My daughter is now 14 and a 9th grader. She is very depressed and said that she feels like an outsider. She will see a counselor this week, but there is only one in the area (2 hours) that takes insurance and not medicaid so we have no choice in therapists.

She has always been different and we have always let her be herself - except for being rude and developing good work habits. She is an excellent student - first in her class.

My heart just breaks for her and she said that nobody invites her anywhere and she is too shy to ask anyone. She is involved in school activities and does well in that format.

What am I looking for? Kindred spirits, similar stories, something to lift me a little

On the bright side, she will only be a teenager for a little while and some of this might just be the entire teenage/high school experience.

She was a little more accepted in elementary school. She is really feeling badly about herself and is getting so depressed. I listen to her cry, but I get so sad about it. Part of it is extreme shyness, but she is in a glee club and performs - and knowledge bowl and does well.

Thanks for the bright side. I hope college is better.

I feel your pain. My son is 13. Since he entered his teen years he has expressed more sadness about being an outsider in our small agricultural, football-obsessed town. It doesn't help that he has to wear a scoliosis brace that makes it impossible for him to participate in fun activities with other kids his age. He has been is in musical theater since age 4 but could not go to the last two cast parties because of the brace which is painful in addition to making him walk like a robot. He can't even stay the entire rehearsal. When he is there he can't really talk to anyone because he has to focus on learning his dances which is hard when he has to sit and watch part of the time because of the pain. Pain can make depression worse so there are days when we take mental health days. It is really hard when he asks me if there is really any light at the end of this tunnel and when he will be able to live a normal life and I have no answers. I can only be there for him as he goes through this. For a while we had fast enough internet so that he could play online multiplayer games and that helped but our internet keeps disconnecting and is very slow because of some problem with the towers that the company will not fix. To him it feels like things are only getting worse instead of better.

But through all his pain he noticed that others are also in pain and had very difficult lives, more difficult than his. He read a lot of the "we are the 99% letters." He has become very concerned about our government and we recently took him to his first political rally. He was surrounded by a lot of young adults talking about the issues he had been telling us about. He was so energized that he was able take the foot pain and back pain from standing longer than he is normally able to. He loved it. He felt so good about persuading his dad, who didn't like this political candidate, to go with us to listen and see what he was really saying instead of what the biased news media was reporting. He felt good when his dad said he liked a lot of what the candidate was saying. He also like that his dad talked to young man standing next to him that sounded like an older version of my son because he was very articulate, very passionate about his beliefs. This very attractive, intelligent young guy was from a small town, didn't do sports, didn't fit in, but he went to college and had just paid off his student loans. I liked this guy. When my husband mentioned that we homeschooled he told us that he thought it was good that we were homeschooling and that it was obvious that we cared. He said most of his teachers in school seemed like they didn't care and he had to learn on his own outside of school. This young guy might not have had a lot of friends in school because he didn't do sports but he is now doing very well because he focused on working and learning. I think my son will do the same. He can't do social things right now but he is probably reading and learning more than he would have if he were able to get out and do things.

I have always told my son that he would fit in when he goes to college but it seems like such a long time to him. He said a few weeks ago that he doesn't think he can stand living like this for so long, so I am also looking for ways to help my son feel like he belongs. I don't think a therapist would help my son and he doesn't want to go to another doctor--he sees enough of those already.

That is so hard. My daughter wanted to go to a therapist to have someone to talk to. She feels that she can't trust anyone anymore.

Have you ever heard of this program?

http://www.giftedstudy.org/

Summer Institute for the Gifted?

Maybe if she went to a program with a larger pool of kids she might find a kindred spirit or feel less like an outsider.

I would wonder if it just a teenage thing to say she "doesn't trust anyone anymore" or if something happened or is happening with the dynamic of the kids in the new grade. I've known three different moms, so far, with daughters who've been friends with certain girls and they "turn" on them or in one case, our neighbors' daughter was the one turning on another girl (per orders of the "leader" of the new group). All about that age, going from middle school to high school or in one case from elementary to the middle school.

I guess you hear so much about bullying lately my mind just went there as a possible reason she says she doesn't trust anyone anymore.

Thanks for the recommendation. She goes to a summer music camp in Colorado where she feels more "in". I worry about her overall feeling. Yes, she has had several friends tell private things about her and she is very sensitive about it.

That's so hard. I don't really have any other ideas. My daughter is only 8 and I can't even think that far forward, it's hard enough now.

I'm sure the counseling will help. It's very mature of her to want to go, that's a really good thing.

Ellipses,
I remembered what one of the moms did with her daughter (they lived in the last place we lived so my brain filed it away but it popped back).

