On the not having a boyfriend front, she’s already ahead.
I know it’s extreme. But I think it’s important for her to know how to drive. And also, how to deal with jobs and bills.
My mother didn’t teach me any skills a grownup might need, and I still don’t have lots of them. What I do know, I’d like to show my kid and hold her hand as she gets started. I feel like time’s running out.
Well, why does she need a BF when she has a 17-yr-old stepbrother? 
(I kid - of course.)
My youngest has also never had a BF beyond a couple of dates. She’s honestly said she does not care to put forth the effort involved in maintaining a relationship. Quite the little bitch!
And her teachers say she is really friendly, outgoing, and personable at school. Nice to know she gets it all out of her system before coming home to spread her raincloud over our home! 
Really bothered me for a long while. She rarely if ever went out with friends. The phone never rang. And I’d come home and she’d be watching America’s Next Top Model or some other crap, and eating junk food. But one time she said to me, “Look, I’m in the top 5% of my class, sit first chair in symphonic band, and I have a part-time job.” As a results oriented guy I had to hand it to her. Told her she could watch whatever TV she wanted, so long as she kept the grades up.
Long story short, she got accepted into a good school, is really excited about studying molecular biology, and just recently decided she wanted to eat well and exercise. So you never know when or if things will turn around. Just keep fighting the good fight. You can’t live your kid’s life for her - all you can do is your best. The main thing, for us, was that our kids contribute and be pleasant around the house. We decided that at base that was the one thing we could absolutely demand.
I hate that. I generally lie and say the tearing is from allergies.
My husband’s sister is almost exactly like this, only she’s almost 21 now.
Just recently got her learner’s permit, but still no license because she doesn’t want to drive. She has a car and everything, just no motivation.
She’s a bloody brilliant artist. Tried to get into SCAD but she doesn’t have the grades for it and doesn’t like the idea that she’d still have to take basic courses like english and math.
Nobody in our family can figure it out and her step dad is at his wits’ end. She’s still living with mom, and mom does everything for her, drives her places, gives her money. The daughter claims to still be broken up by her parents divorce, and I understand that’s a pretty big deal but it’s getting flat out ridiculous.
My husband and I have offered her a place to stay if she wants to get out and explore the world for awhile, but she’s never had a job and never done for herself so of course she’s scared.
Of course the mom knows that she’s probably being a little too enabling but it still doesn’t account for the utter and complete lack of motivation. I’ll be interested to see if anyone has any concrete info that can help.
Dinsdale, I think you and I have similar ideas about child rearing. Anyway, I like to read your posts. 
Thanks for setting me straight Q.E.D. When I was growing up in the 60’s we commonly used the term anti-social instead of asocial. It’s a bad habit I need to break. I was quite shy as a child, but I always had a few close friends I was comfortable with. I enjoyed spending time with them, I just didn’t like being thrown into social situations with strangers. I wasn’t good at mixing at parties and tended to keep to myself. I’m a lot better now with 40 years of practice…
Does she enjoy making art? She could learn technique through the internet/books or just on her own through trial and error and sell things on etsy or ebay. Maybe if she develops her interest in art she’d start getting involved in artist communities on the internet and find out about local people or shows or other events that would motivate her to venture out into the world.
Forgot to say, people in her life could start supplying materials and gently pushing her to work on art projects. And positive reinforcement and praise are very good motivators.
The fact that she hasn’t had a boyfriend is really the least important “symptom.” Many teenagers just aren’t that interested. It can be a little hard for those of us who were definitely interested at that age to fathom, but it’s true.
Dinsdale makes a lot of good points, including:
And on the license issue–I don’t think you should force her to pay for insurance on a car that she doesn’t want. But you should make her get her license. Even if she chooses not to drive, or chooses not to drive very much, knowing how to drive definitely counts as a “useful life skill.” It’s much more of a pain in the ass for an adult to go through the rigamarole of getting a drivers’ license than it is for a teenager.
She sounds a lot like me. Some people just like to be alone. In high school up to my current young professional life, I’ve never been short of invitations from friends. I accept because it seems to be the thing to do if you’re a human being. I don’t really enjoy outings with friends, parties, or social gatherings. My feelings towards these things are indifference, rather than active dislike. Surfing the internet at home is vastly preferable to getting dressed up and going to a friend’s birthday party in Hollywood, but I’ll do the latter out of some sense of social obligation and a feeling that I must play the part.
To me, it sounds as if your daughter doesn’t feel compelled to “play the part.” She just wants to be who she is. In my opinion and personal experience, the problem that she will run into is in her professional life. Someone who doesn’t smile, make small talk, make good eye contact, and socialize during and outside of work is generally not a well-liked employee. Good social skills need cultivating.
I wouldn’t push her to socialize with friends if she doesn’t want to. Her private life is her own, and if she’s happy the way she is, she shouldn’t have to change it. If she’s interested in a teaching career, however, she’s going to have to fake those social skills. For me, I first needed to realize that I didn’t have those skills. Then, I gradually taught myself over time how to smile engagingly, make eye contact, and make small talk by watching and listening to others. Or, like Nava said, she could just become an engineer!
Remember, when you ask an internet message board “is it okay to spend all day alone in your room?” you are going to get an unusual number of people saying “Yes, of course it is.”
She sounds a touch depressed to me.
In any case, she needs to have at least one thing in her life that makes her eyes light up. If she likes music, can you get her to go to concerts? She needs to have stuff to work towards, stuff to look forward to, and stuff to have memories about.
Ouch.
People also read themselves into situations like these. I was going to go on a long spiel about how I was like that, but since I really don’t know your daughter, it’s not likely to be useful.
