Hi all,

I am asking this question on behalf of my younger 17-year-old sister. She is in Grade 11 and a year away from graduating from high school, and recently she's run into a dilemma.

Back when my sister was in elementary/primary school, she had a group of about 5-6 friends - all of them were really nice kids, and they spent a fair amount of time with one another. She entered high school about two and a half years ago, and her group of friends remained close and added a few more kids to the gang.

For a couple of years, everything went okay, but this past year, things have begun to get hard for my sis - four or five of her friends got part-time jobs and now work ridiculous hours, and they barely have time for homework, let alone a social life. She has another close friend who doesn't have a job, but is helping her mother raise her niece, which takes up a lot of her time. Another jobless friend has a very sick mother, which often gets in the way of their hangouts. There's a bit of hope, though - she has begun to become friendly with a couple of girls at school who don't have jobs, but they aren't really at the "hanging out with each other outside of school" stage yet.

She spends a large amount of time doing schoolwork, but still has a bit of free time - but whenever she does have it, her friends always seem to be busy. Most of the time, when my sister wants to hang out with her friends, they tell her "sorry, can't, I'm busy," and it's starting to make her depressed. She's said that she can't remember the last time that she had fun with a friend. My mother refuses to let her get her own part-time job, because she thinks it'll get in the way of her schoolwork.

Now I never had the problems that my sister did - none of me or my group of friends had jobs in high school - and also, I always made new friends more easily than she did (she's quite sensitive and fears being rejected by others). Of course, the obvious answer would be to call up the girls she's becoming friendly with and ask them to hang out, but right now she's terrified of being rejected like she always is, and, quite frankly, I don't know what to say/suggest to her. I've asked her if there are any extracurricular activities at her school she is interested in, and she says no.

I'm honestly confused and frustrated right now... could anyone suggest anything or give advice on what to do? If so, that would be much appreciated.

Sounds like they're finding reasons to avoid her. Solution: Find a hobby (like a sport, club, etc.) She'll find new built in friends.

The longer she hangs onto her old friends, the longer she'll be miserable.

It definitely sounds a bit fishy...

And being 19 myself I think I can sympathize with her.

With her friend who has to help raise a niece, she could always offer to go over and help babysit, I did that with my friend who always had to watch her brother and we always had a blast.

But overall, spend time with her yourself. I have an older sibling and whenever I was down in the dumps no matter how much I denied it I would always enjoy simply watching a movie or hanging out. To know that family has got your back even if only for that moment really helps. What really cheered me up was when I'd just hang out with my sibling and they woulnd't even mention and or question how I was down in the dumps.

Mulling over it and having others comment on it really just makes a person feel worse, almost as if pointing out a flaw point blank.

And there are always the people at school who she may not necessarily hang out with but talks to all the same in her classes or what not. If anything just try and talk to them a bit more. Maybe hop from lunch table to lunch table.

But honestly, if she can't even remember the last time she hung out with her friends there's something definitely going on with the lot of them :/

I hope that this helped somewhat. Best of luck! But then again your being so worried for a younger sister to ask for help is pretty much an indication that you're doing pretty good as is