secondary school friendship groups and politics

Hi all I’m just needing some reassurance and also to let off steam. My Son just started in year 7 at secondary school and already one of his long standing friendships is in tatters. At primary school they were the best of friends. They had a few spats here and there but nothing too major. However hes been coming home with tales that his friend is saying nasty things about him and constantly telling him that hes not his friend. It came to a head when this ‘friend’ started saying nasty things in a whats app group trying to turn the class against him which was upsetting for my Son. We dealt with this by taking screen shots of what he said and sending them to his parents who took the phone away and got the friend to apologise for his behaviour. I thought all was well but last week my Son has been saying that this friend is angry with him and has basically been nasty. I’ve told him to ignore him but he came home today and said that it started to turn violent with this boy turning on him. I’m not saying that my Son is perfect. He can come across as big headed sometimes but I just want to know is this normal in secondary school. I do feel very protective towards my Son and want to put him into a protective bubble. However I know that its not possible and my husband says its part of growing up. I just don’t want it to turn into a bullying situation as I read so many horror stories in the news and with social media its another outlet which can be used to hurt people

Have you informed the school? As well meaning as the other parents might be, they cannot intervene at school, if things are getting physical there. Waiting for things to escalate might leave your son being marked out as the problem, even if he only tries to protect himself.

Friendships do change. I didn’t finish secondary school with the same friends I started with, nor did I finish college with the same friends I finished secondary school with. And I only know one person from my entire school career now.

Re the nasty behaviour – this is shitty, but it happens and you just have to take it on the chin in the first instance, cos it’s just a bust-up. However if it keeps happening then you have a problem and need to follow it up.

It’s mostly likely fine. The transition between primary school and high school is a big jump for them and it changes them, not always for the better.

They’ll act up for a year and then settle down as they come to realise thay aren’t as grown up and mature as they thought they were.

My youngest of three is going through it just now.

Current coronavirus restrictions, phones and social media just amplify it but it’ll work out fine in the end.

Thankyou. I will be monitoring the situation and if it carries on I’ll be involving the school. I just feel on edge when he goes wondering what kind of day he’s having and what mood he’ll be in when he gets home. He breezed through primary and had no hassles so I guess I was too niave thinking he’ll have more of the same at seniors.

Is Year 7 age 11 or so? Not judging, but is the use of WhatsApp widespread among his friends/that age group?

Definitely let the tutor/head of year know. It’s really helpful for them as they can start to see patterns emerging before they become real issues. You don’t have to go in heavy handed, just email tutor and HoY and let them know of your concerns.

(I am a secondary teacher if that helps)

Another vote for let the school know even if you don’t want action now. If things escalate in the future then you have some history to back you up. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it’s probably the best you can do for now.

My role in secondary school is a pastoral role… I’m working with year 7 this time and will move up through the year groups with them.
Definately let the school know and send them the screenshots. These can be logged incase they are needed at a later date. Friendships in year 7 breakdown and reform on an hourly basis so I wouldn’t worry about it. Within my year 7 I am not aware of any pupils that do not have any friends. Covid has made it a bit tougher on socializing but most kids are pretty good at finding friends.

They are little sh1ts at that age, especialy girls.

Is Year 7 age 11 or so? Not judging, but is the use of WhatsApp widespread among his friends/that age group?

yes. Probably from about 10 up it’s common enough that if you are not in the WhatsApp group you’ll be missing out (or fear you are missing out).

@retrogirl – I think hubby is mostly right this is part of growing up, it’s not uncommon moving to the bigger school. I think the important thing is he feels he can talk to you about it. I thought it was worse this year with ours because she was a girl (and boy can the “fairer sex” be nasty as hell sometimes) but it could also be a post lockdown thing.

We had similar with his mates, one of the other big lads was bullying his mate essentially and turning him against my lad. My lad has made some other mates since then and his initial friend is now back as a buddy, but not close friend, but it’s taken over a year to get to that.

The peer pressure and friendships are proper rollercoaster at this age, in, out, hate, love, best friends, super enemy…. It’s all a bit baffling, but i assume i was the same, i forget though.

Whatsapp doesn’t help.. but is the way of the world.

We use Apps that monitor all his whatsapps, internet, etc… But we very very rarely enforce them. It is useful that we can lock his phone at 7pm though for example. Qustudio i think it’s called.

From what I’ve seen his other friends know their own minds and have my sons back so I’m thankful for that. I’ve been keen to let my son know that he needs to stick with the kids that are been his real friends

Sounds like the behaviour so far is what was dismissed as “normal” when I was that age in 1980, but probably and more correctly “bullying” and something the school should be made aware of nowadays, as others have suggested already.

