VERY lonely...

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My daughter is VERY lonely. She is 14, was homeschooled for 6 yrs. Our situation made it where she wasn't around any other kids at ALL hardly. It has made her so depressed. Even though she's in a very small school now, she can't go now because of her anxiety. I don't know how much longer she can hold on. I have tried all I can think of to get her friends and to even BE around other kids. She WANTS friends, she isn't the type who likes to be alone.
We've tried girl scouts, church youth group, 4H, homeschool groups, etc. She has anxiety that makes her upset around this. Plus, she wasn't in these groups every day to get to know people. No kids live near us, no kids in family her age. We just don't know what to do. We just recently have been able to get help for her this past April. Before that, nothing. She has meds that are helping, but she still cant' get past the lonliness. Hoping the meds will help soon so she can go back to school.
This is so heartbreaking, this has been going on since she started homeschool. If I knew this was going to happen I would have never took her out of school. But they woulnd't help with her problems and we thought it was the best thing at the time.
After a while, we could tell that she just wouldn't make it back in public school.

This is why I am against home schooling. Our kids need interaction, and how schooling them is removing the chance to interact with other kids their own age. I know it is difficult, but it is needed, just like taking them to the dentist. What I did when my daughter was little was making friends for her. I know at 14 is gonna be more difficult. Try to make friends with people with kids around your daughter's age, and then arrange going-outs that include the kids where you can see your daughter interacting and help her when needed (campings, going to the beach, weekend get-outs are good opportunities). Our kids say they want friends, but they want friends "in their own terms", and that does not work. They need to learn to accept their friends the way they are, with their weeknesses and faults, and it takes time and help.

It is so hard to know what is and isn't going to work. We all do the best we can for our children. It doesn't help to beat yourself up over the past. Hindsight is NOT 20/20 and you cannot know how better or how worse it would have been if you hadn't home-schooled her. Social anxiety can happen even when children go to school.

My son was really helped by the Turnaround program --> http://www.myanxiouschild.com/ He has some social anxiety related to feeling odd or different, but mostly worries about things that are likely to never happen and safety issues. This program is good for all kinds of anxiety in children. It is really made for children about ages 8 to 12, but with AS and developmental delays, I think it could be very helpful for a girl who is 14 as well.

As for friends, does she like to be around younger children. I know when I was younger, I struggled with depression and loneliness. It was helped by learning to care for young chidren. I would be a mother's helper and play with their kids while they cleaned house or worked from home. As I got older, I worked in the church nursery, at mother's day out, and for vacation bible school. This helped me to meet other kids my age who had a nurturing heart, because they were working with kids too, and it helped me to feel loved and wanted, because the kids were always so happy to see me. I don't know if she likes children, but this may be something you can try.

I am curious about the timing. Where you trying the social activities during home schooling, or afterwards.

If you were trying them during home schooling, I think it's hard to say that home schooling was to blame for it. If you did them after 6 years of home schooling,t hat might not have been the best idea to go that long without social interaction.

I think homeschooling is an acceptable thing if you get them involved in other activities to meet children. The high school I went to was full of ignorant children behaving like jungle monkeys.

I think it's time to enlist the help of a professional therapist. She might need a temporary fix to help her get over the anxiety.

Homeschooling would have been great in our situation IF these things didn't happen. I hate public schools. Everyone says they need to be there to 'socialize', to learn the 'real world' but being in 4 walls all day with same age kids who are mean, etc is NOT socialization to me. It is NOT the real world. With homeschooling, you get to go out in the world and help people, do many different activities, with people of all ages. It just didn't work in our situation. And public school would have been a lot worse.

While in homeschool, we DID go to many activiites in the beginning. It's just that the anxiety was so bad she wanted to leave just about every where we went. I kept trying, and she kept crying. We tried VBS at some churches, she coudln't handle the loudness, singing, and too much moving around. We didn't know WHY she was like this and kept trying. We didn't know we were hurting her even more.

At the time we didn't know that she couldn't connect to kids. Just like all kids, they need to be around each other on a regular basis to be friends. We coudln't figure out how to do that. With homeschool activiites, different people go to different things, it was never the same kids at any given event. I tried to just go to people's houses with her to be with different girls. It just never went any further. Not sure why.

