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How to celebrate sweet 16?

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Paul1969

New Member
Here is the challenge I am currently dealing with. I would like your help or advice on this matter.

My daughter Lotte, Aspergirl, will turn 16 in 2 weeks. Special occasions like this always cause her an amount of anxiety she cannot cope with --> meltdowns. In her heart she wants to celebrate it, but in the past birthdays were never pleasant. Not hers, not any ones.

Her biggest problem is that she doesn't have any friends. She is alone and lonely. She does make friends, but is unable te keep them. So she knows some girls, but doesn't want to invite those. For example, last year on her birthday her "friends" forgot to send her a "happy birthday" on social media, the entire day. The next day she confronted her friends with that. In an effort to console her they hung balloons and festooned her locker. As a reaction Lotte destroyed it all in front of her friends. Those friends she doesn't wanna invite anymore and I doubt if they would come if invited.

She has some individual friends, but since those friends don't know each other, she doesn't want to invite them all at once. She also doesn't want to invite them all separately, since that's not a sweet 16 party. She wants 10 at once, but knows she cannot deal with that. (Nor does she have 10 friends)

She wants our help, but also doesn't want us to do anything at all. All the suggestions we give her are met with her "bears on the road" (Dutch expression that is hopefully self explanatory). I didn't give you all the bears yet, but she is really good in coming up with reasons why she doesn't want any of our suggestions.

Any suggestions, advice, experience that you can share with me? I do want to give her "small" successes in her social life so she can celebrate little victories instead of big failures that reinforce her low self-esteem.
 
Why don't you celebrate together as a family - go out for a meal, or have a special meal at home, or go out to the cinema together or on an excursion, something like that? Remember that a birthday celebration is not obligitory and doesn't need to involve school friends. Involving school friends might just stress her and make her unhappy - but if she does have a 'bestie' at school, you could invite him/her, if she wants that. Give her a say in this, don't try to force her into socialising or doing something that she is not comfortable with, that will just make her unhappy. Who are you doing it for - who is it who wants her to have lots of friends, her or you? Talk to her about it, ask her what she wants, listen to her, discuss it together.

These days there is waaayyy too much emphasis on social status, social hierarchy, social media and 'friend collecting' - how many friends you have - it just leads to fake, superficial friendships. Better to have one or two genuine friends, than hundreds of fake ones.
 
Thanks for your reply Progster. I guess I wasn't clear on that part. She has a say in everything. It's her desire to have a birthday party. Not ours. All we want is her to be happy, even if that means, in her case, staying in bed 24/7 (she doesn't actually stay in bed 24/7 but she would love to). If that makes her happy, so be it.

However we have a lose/lose situation every year and I wanted to break through that situation. If we organise a party and things go wrong, it reinforces her low self esteem. If we don't organise a party, the same happens, because it reinforces her loneliness and therefore her low self esteem. She blamed us the entire last year for not celebrating her b-day last year. (Even though back then we gave her a lot of opportunities to celebrate, she said no to all suggestions, so in the end we didnt do anything)

She herself doesnt want to celebrate her b-day, but she herself also does want to celebrate her b-day. Both angles are hers. We asked if we could invite our friends over to celebrate her b-day, but she doesnt want that, so that wont happen.

We told her that whatever she decides its fine, its her choice. But that too is a struggle for her: making decisions. In her heart she wants to celebrate it, she wants to have friends. Her depression is mostly caused by her loneliness.

We do celebrate her b-day with mum and dad and her brother and sister. We go bowling (her desire) and eat at a fastfood restaurant (her desire), but still she wants to have friends from school come over. Friends she more or less doesn't have.
 
I see. I don't know what to say really. I see your point of view, that it's not fair on her part to reject all your suggestions, and then accuse you of not arranging a party. She needs to choose, either invite all her friends who might not know each other, or just invite one or two, or have a family celebration. I don't have any other suggestion other than to talk to her about it, try to convince her that she doesn't need loads of friends at a party to make it special. Perhaps a compromise is best, that she just invites one or two. Perhaps there is no easy answer or solution. She is being pulled in two opposing directions - social pressure, wanting or feeling the need to fit in, which means having, or being seen to have lots of friends, opposing her autisitic traits, the feeling of being behind glass and disconnected - wanting to do something, but at the same time, not wanting it. Push-pull. It's not a good place to be, but things do get better as you get older. When I was at school, I didn't have many friends either, and neither got invited to parties nor had parties of my own - I always celebrated birthdays with my family, I didn't want parties and it didn't bother me that I didn't have them as I never asked for them, but everyone is different.
 