Boys that age are bastards. All I can add is, thank god you don’t have a daughter. They are twice as bad, and their mum’s WhatsApp groups are even more mental.

Yr 7, 8 and 9 kids seem to be terrible at interpersonal relationships with their peers from my experience with my kids. It gets much better as they reach 14/15 and they grow up a bit.

Not a lot you can do except sympathise and make sure it doesn’t escalate into self harm etc. You will secretly hate other people’s children though.

I wish I’d figured out how to time limit social media so they weren’t on it all night getting worked up. When I’m reincarnated I’ll do that next time, otherwise it’s just growing up in the new digital age.

I wish I’d figured out how to time limit social media so they weren’t on it all night getting worked up.

Phones charged downstairs when they go to bed. We’ve had to set our daughters phone to silent when she brings it down, the constant “pinging” drove us wild!

Phones charged downstairs when they go to bed.

Basic rule. Fail to do this, and you are failing your kids. Sorry for being absolutist about this.

You have obviously never lived with teenage girls! The phone is an extension of their very being.

Isn’t that true for pretty much everyone these days? Asked the question earlier because my daughter is going up to secondary school next year. She hasn’t got a phone, but says she’s the only one in her class that doesn’t (she isn’t).

Another teacher here. Cant for the life of me work out why you still havent emailed tutor yet.

You have obviously never lived with teenage girls!

You are wrong.

The phone is an extension of their very being.

This is true, and also why their sleep will be disturbed nightly if they keep their phone in their room all night, just at the point in life when their rapidly changing brain needs the most sleep.

Asked the question earlier because my daughter is going up to secondary school next year.

Socially, she’ll need a phone, even in yr7. Using one at the end if yr6, and over the summer break, with your involvement, will help her prepare for using it wisely in the far more charged environment of secondary school. Christmas present?

You have obviously never lived with teenage girls! The phone is an extension of their very being.

It really shouldn’t be that hard to have rules for your own kids in your own house.

Ours got their first phones in Year 6, just before secondary school. They were probably the last in their year to get them. They knew when they would get them, so no dramas about not getting one sooner.

Ah, I think I was referring to slightly older teens. In yr 7 and 8 I solved the problem by not allowing social media until 13 and only having a crappy phone. Life threatening illness just after resulted in a massive new iPhone and screw it, let her do what she wants attitude.
It’s difficult for gen x parents to understand how fundamental to youth culture a phone is now. First digital native teenager is now brainbox medical student so it can’t have held them back too much.

Congratulations! Yeah, as it happens our eldest chose to stick to the “phones on charge downstairs at bedtime” thing when an older teen to help our youngest get through the early teens… but you’re right, the choice for older teens is a very different balancing act.

We used to put our daughters phone on charge downstairs – then she revealed to us the other day she’d just get up in the night when we were fast asleep and use it anyway!

So try locking it away if you think putting it downstairs will solve anything. Kids are resourceful! 🙂

She’s now 18 and a decent level headed, now young adult. Still glued to her SnapChat, but that’s the way it is now.

FWIW the primary school friends she moved up to secondary school with are no longer her friends. Kids argue, fall out and find their own way. Unless it’s getting to criminal, physical or serious mental health issues try and let them deal with it. We had to intervene once and it was dealt with well by the school.

this all sounds horribly familiar, though we’re not quite at Secondary. Our Daughter got a phone for her 10th Birthday this year because her peer group all had one and were using whatsapp to socialise a lot, we could see she was missing out and falling out of favour with friends, so we bit the bullet. Jesus Mary O’christ girls can be a bitchy bunch of little shivs… no idea if at the time the parent knew some of the communication going on, but we let them know about it, things did thankfully change.

However, phones with kids are a nightmare, we are constantly having to remind them of the privilege of having it and to monitor how long, thankfully the google family link app is really good and controlling what they do..

My son who is 8, hasn’t got one and wont be until he turns 10 (2 years from now), we were originally holding out until secondary school but i blame COVID for it’s accelerate adoption..

ALSO – and i will sound like an old b’std.. Social media is full on rotting kids brains, tiktok, snapchat and to a lesser extent instagram highlights all of thr poor traits that foster mainly from the states – the jumped up little wannabes, attitude massive lazy arrssed “influencers”… ggrrrrrrrrr

Basic rule. Fail to do this, and you are failing your kids. Sorry for being absolutist about this.

