an only child that we are homeschooling...a boy that is also 8 1/2. Perhaps they might like to be penpals.

If your daughter is interested, let me know and I'll see if my son is. He's pretty shy about girls, but if he doesn't have to talk to her face to face, he might just be up for it...hee hee hee!


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## bluefish (Jan 27, 2006)

Oh, she'd love that!! If it helps your son any, she's all about frogs and toads right now. We have several living temporarily on the kitchen table.


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## mekasmom (Jan 19, 2010)

What about ballet lessons? church and sunday school? Swimming lessons? 
Your daughter is fine right now. She does not have to have an 8yo friend. She can have other friends at varying ages just fine. And it's better to keep her homeschooling rather than expose her to the horrors of public school. But there are other options such as dance, gymnastics, early girl scout clubs (bluebirds?), even acting in community plays and things. Plus, when it comes to homeschooling, sometimes you just have to travel to neighboring (larger) towns for bigger coops. We spent lots of time attending coop activities in other towns, sometimes an hour or more away, when the kids were small.


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## shanzone2001 (Dec 3, 2009)

My daughter is 9 and would love to be her penpal...I just asked her and she said, "Yes, yes, yes! I will soooo be her friend. She can come visit and sleep in my room." Awww...send me a pm if you want to get them connected!


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## Pony (Jan 6, 2003)

I don't know that she's necessarily going to go through a stage where she needs to rail against you or even rage against the machine. :shrug: It's not necessarily a rite of passage, and I think it happens less often in families where the kids don't have so much of a certain kind of socialization (read: public school). 

If she has a couple older female friends with whom she can make connection and develop a relationship, then that's great. You'll know she's less likely to be led down that primrose path to perdition.

I'm biased. Even though my children went to parochial school, and then (dear God what a trial and I could go on all day) public high school (but in 3 years, and DS went to a non-traditional HS), I have worked in schools and with kids who needed to be protected from school.

You and your daughter will make good use of the resources you have, and I think it's very cool she already has a couple new pen pals.


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## rean (Nov 18, 2008)

Ask your local librarian about other lonely little girls. I bet she/he knows of some.


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## dranger1108 (Aug 7, 2010)

maybe find out if there is a local girl's scout or campfire group?
when I homeschooled the kids, they ended up going to a local kid's church group and made friends in the neighborhood that way.


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## Sonshine (Jul 27, 2007)

I homeschool an only child too. We have several neighbors that have kids though, so he has friends through that. One thing I've always done though was get him involved in outside activities. He's done cubscouts, taikwondo, swimming and church, so he's always had a fairly active social life.


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## ovsfarm (Jan 14, 2003)

At about the same age, my daughter told me that she was terribly lonely. We talked a lot about how to meet new people, how to be a friend, and praying to God about it. By the time she was 9, she had met two girls her same age and decided that one of the boys she already knew was pretty good friend material after all. She began spending lots of time on the phone chatting with these friends and although her "face time" with friends didn't change all that much, she became convinced that she was quite the social butterfly.

All that to say that I think there might be an 8yo thing where girls just feel lonely. Try to get her involved in special interest groups where there will be other kids her age and see if she clicks with anyone.


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## bluefish (Jan 27, 2006)

Thanks all! There's some good ideas to think about. My DH recently got a job in this town, he used to work in one an hour away, so I'm hoping that will help as well. He's very good at getting to know people and what's happening around. DD is thrilled with penpals!


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## mammabooh (Sep 1, 2004)

thermopkt...if you'd like, PM me your daughter's name and address, and I'll get my son started on a letter for her.


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## highlandview (Feb 15, 2007)

You could look into girl scouts or 4H.


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## Jeni (Mar 24, 2010)

I agree with everyone else. Lots of activities. I am an introvert as well, so putting myself out there on behalf of my kid is hard. Sounds like you are on the right track with the pen pals. I am sure your dd will be fine.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

thermopkt said:


> I'm not sure what I'm after here, just rambling I suppose. We have an only child (though not for lack of trying), dd age 8 1/2. We homeschool. The problem is, my DD has no friends.


I can't believe I missed this one!!

In fact, I could have written your post, except that I have two kids; 8 and 10. And we're living in our _shop_, which is a garage/barn combo. 