Two of the girl scout troops were bad, all public school girls and I couldn't believe how bad they were. She coudln't handle it and didn't WANT to handle it. One of the homeschool groups had a girl scout troop that we visited one time. They were SO nice. Difference as night and day. The problem was, the troop was too far for us to go to.
One of the homeschool groups were bad. THey would plan activities, she would get excited, then they just dropped it without telling anyone. She got hurt a lot by this.

GA isn't the best place to find help. We weren't financially in a place to help her at all until this past April. After April, we took her to different places for help, but since we didn't know the problem we didn't know WHO would help. We took her to 'general' psychologists. They surely didn't specialize in her problems and we didn't know that. We had to change psychologist and psychiatrist one time. We are just going to them until we can start Marcus in a few weeks.

We tried the best we could alone with no outside help, but didn't know what to do. We were actually doing things that looking back, hurt her instead of help her. We thought if she WAS around other kids, which is what she wanted so badly, it would make her feel better. But it made her worse.

I finally found out about a place called Marcus Autism Center in ATL. They must be very good, a lady told me she had to wait 9 months to get an eval done. But, they put us on a waiting list for 3 months for a psychiatrist for meds. They said that was the best starting point in her situation. So we go Nov 14.

SHe has been suicidal a few times. Cries sometimes, but seems to be getting use to being alone and not having friends. She has meds she started taking a month ago that seems to help. It's like we are just stuck with no way to go.
Her teacher at the school wants to ease her back in, going an hour every day. We are starting that this week.
This has been going on for YEARS and it is so heartbreaking.

Thanks so much for the turnaround link, I'll definately look into this.

sounds like a verbatim description of my high school. I was bullied so much that I was essentially begging to be homeschooled. But my mom was blind to what was going on and I continued to go. She later said in hindsight had she known I felt suicidal that she would've done otherwise.

See, the weird thing is, even with me being public-schooled, my mom didn't want to let me participate in a lot of things and i felt held back by it. It was always on her terms as to whether she "felt like it or not".

So I guess I can't really fully relate to your daughter being from the opposite end.

It sounds to me like your daughter has had a lot of needs that conflict with each other. That is a rough road to travel, and there would have been no way to handle it perfectly. Please don't beat yourself up over any piece of it. It is sounds to me like you would do whatever it takes to make your daughter have a good life, and that you try hard to sort out her needs. That is all any parent can do.

The anxiety is a killer. It seems there is only so far people can go on that by changing the environment, and then medical intervention is needed. It sounds like that is the point where you are now: trying the medical intervention. You and her will have to allow that some time. Not too much: adjust if needed. But from everything I read here medication can make a HUGE difference with anxiety.

Once you've crossed that hurdle with her, she will be in a stronger position to handle more changes.

None of them will be easy for a 14 year old. I don't know how you inspire her to stick with it and believe in a better future, but that is exactly what you have to do: convince her that sticking with it will be worth it, and there is a better future out there. Bumps will always be part of the process, but if she gets the anxiety under control, she can do better.

I guess one key to keeping her positive will be for you to feel positive, confident in her future. I don't know about you, but I've never been able to sell anything to my kids that I don't whole heartedly believe myself. So finding some personal stories from Aspies who had it rough with anxiety at younger ages and then overcame it will be useful.

For now, work on controlling the anxiety first and foremost, and then on following her interests. My son's friends are all based on his interests: that seems to be the way it is with teenage Aspies, they huddle together with kids over shared interests. Venturing from Boy Scouts (which accepts girls) can be good, if she is interested in any of the focus areas available locally, and the rest will depend on what is uniquely available in your area.

What about inviting one kid from school over on a Saturday? Someone she talks to at school or who is somewhat friendly toward her? If she doesn't know of someone or she would feel awkward about it, maybe you could explain the situation to her teacher and have her suggest someone, then call the girls mother, explain the situation to her as well, and invite them both over for a few hours on a Saturday under the pretense that you and the mother need to talk about something unrelated to either of them. That way there won't be a lot of pressure, but the other girl will be there at the house and maybe they can hang out and then be invited back.

I am not saying that IRL social interaction shouldn't still be the #1 goal, but have you considered any online groups for her as an easier introductory way to connect in the meantime? It really depends on her interests, but there are online groups for pretty well everything and anything. Some of them are even generally kind and supportive and model some pretty good social behaviour, such as Nerdfighters. This might be a nice way for her to start to feel more connected.

