My Son has No Friends!

baseballmom
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:49:19 +0000

Sure D’yer…for one, we have some experience with this. Our D was extremely homesick years ago. It lasted for 3 weeks and ended when she was told that her behavior was embarassing us. Her response was to not call us for a week and after that we were lucky to get a once per week phone call (pre cell phone days).

Fast forward to son. Completely different kid. He was homesick but never said so. He was miserable socially and was bullied for weeks before telling us. Once that was straightened out entirely by the school and the bullies were appropriately disciplined, things improved slightly.

Son was calling us 4 to 8 times per day with variants of “i have no friends, nothing to do, food stinks, it’s boring, etc.” The relationship with his roommate was tolerable but they had agreed that they did not like each other and both wanted a switch.

The ultimate success was a combination of two things:

Firstly, H told son to stop calling us with every little complaint and figure things out for himself. That resulted in an almost immediate reduction in daily calls from about 6-8 to 2-3.

Secondly, we sent a clear message to the administration that we felt our son had been through enough and asked them to work on the roommate switch project. This request was made several times on the phone, but the firmest and clearest request for the switch was put in an email with a detailed list of the problems son had endured. This was worded NOT as a complaint, but as a reminder that it would remain a major problem for our son until it was remedied. After sending the email, we never contacted the school about the need for a room switch. We were patient and it took about 2 weeks. Previous to the email H was in almost daily contact with the school leaving voice mail messages and talking to various people in the administration.

Since the roommate switch (Saturday), son has called 3 times, once on Saturday and twice yesterday. Now H is wondering what is going on and keeps calling my son! :)