My kids got VERY lonely when we were homeschooling. 
Anyone who poo-poos the true _value_ of the "socialization" (or maybe the better term is socialIZING) that's to be had in public school simply isn't isolated enough to understand. 

Sure we do things like 4H, church, and homeschool activities (when there _were_ some!), but having to go for a week or two without seeing another kid and then getting to spend a few minutes of unstructured time with them? It's not the same as being in school. 
It's just not. 
Not to mention, when you're fairly isolated any activity you do means more driving time!

My kids begged to go back to school so we said we'd try it this year and see how it goes. 

There are indeed drawbacks to public school. But at the same time, it's really not any worse than when _we_ were in school. 

My son (10) has had his first run-in with cliques. He's figured out he's near the bottom of the pecking-order in his class. He honestly doesn't care. In fact, he's rather anthropological about it. Trying to figure out why kids feel the need to form these groups... 
More importantly, the fact that he's a strong kid who doesn't care has apparently been setting an example. He's made friends with the other kids at the bottom of the food chain and is helping them see that it doesn't really matter if the "cool" kids like them or not. His teacher is super-impressed. lol

Also, I need to mention, the only time he's truly been bullied was at Awana!! When we were homeschooling. 

DD, on the other hand, is making friends left and right. She's my social butterfly and is in full bloom. 

Both of them are doing quite well academically, because both have figured out that Mom is probably the toughest teacher they'll ever have. 



All of this said, I think it would be better for them to be homeschooling. They made better academic progress, they didn't have the social pressures and it made our family closer. 

But they were _so_ lonely...  
So this year, that's the direction the scales tipped for us. They're back in school.


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## ACountryMomma (Aug 10, 2008)

I can completely sympathize! I have 2 children and have been homeschooling for 5 years. My son is 11 and my daughter is 7. I went so far as to start an email list for people who homeschool in our general area, but most who signed up live in the nearest metro area (about 45 min drive) and they already had been having get togethers in the city parks. So they already knew each other. The problem was that most all the children who regularly showed up were toddlers to preschool/K age. My daughter was OK with it but it seemed that when ever someone finally started regularly bringing any kids my son's age they would end up moving or returning to PS. Plus they really wanted to make friends a little closer to home. It's a pain to drive almost an hour to a park to play for 2 hours, but we make time - on the other hand people in the metro area seemed to be overwhelmed at the idea of driving out to our place for the kids to play together for the day.

So we have to make a lot of effort to invite kids over, living way out in the country like we do it ends up being a once a week, or 3x per month thing. We also joined 4-H last year and that was a great help because we found another homeschooling family. If not for them my daughter would have been fine because in her young group (cloverbuds) the kids are busy either soaking up the lesson or playing together... but for my son the boys & girls his age who public school are very "clique" oriented. He is willing to start up conversations with new people, but the ps children are very wrapped up in the drama they experienced over the week. But, like I said, we did meet a homeschooling family and their boy and my son are about the same age and get along quite well.

We don't generally go to church, but I did try one out last fall - but there were NO kids over 5. So my son and daughter both had their Sunday school teachers all to themselves! Not exactly the best place to make friends... And from talking to folks about other churches in nearby small towns, this is pretty common. The kids just aren't coming to church. I wonder if their lives are so packed full with school & homework & sports & 4-H & etc. that they just have to get a little break & Sunday morning is the time to do it?

At any rate. I'm planning to start driving to the city again to see if there might be some older children since the last time at the get togethers (we call them park days). You might set up a yahoo group to encourage homeschooling people in your area to communicate and make plans together? I started the one for our area they year we started homeschooling & it grew slowly, but there are 140+ members with about 10-15 actively participating online, while others tend to read about plans and participate in real life. 

I guess I'm finally starting to accept that it's always going to take a LOT more effort on my part, not only to homeschool the kids, but to give them as many opportunities as possible to make good friends. On the plus side... the friends they make are terrific children who we love having over and are like part of the family!


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## bluefish (Jan 27, 2006)

You know what's _really_ frustrating? In the last two weeks, I've met *two* families who homeschool and have kids my DD's age. They have the same interests and priorities as us, homestead lifestyle, all that.

And they're moving.:Bawling:

We need a beating head against wall smiley.


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