Not sure what to say, but I really hope you can get your daughter help that is effective
The meds sounds a good start as the Anxiety sounds a really major problem.

How about trying to find another teen on the spectrum (or even better, a support group for teens on the spectrum)? Neurologically typical girls can be really cruel at that age. I know I couldn't have handled that. And tell your daughter that it gets better when she grows older, especially if she's going to collage. I was totally alone in school. I wasn't bullied anymore at her age, but I had absolutely nothing in common with the other girls in the class. Then I started collage and suddenly found out that my weirdness wasn't frowned upon anymore. In fact, everyone who studied literature was a bit weird. At 21, I got my asperger diagnosis and immediately went to my first support group. I can only describe it as coming home. Now, I have loads of friends (mostly aspies, but a few NTs too) and a girlfriend who accepts me for who I am.

my son is homeschooled and has many friends. In fact he has freinds BECAUSE he is homeschooled. He inst with the same kids 6 hours a day,every day, which is a long time for him to get annoying to them of for them to byully him. He is also around kids every day, he is in many groups, programs, etc... the kids are able to handle smaller doses of my son, and it gives him positive interactions with kids. He has kids calling to play with him it is wonderful.

I live in a very populated area where homeschoolig has a large community, and the activities with kids is endless. No one that I know homeschools to isolate their child or have them have no friends. In my sons case it has HELPED him, he lost most of his social anxiety once he started homescholing, and he actually started to approach peers and interact with them more, and ask for them to play with him.

We cannot judge a whole homeschooling community becuase in one case it wasnt successful fro friendships. Who knows where she lives, what access she has had to programs or what effeort was put in to make sure she was with kids every day.

I have freinds with kids in public school that have no freinds, who are just as lonely. IN face a relative of mine, her son was in school he has Aspergers, he was never homeschooled and he was friendless most his school career, very lonely, tormented ad bullied relentlessly. We can look at the negatives of any school situation. Nothing is perfect but we all try to make the best decisions for our kids.

I hope the OPs daughter is able to connect wiht someone, it must be so hard for her..

Is she allowed to use the internet, maybe there is a community out there where she could safely chat/msg kids her own age with similar interests. That way shes meeting and socialising in some way, but can do it at her own pace at home. Then maybe if she builds up a friendship it could move to phoning, skyping and meeting up. Obviously I understand parents worries on internet chat but you would be there to monitor it

Thanks everyone for your replies. I can't remember if I said that this school year she is in a very small private school (22 students) and it is a GREAT placement for her. But, since we haven't gotten help YET (still working on it) we didn't know that she would be so upset, have anxiety, etc even there. All the years of homeschooling she was so lonely, wanting friends. So we thought her being in this school would solve that. At home she doesn't HAVE a reason to be anxious and do all this, so we had no idea she would do this when she started the school. It shocked us.
We desperately tried to get her into some type of private school over the years. Most were too expensive, didn't help kids with problems, way too academic, etc. I have applied to over 150 jobs since last November to pay for her to go SOMEWHERE. Finally, we got in a position where we could borrow the money from the bank. And about a month ago I finally got a part time job.
Anyway, back to her school, we had to shorten her hours everyday. And then change the hours. It got to the point where she couldn't go at all. We are trying to find out WHY she's doing this. She says she doesn't know. But the teacher said one thing is that after a certain length of time she gets overwhelmed with everything.
She has been taking meds for a month now. She does go to the school every Wed afternoon for teacher to give her work for home and to check what she's finished. We're slowly working her back in. She has been staying 2 hrs on Wednesdays now. Teacher says she is getting better each time. Next week we're going to start the half days every day again. She was there yesterday and it made her so happy. On the way home she started crying and said 'thank you Jesus' and said she was so happy!

As for friends there, she is behind academically because of learning problems that I didn't know how to help with while homeschooling, and because of our living situation, we couldn't do the school work as much as needed. So, she is in a class with about 5 other kids. They are all about 3-5 years younger than her. She says she doesn't mind, she likes it better with younger kids. She is overweight, so really looks out of place . But if she doesn't mind then that's great.

