KOTO - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
When you were a teenager in middle or high school, were your parents ever on your case for not having enough friends or extracurriculars?
One teenager is struggling to develop a social circle outside of school and doesn’t participate in any school sports. He recently had an outburst at his parents, whom he blames for his lack of socialization.
He’s 14 and a freshman in high school. Unfortunately, he’s struggled to find a solid friend group and social circle since elementary school.
“This is something my parents criticize me a lot for,” he said.
“They were both popular and well-liked in school and college, and they complain that I’m always at home, never go out with friends, etc. [They] say it’s unhealthy. They also criticize the fact that I’m nonathletic, skinny, etc. I think my struggle to connect with others, make friends, and my lack of athleticism is, in large part, because of them.”
He feels all of this is his parents’ fault because they live in a part of their neighborhood that never had kids his age nearby, so the only time he could see his peers was at school or school-related events.
When he was around six, his parents took him out of the sports and extra-curricular activities he participated in because they felt he wasn’t good enough.
“My parents removed me from all of them,” he explained.
“Soccer, because they felt I wasn’t good at soccer, it was ’embarrassing.’ [They took me out of] Taekwondo because I was getting into conflicts with other kids and Boy Scouts because it was really time-consuming for them to have to drive me to stuff. In each case, I told them I wanted to continue, and they didn’t care.”
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