Volunteer work, specifically with animals. Animals are very kind, don't judge, don't tell secrets and can be quite loyal.
But anything else, whatever works with your daughter and you can fit in.

Without going into detail, this girl, who was 14 at the time was very, very traumatized by the things that happened with the school (former) friend. She was falsly accused of something, it's a long story. She was very shy and also would never hurt anyone, very serious.

Anyway the volunteer work really helped her. She was fine in the end, the last time we saw them she had a really nice boyfriend and was happy with life.

Best of luck.

That is a really tough situation and it is unfortunate that there aren't more readily available therapy options. You may have already explored the option, but I'm wondering if there might be a good counselor she could connect with at school. Also, I would keep your eyes open for any other adults who she might connect with, maybe a neighbor or an aunt type of person. As a teenager it really did nothing to hear from my mom that teenage life wasn't forever, but hearing from younger adults like people in their 20s means a lot. Any meaningful volunteer work or community service opportunities would be great too. Seeing people like you who got through it means the world.

Lori, this is a scary statement and I encourage you to take it seriously. Going to see a therapist or counselor is nothing like going to see a doctor for scoliosis or medical tests. I would really encourage you to pursue getting him some support. It is NORMAL for people going through major medical stuff involving stress and pain to go and see a therapist. Of course it doesn't feel like it will help initially, that feeling that nothing can help is part of depression. That doesn't actually mean that it won't work. Bit by bit it does help, quite a lot for a lot of people.

Ellipse,

I understand what you are saying about your DD feeling like an outsider - we felt that way most of the time we were there.
Have you checked for someone at the college for her to talk to? I know there used to be someone there that would have been helpful, but who knows if they are still there now.
Good luck with her latest problems, I'm sorry I have no advice. If I think of a name for you I'll send you a pm.

Kerry

Very well said, passthepotatoes.

Ellipses, I read your post earlier and have been thinking about it all day. Not sure that I have anything of value to contribute, but it just really brought me back to my own struggles at that age. I always felt like an outsider for a variety of reasons, in addition to my own giftedness, I never fully fit into a single social category or group. I think it is great that you are trying to help your daughter through this AND that she is comfortable enough to share her feelings with you. I hid my own feelings of loneliness from my parents.

My own children are much younger than yours, so I don't know what it is like to parent a child through this, but here are a few things that I have thought about regarding my own experiences, maybe they would help.
--I read some research recently that said that kids feel like they need to have alot of friends, but in fact, 1 or 2 really good friends are really what helps teens through this, mental health wise. This was definitely true for me, I developed one very close friendship and a couple more fairly close friends and that really made a world of difference. So maybe you could help your daughter foster one or two close friendships rather than focusing on the being part of a larger group or crowd. Maybe someone in one of the activities she participates in? Chances are there is someone else feeling like an outsider too who might welcome a new friendship. If she were younger I would say, call the parent up and set up a playdate if she's too shy to do so herself, but I don't know what would be appropriate intervention at 14. But maybe you could find some way to encourage a new friendship though.

--I remember when I was a junior in high school an adult said to me, "Enjoy high school, it is the best time of your life!" and even at 17 I remember pitying this person. If HS is the best time of your life, that is just sad. HS was NOT the best time of my life (and I would imagine it isn't for alot of people). Things do get better! And, in light of my recent 20 year HS reunion, IMO those who seem to be on top in hs are not necessarily the ones who seem to be the most successful, happiest, etc. later in life.

--I think a pp mentioned something like this, but if the therapist doesn't help, perhaps an adult mentor would. Someone who is happy and successful now, but also struggled in HS?

Don't know if any of this is helpful to you, but I just wanted to say, I remember that feeling and it CAN be survived. Big hugs to your dd!

Depression and normal teenage angst are often hard to differentiate, even for a parent living with a child day in and day out. If a child is expressing feelings of worthlessness, it is worth it to pursue help. And if one therapist doesn't or didn't help, it doesn't mean another won't. And if it is clinical depression, medication supervised by a doctor might be the answer.

Just don't ignore the little warning bells. Sometimes this is all a child is willing to send off, and sometimes kids do drastic, permanent things in a state of depression, so the consequences of ignoring the signs are too high for everyone,

Depression is actually a normal side-effect of chronic pain/chronic medical conditions. The brain really isn't made to deal with chronic pain.

I can't speak to how effective therapy is, but I do know that reactive depression is pretty standard in my chronic pain cases.

It must be very frustrating for a boy that age to be "trapped" like that with his medical issues and I can see that he'd think college would seem like an eternity at 13. Do they have a social worker or counselor where he goes for his treatments? If I have a question about my daughter I usually start with her OT since she's gotten to know her well and is interested in helping with the whole package, including the self esteem.