Beren op de weg? Nog nooit van gehoord.
(Bears on the road? Never heard of it.)

It seems she might have a bit of a princess syndrome. It's damned if you do damned if you don't. Nothing is good enough, despite it being quite clear to her that what is the perfect little party in her head is just going to be a total disaster.

The best idea is to invite her best friends (Maybe #1 and #2) and do something they all like to make it special. If you invite 10 friends then it's going to cost a truckload of money to do something special, but with 2 of her best friends you can still make it memorable without too much craziness. 2 is best because if she goes out of commission due to meltdowns or whatever, it won't be boring for the lone kid. Of course, I don't know exactly what triggers her meltdowns so obviously you want to avoid things that could possibly cause them (Large crowds, etc).

If she refuses or brings up bears you can either tell her you are going to organize it anyway and that she can see if she wants to come along or you can say it's either that or nothing. Unless, of course, she has a realistic alternative. You need to start setting boundaries that prevent her from ending up alienating the friends she does have because she has a meltdown, and you need to educate her on to self-diagnose meltdowns about to happen so she can avoid having them in public at the very least. She also might need to get used to a certain idea (a certain type of party) and that it might take her a week or so to actually accept it. If you keep changing plans or leave it up in the air as to what to do then she has no chance to get used to something other than the perfect party with 10 people she has in her head.

The depression is probably not caused by lack of friends. It's the autism combined with being at the mercy of authority figures. I had a ton of friends but also became depressed right around her age (15-16 I think). You have to see exactly how the school establishment handles everything, because in my case my school years were like living in North Korea.
 
When my daughter turned 16 I took her and her best friend to Cherokee, NC and took a train ride through the mountains. She loved it and for a while wanted to be called whatever her name was in the Cherokee language. Another time I took her to see Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (she was a huge fan and was crazy over Neil Young and all the older generation loved watching her jump around to her favorite songs). She was as much a hit as CSNY was. lol
 
Also, by going to an event or something, it takes the pressure off her to entertain and socialize as much.
 
I've always enjoyed my parents spoiling me on my birthday even as I've gotten older. On my 16th birthday we went out to eat at an Italian restaurant and I got 100$ spending money, and I was happy. At least my parents didn't have to worry about giving me a car or driving lessons.
 
I agree about inviting a small amount of friends and either ignoring her desire for an arbitrary number of 10 or talking to her about that desire and it's arbitrariness.

At 16, I didn't have any friends and my parents didn't make any effort to do anything for my birthday and now, for some reason, I don't like birthdays. Hmm.. perhaps I'll figure that out one day... But anyway, what I'm saying is, I think you're doing great, whatever happens!
 
Why not just have a quiet birthday at home? Perhaps she could invite just one very good friend, or none at all. For my 16th birthday I got a pet hamster, and that was enough excitement for the day. Even on my 18th birthday, I hung out at home, opened presents, ate cake, etc. I think the best birthdays are ones spent alone with family. No need to make a big to-do about it.

If your daughter wants a huge celebration, though, I'd choose the least stressful option.
 
I still agonise over this kind of thing, so I do understand how hard it must be for your daughter, and for you.

I'm not sure I an add much to the suggestions here and glad you are doing something as a family so she feels special regardless of the friend side of things. One thought for friends.... rather than a full blown party, could you just invite a few for cake and perhaps a film at home? My son is 16 and also has a diverse set of mainly individual friends who don't all know each other, so he doesn't want to have too much empty time for talking at things like that. His parties are usually playing football at the local park, followed by pizza and cake, but this year he had an exam on his birthday, so he just had a small group round for cake afterwards, and they knew they couldn't stay too long as they all had revision for the next exam to do.
 
In the end we only celebrated it as a family. We went dining in her favorite Bickel Bear restaurant :) (the Dutchies here will know that one I guess).

So no friends, no nothing…

She got a gaming laptop and a Wacom tablet for her birthday. literally half my salary :-( but her talent is graphics, she can draw pictures you wouldn't believe. All self taught. And she is amazing with clay too, she made the dragon from the movie how to tame a dragon when she was 11 and it was a 100% clone. Unbelievable!

Another topic, because she doesn't want to do anything with that talent other than use it as a hobby. She says drawing soothes her and she doesn't want a career in it, since than it won't be a hobby anymore. So she is now picking a study based on career expectations instead of interests. I think that's wrong, but she is, well, you know how she is :)
 
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