We are going back to dr today for med check, I'm going to tell him she's about 70% better but needs something better. Even though she feels better, we still have to work on the friends part.

@ DW_a_mom, I wish I could be positive. My life circumstances has made me negative. I feel so bad because I'm not positive for her. I just dont' know how to do it. When she cries I cry with her. I don't know how to make her not cry. Me and her father go to great lenghts to do things to help her feel better. We don't buy things to throw at her. I hate that. And she gets better after a while. But nothing will make her feel better until she gets friends.
It's hard to pursue her interests. We live in the country, miles and miles away from a big city that has lots of things to do. That is another problem. We take her to parks, swimming, bowling, just riding around, things that she wants to do. BUT, it doesn't make her entirely better. It's like me and her father are taking the place of friends.
I think I mentioned earlier that she was in 2 homeschool groups, 2 girl scout groups, church youth group, 4H, etc. Her anxiety PLUS ALL the kids were so badly behaved she couldn't take it.

@OliveOilMom, that is a great idea. She's not friends with anyone that much yet. But, the teacher did suggest she could bring all the kids in class to our house to hang out a while. Not sure when we're doing that yet.

@ annotated_alice, I have tried many times to get her connected thru someone on the internet. Pen pal groups, message boards, etc. She just doesn't want to do it. She says she doesn't know how or what to write. I then knew it's because she has a 'language processing disorder' and can't write things sometimes.
I dont' know if I even mentioned this, but she has been diagnosed with this as well as dyslexia. And probably dyscalulia. She has a very hard time with math. We have never been able to afford help for her with these things. I tried to do what I could when homeschooling, and the teacher now is, too.
We are finally going to the Marcus Autism Center in ATL on Nov 14. I am SO glad, they will be able to help with everything (I hope) It is 50 miles or further from us.

@nostromo, thanks so much!!

@ Heidi80, I have been trying to find another girl, but there are no aspergers/autism social groups around here anywhere. And I don't know how else to find someone.

@ MMJMOM wrote - Who knows where she lives, what access she has had to programs or what effeort was put in to make sure she was with kids every day.

Well, we live 50 miles from any large city. There are a few things to do maybe 20 miles away, but we have tried all that with homeschool groups. I think I explained in another message why that didn't work out. I have put in a LOT of effort to try and find kids. It just isn't working for some reason.

@ConfusedNewb, I have tried many times to get her connected thru someone on the internet. Pen pal groups, message boards, etc. She just doesn't want to do it. She says she doesn't know how or what to write. I then knew it's because she has a 'language processing disorder' and can't write things sometimes.

Thanks so much everyone!! Things are looking up for today. She'll start back school part time next week and see how it goes. Oh yea, one thing that concerns me is that since she's in class with much younger kids, they are not old enough for her to 'hang out' with, come to our house, etc. They are not going to be socially up to her level. I'll keep an eye out and if this situation is ok with her, then I'll leave it at that. I am still going to try to find other kids in addition to the ones at school, though.

You are right: your experience sound wonderful. Apparently you live in a very nice place. Where I live there are very few activities for kids my daughter's age, and she also has issues socializing with kids in activities outside school (I have tried karate, ballet, painting, acting, modeling...), although she is getting better with time. She does not have many friends at school, either. Just one. But school gives her the opportunity to face socialization problems everyday and try to handle them. We work on that every day. In your position, if I was a stay-home mom, I would probably choose homeschooling, too.

Homeschooling surely isnt for every child or family. The funny hting that people complain about homeschooled kids lacking socialiation, is that they can actually get more opportunity to socialize and not just in a classroom setting. My son is out in the real world, learning how to get along in the community, and he has plenty of opportunity to learn social rules from his friends in real settings, like his home, their homes, parks, libraries, and other group settings. Believe me, he does PLENTY wrong, he has had meltdowns at frineds homes, he has distruped groups, he has taken over programs, and each time we have learned from the experience and his peers have helped in a huge way during those times.

in some cases, if a child has social anxiety and the school setting is too overwhelming, this can help ease the anxiety, as it id in my sons case. But it could have gone the other way too, as it did for the OP. It could have allowed him to shut down more and have even more issues getting along.

With our kids, there is no one right way. All we can do is the best we feel is in the interest of our child. I hope the OP finds an outlet for her daughter. I can imagine how lonely she must be.