In my experience, the part-time job is necessary so I would push that. The boyfriend part seems very normal, so I wouldn’t be concerned about that. Casual dating seems to really have gone out among young people, so sometimes there just isn’t anyone among her circle of friends (particularly if it’s small, as you say) that she wants to have a relationship with.
Exactly. My guess is she feels school is the place where she either has to play the high stakes popularity game, or withdraw in a face-saving way from playing that game as much as she can. Texting is such a face-saving way; texters can hold up the pretense that they are having a cool life. Pushing her to get a car means you are taking such a face-saving excuse away from her. After all, then she can no longer say she would be going places if it wasn’t for lack of transport. Getting a job in the neighbourhood also is somewhat incompatible with face-saving withdrawing; what if she works with a class mate, or a classmate walks in?
That’s why enlisting her in some geek activity with young people who are not part of her usual social circle, might be beneficial. A new circle of people, might allow her to re-invent herself. And geeks are not interested in playing the popularity game, which might be, to your daughter, a huge relief. She might not even know there are circles where that game isn’t played.
Another benefit is that usually, geek clubs have more boys then girls, and the few girls who participate are sought after and courted. That might bring her out of herself too. I know it was that way for me among my nature geeks.
Maastricht, you’ve touched on something I heartily believe in. Having strict parents, or a curfew or no car, or whatever, gives kids an easy, face saving way out of situations they don’t really want to be in. Examples: My mom can smell a cigarette at 50 paces, no way can I risk trying one. Oh, I’d love to sneak out to a bar, but my curfew is 12 and I’ll get grounded for a month if I’m a minute late.
Parents aren’t just there as gatekeepers, they also help kids dodge peer pressure.
Usually at any high school there is a group for everyone. Whether or not she wants to be a part of that group is a different story. Heck, for all we know, she might be spending all her time making youtube videos defending Britney Spears.
The bottom line is “does she SEEM unhappy to you.” If a person is content not to socialize that is fine. If they want to but are afraid or don’t know how to do it, then it becomes a problem.
I think that there are certain things a parent should force a kid to do. Like drive for instance, it’s a skill she’ll need and is useful. Now by force I mean, get the license. Once she gets it don’t force her to drive. So long as she has the license.
As long as she is polite, gets decent grades and contributes to the family, (either doing chores or paying rent), and isn’t making trouble it’s best to let her be. Make sure she understands you’re conserned about her and let her know that if SHE (not you) feels she needs some counseling you wouldn’t be opposed to helping her get it.
As a parent you should be guideing you’re child not forcing her. Once she hits 18, is she’s still at home, make sure you raise you’re expectations. Tell her you expect her to pay rent. (It doesn’t have to be a lot you could say 25% of whatever her take home pay is) and then reward her by giving her more freedom.
If she’s over 18 and chooses not to go to college (and it isn’t right for everyone) start to encourage her to leave home and develope as an adult.
“Let’s talk about it!”
“No, I don’t want to talk about it, as a matter of fact the last thing I want to do now is talk, plese give me some time to calm down.”
trying to hug me “But honey, talking about it will make you feel better!”
“Talking makes you feel better. It does not make me feel better. The sooner you stop talking to me, the sooner… GETYOURHANDSOFFME!”
There’s a special circle of Hell for those people. They sit there with the ones who say “oh baby don’t cry!” to someone whose beloved just died in a traffic accident :mad:.
Sounds like a mix of insecurity, depression and social anxiety. The Triplehead of TEENAGE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM, which I had for the win!. I was a late, late bloomer for many reasons, but the social imprinting I had ( or didn’t) from my 4 older Total Dork Star Trek Fan Wank-Mensa brothers, did not help one bit. not one thing helped. It did help me pick up on their social phobias and issues, which took me many a year to shake off.
Ironically, my mom is quite a social butterfly and none of her personality seems to have pervaded her natural born childrens DNA.
I personally hated my home life because it was very depressing and would rather be by myself rather than hang out with the brothers of the dorkalypse. When I went anywhere without them, it was wonderful and my entire personality changed.
How does she handle new situations and change?
Every time she’s changed schools (private to public, middle to high) she *hated *everything for a while, then did an about-face and loved the new place.
So she can adapt…I have hopes that’s how it’ll go with the driving. I’m still going ahead with the car and the part-time job idea, but if it doesn’t work out after a while, I’ll let it go, and at least she’ll have a license then.
From what I’ve read so far, depression or social phobia seems very likely.
“Hmmm… stays in room, few if any friends, no socializing, no desire for license…seems perfectly normal… so… um… what’s the problem?”
Just another thought:
My son is now a freshman in college. He had a kinda tough time in high school as far as not really being as accepted or successful in the groups he most wanted to be. Never succeeded in being a “cool” or “popular” kid. His interests/abilities tilted more in the direction of D&D, SF, history . . . And he’d spend hours/days/weeks holed up in the basement or his room drawing maps, writing novels, whatever.
For a long time we counselled him that things would be better at “the next level” - and generally they were. Middle school was easier for him than elementary, and high school easier still. At each level more kids were more tolerant of differences, and there were more kids who shared his interests.
But I think he entered college with unrealistic expectations. That it would be a clean slate, and he could spring upon the scene and basically be whoever he wanted to be. When the reality was he was the same guy he was in high school, with the same interests and the same social skills and experiences (or lack thereof).
Not sure exactly what I’m trying to say, other than to say high school is really a time to experiment with social skills you might want to use later in life. And it would take a pretty supreme effort to truly rework one’s personality and nature. I’m no expert, but I think that by the time a kid hits their late teens, it is a pretty good bet that what you perceive as their predominant traits will at least be evident throughout their life. In short, I doubt your kid will ever be a social butterfly. But by no means does that mean she shouldn’t be happy - which is what is really important, right?