Before I had a child I remember listening to older people saying, "what are all these kids so depressed about, they have so much...why are they so unhappy..." and seeing Oprah shows with teens talking about how depressed or stressed they were when the world seemed layed out at their feet and it was hard to understand.

But now with a child in school and really hearing so many stories, I don't know what the reason is but plenty of kids are really and truely depressed and stressed. A boy classmate of my daughter's said he was going to "pass away tomorrow" and my daughter asked him what he meant, and he said he was going to jump off a building. This is an 8 year old. When you mention it to the teacher though they seem to think it's probably just some sort of joke or teasing. Maybe some teachers take these things more seriously than others. Same with parents of kids that age if you try to tell them. I don't know if it's part the child being upset about something in their life at the moment and part them hearing about suicide from the news, and putting it together and not knowing what it really means or not, but it's better to err on taking it seriously whether taking immediate action or setting up appointments and letting your child see clearly that you're in their corner and are trying.

Ellipses,

Check your pms. My dd13 may be at the same camp this summer and she's having a hard year socially this year as well. She, too, is a 9th grader and, while she thinks that the other kids at her school are all nice, she is lacking in rapport with most of them and is very lonely.

I've also wondered if some of her difficulties are due to the emotional changes that come with being a teen. I do also think that some of it is the difficulty in finding other HG peers. The kids she is looking for are found in small quantities in life, but they are there somewhere. I'm really pushing my dd to get involved in mock trial and other extracurriculars at school next year to see if she meets more like souls there. She's also thinking of starting a club to raise $ for spay and neuter clinics for animals in developing nations. We were in Costa Rica last summer, which was the first big vacation our family has ever taken. It took a while to pay it off, but it was very worth it and sparked dd's interest in working to improve the conditions of the animals we saw there.

Another issue my dd has run into is that she is being raised in a family with different religious and political beliefs than many of her peers. While she does know some kids who are very bright at her school and who seem nice, she's having a hard time getting past things like class discussions in pre-AP bio where a lot of the kids say that evolution conflicts with their religious beliefs and they don't believe in it. Dh and I were both raised Catholic, but he is atheist now and I lean toward Buddhism. Dds haven't been raised in a particularly religious home. I have also been vegan for 23 yrs and dds have been vegetarian their entire lives. Dd13 has recently become vegan as well.

She has a lot that makes her different and that is hard as a teen. I think that HG kids, like our girls, have a hard enough time finding peers, but when you add in other things (shyness, different beliefs, etc.), it can be even that much harder. We've told dd that she needs to stick it out next year and are trying to give her to tools to work toward making the school experience better and to work on self advocacy, but if she is still this unhappy by the end of her sophomore year, we may have to consider something else.

I talked to my adult daughter who remembers not fitting in and feeling shy around other kids, especially after changing schools. The new school had a lot of kids in it who had a lot more money to spend on clothes than she did. The other girls could afford to do a lot more things like cheerleading classes and vacations. My daughter, who learned to read in preschool, had done very well in school until we moved and at the new school none of this mattered. She was an outsider. A smart girl without the right clothes and the right friends was a nobody at this school. She got really depressed because she was bored and had to stay home a lot because we couldn't afford to do much. This lasted about a year. That was one very long year for her, but then she found a friend. Her new friend didn't have money either, but they had things in common. They were both smart and attractive. They started shopping together and it was like they developed their own style with their limited budgets. They looked better than the girls with money. The rich girls were copying their style. My daughter learned how to do the things cheerleaders learned in classes in our front yard until we could afford the classes and she didn't take very many before she tried out for cheerleader the next year and made it. She became very social. School was not important any more. Being in the top social group was. Fifteen years later she and her best friend are still not married because they have too much fun traveling and enjoying life. They only date guys who are wealthy. Most of their friends are married to doctors. My daughter is dating a millionaire. None of this seemed possible the year she was an outsider. I am the outsider when I visit her world. I don't wear the right clothes or the right hairstyle. I am just her mom and I am happy for her.

My daughter talks to her little brother every day about her life experiences and he does the same. He tells her things that he does not tell me. She doesn't think he needs to see a therapist. She thinks he is handling the brace as well as anyone possibly could. It hurts. He can't do much in it. What could a therapist do to make this any better for him? He knows he won't have to wear the brace forever, probably just another year or two (until he stops growing) and after that he will be able to do more. She talks to him about all the fun things he will be able to do when he no longer has to wear the brace. I think this is what gives him hope that his life will get better. She says he is a lot like her and that he would be very social if he had a chance. He does not have that chance here. She thinks living in a small town with nothing to do and not having a friend with common interests is his biggest problem and that he will be fine when he can move away from here. She says the town we live in is depressing.