Yeah we managed to keep that up until ours was 14 or so, now it’s there’s a screen time limit.

A few times he’s be able to get around it because my Wife is been daft and been tricked into giving him the parental pin he’s been up until 3am chatting shit and is a nightmare to be around the next day.

As for the OP, Son starting High School was hard for us too, they’re suddenly thrust into new groups and need to form new allegiances, couple that with the first stages of puberty and being a very small person in a very big new school makes a lot of them insecure AF, and insecurity can bullying, a simple attempt to make themselves feel better by making their friends comparatively worse.

With respect to Teachers and School Pastoral Teams, in My Son’s school at least they can often make things better, but sometimes worse. They seem disproportionately concerned with issues outside of school and out of term compared to within and fall back on “you’ll just have to sort this out between you” when things get tough.

Anyway, if you think Whatsapp is bad, wait until they get into Social Media, TikTok and Snapchat seem the worst as most parents don’t understand them, although Insta comes with it’s own particular slices of hell to deal with. I fought like a Lion to stick to their own minimum age restrictions, but it’s hard when, at least it seems, a lot of parents hand over a shiny new smart phone to their kids about the age of 10 without giving it a second glance.

the jumped up little wannabes, attitude massive lazy arrssed “influencers”… ggrrrrrrrrr

Oh **** tell me about it, honestly if my Son waves his hand again and says “I feel I should have….” before nonchalantly TELLING me he NEEDS this or that expensive consumer crap I might sell him to anyone who’ll send him down t’ pit.

It might have if my Wife didn’t pander to his every whim, but I guess I’ll just postpone buying myself, well anything, for the next few years, probably 10 or more, because there’s no way he’s going to strike out into the world anytime soon, he’s got “30 years old, living at home, no job because he’s waiting for one deserving of his talents” written all over him.

Reading this thread (and i have just been through something similar with one of my daughters)it occurred to me that when I was at school (80`s) there was a sort of natural pecking order established. The big hard kids picked on the little weak kids and everyone in between just tried to stay out of the way. If anyone was out of order there would be enough kids on the other side to “sort it out” it was like the playground used to police itself.
Now, with a zero tolerance to “bullying” there is no natural order its a free for all and any kid that wants to give someone else a hard time has no peer barriers in the way.

I think one of the very big issues here (on the subject of phones and the issues they can cause) is that none of us as adults ever had the access to to such technology when we were growing up. We were never taught boundaries nor do we know what is right, wrong, too much, too little etc – we are all making it up as we go along.

Speak to the school.and let them know what is happening, but please be aware that they cannot engineer friendships and any leveraging of existing ones will only be effective for a very short time, and then counter productive.

Some very good advice on digital/sleep hygiene above.

I speak to many parents who feel that they are unable to enforce phone/internet/gaming boundaries, as they have simply sleptwalked (no pun intended) into it.

It is much easier to put boundaries in place at the beginning, than to begin to implement them later.

FOMO, disrupted sleep and peer pressure can have a massive negative influence on life/educational outcomes if not moderated. A major challenge is that much of this is new to today’s parents and they don’t have their own experience as a child to look back on, or necessarily set good examples in the present themselves.

Good luck!

@trailwagger, that theory has definitely got grounds – i think it’s in part (and this is just my observation of meetings by zoom/teams etc), is that as humans we rely so much on facial expression and stance to figure out what/if someone/you are saying is OK, and we lose that through distance.

Im used to travelling alot (not a topic to go into) and my job requires me to build strong relationships and I’ve struggled over the past few months to do that meaningfully as I’ve not been able to gage reactions, or to know how someone may truly be feeling about what I’m talking about. I appreciate this isn’t the same for everyone, but I’m sure it’s the majority..

ALSO – and i will sound like an old b’std.. Social media is full on rotting kids brains, tiktok, snapchat and to a lesser extent instagram highlights all of thr poor traits that foster mainly from the states

No idea about snapchat as mine have largely ignore it – but I’m not convinced Instagram or TikTok are inherently bad. I’m going to boldly suggest that the dance craze on tiktok has actually been quite good throughout lockdown for getting my daughter motivated to do something active. She’s roped in other family members, we’ve climbed hills to do tictok is silly places, whilst I don’t “get it” myself its been positive. When she set it up – she set the privacy settings so only people she knows see it – without any prompting from me. Her older brother is more interested in Instagram, he seems to get the idea about what makes a good photo, how to make it interesting etc. I’ve not seen any behaviour from him I wasn’t exhibiting at his age before the internet arrived in our homes.

