<p>My son is a currently a sophomore at an all boys school. The school is 25 minutes from home and offers nothing in the way of social activities. Most of his classmates are 30-60 minutes away. Any suggestions that you might have for social opportunities would be appreciated. He's a good student, good looking, and a good athlete, now he just needs a social life. Thanks!</p>
<p>umm hahahahaha wow…
"He’s a good student, good looking, and a good athlete, now he just needs a social life. "</p>
<p>wow really, so he has three attributes that usually point to having a good social life… but he somehow doesnt have one. i think youre one of those mothers who think theyre children are perfect…</p>
<p>anyways, make him make a club?</p>
<p>^^ clearly this guy only read the last line…</p>
<p>anyway, sports is a decent social opportunity. if you mean social opportunities with both sexes involved… no idea. i’m in a somewhat similar situation, classmates scattered all over the place, but its coed. i hang out with my friends at school, play sports… and its not against the law to spend some friday/saturday nights home.</p>
<p>This is probably better asked in the parents section. This section is more about people ranting about nonsense or ■■■■■■■■ than giving a whole lot of worthwhile advice.</p>
<p>^No. Most of the parents are disillusioned about high school “social life”. </p>
<p>Friends are the gateway to social opportunities.</p>
<p>^Students go to the parents forum as well. Really it’s just for more serious discussions than parents only. It’s not as if only parents are allowed.</p>
<p>I am on the parent’s forum all the time. Go there, they will have MUCH better advice for you.</p>
<p>To start, it’s a little strange that he doesn’t have a social life. No parent wants to hear that their child is flawed, but he may need to work on some of his social skills: saying hello to people, smiling, making small talk/jokes, eye contact. He should have a cell phone and have the numbers of all the people on his sports teams and in his classes, along with a facebook. He calls up a friend to hang out, they go somewhere, suddenly there are a few other kids from a different school there(hopefully girls, because he goes to a boys school), he meets them(and later fb friends them, or gets their cell) and now his social circle has widened. And it’ll just get bigger and bigger. In the middle of Junior year, when he knows 200 people decently well, it’ll be tough to not have anything to do on a free night. </p>
<p>If he doesn’t have a license you will have to drive him places, unless he manages to get a ride with someone else.</p>
<p>I’m kind of in the same boat.</p>
<p>Try having friends from school who live in another <em>state</em> than you do.</p>
<p>The schools here overall lack in decency… so we have kids who travel as much as an hour to get to school. We used to have a girl who lived an hour and a half away!</p>
<p>I mean… I have a single friend who lives about ten minutes away. Otherwise… My friends live 20, 30, 40, and 50 minutes away.</p>
<p>I think the easiest thing to do is just go see a movie.</p>
<p>He doesn’t need any sort of organized social activity, he just needs friends. In HS, you generally call up your friends, or they call you, and you go somewhere, or you go to each other’s houses. It’s not very formal. So all he needs to do is make some acquaintances, get their numbers, and then he can call them, they can go out, they’ll become closer. Having some friends will give him more confidence, and he’ll make more friends. Or he might just have a really close knit circle of people with whom he always hangs out.
His team is probably a good place to pursue friendships. Classes are also good. There are probably already some people around who he talks to a bit, people who might be called acquaintances, so he should just get to know them a bit more, and get their numbers. Since he’s a soph, and his friends will likely be around the same age, I’m guessing you’ll probably have to drive him to these activities, whether it be to the movies, to a friends house, to whatever the popular hang out place is there, but since you’re so interested in the advancement of your son’s social life, I feel like you probably won’t mind. But alternate with the friend’s parent too, you don’t want to be stuck driving all the time.</p>
<p>Lol this person posted this in the parents’ cafe.
Everyone go there to make suggestions.</p>
<p>This is a bit awkward.
But I go to an all-girls school with kids from 4 different states, some 1.5 hours away. If you’re trying to encourage your son to make friends, the best way would be to join a club or two and a sport, preferably, students in the club would also be on the sports team so you would get fairly close by the end of the year. However, since most friends are probably far away and school is relatively far too, the friday/saturday night social scene probably won’t start to pick up until a lot of kids can start driving. So until then, socializing will probably be going to the occasional football game and dance. The one thing that will definitely not help a child socially would be to have an overbearing mother who is continues to encourage her child to become more popular because it really just comes off as awkward and it’s fairly degrading to the child.</p>