Lori,
It is great your daughter weathered being an outsider for a year and came out happily dating millionaires. I don't know that I would assume that your son's experience will be the same. From your posts it sounds like your son has some particular challenges that she does not including: scoliosis, migraines, physical disabilities that will not go away when the scoliosis brace comes off, challenges with skills like handwriting that impact on his ability to access appropriate educational experiences, being less accepted by some family due to his interests, intense fears of medical procedures, chronic pain, having experienced the death of people he's close to, and being an "outsider" for a lot longer than a year. That is a very, very long list and a small fraction of that would be justification to pursue therapy.

I wouldn't expect therapy to be like a magic wand eliminating all problems in his life. I would expect it to be a place he could safely process some of what is happening to him and learn anxiety relieving strategies that may help him move from a place of feeling like he "can't stand to go on like this for so long." There is quite a bit of research suggesting a improvements in patients with chronic pain who get cognitive behavioral therapy.

I really hope you will get him some help.

I can appreciate where you're coming from, Lori, but I'd like to offer a couple of things to think about as you consider the things your son has told you about not thinking he can live like he is until college:

Suicide is a major cause of death among teens, and 8 out of 10 teens who attempt suicide try in some way to ask for help. As parents, we cannot always discern the difference between our kid throwing something out into the universe to see if we'll help in time or our kid just going through a rough patch. It isn't worth the regret or grief if we're wrong. http://www.teendepression.org/related/teen-suicide-statistics/

And, second, I also suggest looking into the benefits of behavioral cognitive therapy to cope with the pain, chronic health issues, etc. I have two autoimmune diseases, one of which results in my living with chronic pain. Cognitive therapy is not about marinating in self-pity but about learning techniques that help us cope with things over which we have no control. Jon is right - chronic pain often leads to depression, and not addressing it makes dealing with the pain that much harder.

Just some thoughts to consider.

Add to this list of things my son is dealing with the fact that his mother gets worn out and stressed and his elderly grandfather, who lives next door, is not in good health. My dad has been living with a lot of pain but is finally able to have knee replacement surgery since he is no longer responsible for my mother's 24 hour a day care. He took care of her for 8 1/2 years until she died last September. His surgery is Monday so we will take time off from our homeschooling to be with him and help him when he comes home from the hospital.

We seem to be getting slammed with a lot of difficult, painful things in our family lately but we keep bouncing back. We never seem to have time to get used to a "new normal" before we get hit with something else to deal with. We constantly have to be flexible and change our routine. We prioritize every day and priorities change daily. It is hard but we are not depressed all the time. We take mental health days when we need them. We took a mental health day yesterday and drove to a college town. We went to a mall and walked around and had lunch and talked and laughed. Everything went great until we had to drive home back to reality, back to our boring old small town with road debris on the highway that fell out of the back of someone's pickup truck. I ran over some of it and worried that the metal object might have damaged something under my car. I can't afford any other expensive car repairs on my 13 year old car. My son listened to my meltdown about how I hate it here too. We will survive this.

My son uses his wonderful sense of humor to get through some of life's difficulties. He "gamifies" as much of his life as he can. He knows that he is playing this game of life at a higher difficulty level than a lot of people. He knows from things that he has read that there is a good chance that there will be better ways to manage pain in the future.

We celebrated the fact that after everything he has been through that he managed to do more math in February than he did before he started wearing the more painful brace. He did this even with our internet problems--it keeps disconnecting and is very slow and we never know when it will work. We didn't let that stop us. We drove to a McDonalds with wifi about ten miles away and he did his math there.

He started watching more sci fi shows on netflix and this takes his mind off things. He finished all the episodes of Heroes and is currently watching Firefly. He reads a lot of very interesting things every day and he still loves to learn. He loves political science. He says he would like to sit in on a college class where there was a lot of discussion but he doesn't want to do it in a brace because it makes it hard for him to sit for very long in most chairs. Sometimes he even finds it more comfortable to sit on his knees and he could not do that in a classroom. We can't even go to movies because of this problem. The brace is very disabling.

His disabilities do not stop him from learning. They never have. They affect his endurance and he can't work on endurance while in the brace because it limits movement. He says he notices the "catch 22s" in his life.

I notice that he is more cynical than I was at his age, but the things he notices are things that I can't really argue with, they are true. I think cynicism can go along with giftedness but I also know that it can go along with depression too. I am watching this closely.

We are not rich. We cannot afford all the therapy that people recommend. We have no choice but to live within our means.