Now, with a zero tolerance to “bullying” there is no natural order its a free for all and any kid that wants to give someone else a hard time has no peer barriers in the way.

Do you really think there’s zero tolerance to bullying and no natural order? I’m pretty sure that all the same cliques and groups are forming and in fighting.

My role in secondary school is a pastoral role… I’m working with year 7 this time and will move up through the year groups with them… …Within my year 7 I am not aware of any pupils that do not have any friends.

I’m kind of staggered by this. I can only assume you mean do not have any people they associate with in school? I’d be surprised if there weren’t people at both ends of that social pecking order who, on proper analysis, didn’t have friends at the school.

Reading this thread (and i have just been through something similar with one of my daughters)it occurred to me that when I was at school (80`s) there was a sort of natural pecking order established. The big hard kids picked on the little weak kids and everyone in between just tried to stay out of the way. If anyone was out of order there would be enough kids on the other side to “sort it out” it was like the playground used to police itself.
Now, with a zero tolerance to “bullying” there is no natural order its a free for all and any kid that wants to give someone else a hard time has no peer barriers in the way.

I agree with a lot of that.

The words of Slim Charles, “Game the same, just more fierce is all”.

As for a Zero Tolerance to bullying, IME yeah should one kid walk over to another and kick them, there would be hell to pay, but that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. It’s all psychological now and more subtle. My Son can’t do PE anymore due to bullying in the changing rooms because he’s Gay. Far from zero tolerance, the bully’s get away with it because he replies to their taunts, making it an argument.

but that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. It’s all psychological now and more subtle

Yeah I can see that. What I mean by zero tolerance though is that in my day someone had to do something quite serious to get in trouble. Name calling (unless it was relentless) was sort of accepted as being “what kids do” if you know what i mean. So as well as there being a well established pecking order there was also a scale of bad behaviour. “being a bit mean” was dealt with by telling your child to stay away from the perpetrator. Nowadays if a child gets called a nasty name the parents are straight into the school (and i am guilty of this myself). Its like the OP has said we all want to protect our children so much and keep them in a safe bubble. I do wonder if we are doing more harm than good this way though.

I don’t think you have a clue what goes on in schools, if you think “name calling” has been shut down, and isn’t going on all the time. In person, as well as digitally.

My role in secondary school is a pastoral role… I’m working with year 7 this time and will move up through the year groups with them… …Within my year 7 I am not aware of any pupils that do not have any friends.

I’m kind of staggered by this. I can only assume you mean do not have any people they associate with in school? I’d be surprised if there weren’t people at both ends of that social pecking order who, on proper analysis, didn’t have friends at the school.

I can guarantee there is at least 1 kid in your group who has no friends. I was that kid in my year group for a very long time but all the teachers thought I was reasonably popular. What they didn’t know was that every time they saw me talking with someone it was me being bullied, I was just very good at hiding my emotions and feelings so from the outside I looked fine. It’s something I still do to this day and has caused me massive amounts of issues. The teachers had genuinely no idea until the bullying turned physical one day 4 years into my secondary school life and I ended up in hospital with a broken back, dislocated jaw and severe concussion. Any attempts before to engage with the school about it had been dismissed as just the normal kids finding their way in life.

Keep the school informed of everything that is happening, then if things escalate you already have the body of evidence to get things moving on solutions.

I think my problem is that I don’t like confrontation but I think I underestimate my son as he can hold his own. The only social media he has on his phone is what’s app and I regularly look at the phone which was one of the conditions of him having one. It’s staggering how many groups kids form and how much rubbish goes on. I’ve put my foot down about tik tok and he’s not bothered about Facebook or Instagram at the moment. To be honest he’s not a prolific messenger on what’s app which is good. I’m just thankful that he feels comfortable confiding in us. I think it’s the lioness in me that just wants to swoop in and make things better for him but as my husband says he needs to find his way with guidence from us when it’s needed

and he’s not bothered about Facebook

No kid is – it’s for old farts and businesses!! 🙂

Anyway, What’s App conversations between yr 7s only ever tend to go along the lines of

Hiya
Hi
Hi
Wot u doin?
Hi
Hi
Hiya
LOLs
Hi
Hiya
Im bored
Hi
Hiya
Hiya
Hi
Hi
Wot u doin?
Hi
Hi
Hiya
LOLs
Hi
Hiya
Im bored
Hi
Hiya

Hiya
Hi
Hi
Wot u doin?
Hi
Hi
Hiya
LOLs
Hi
Hiya
Im bored
Hi
Hiya