Exclusion has long been considered part of adolescence. The road is often rocky as tweens and teens strive to maintain their identity while fitting in at school with their classmates and even at home with their siblings. Young people differ greatly on the way that they view social interactions— and deal with the pain and confusion of feeling left out. Keep reading as tweens and teens reveal their personal experiences with feeling excluded.

Nawal Arjini, age 12
I’m new at my school this year. Though there are nice people at this school, they have been together for so long. This means they’re all really tight, and it’s been hard to break into their friendships.

I don’t want to break up their friendships, but I want to find a really good friend and doing this has been extremely difficult. Sometimes I especially feel left out because everyone is talking about what they did last year or other things from the past.

When I was in 1st grade, I became close with one of my classmates who’s still one of my best friends. But this friend had another friend who thought that you could only have one best friend. She felt insulted when I started to hang out with her best friend. Sometimes, she’d try to take my friend away from me. Because I didn’t really know anyone else, I didn’t know what to do. The result is feeling excluded, which causes sadness and jealously.

Jade Sabajo, age 10
I sometimes feel excluded in my family. We siblings— my sister, my brother and I— have different fathers. My other sister has a different birth mother.

I like my sisters a lot. My Dad, however, it’s like sometimes he treats my sister Mercedes better than he treats my other sister and me because we’re not his biological children. When I talk to my Dad about it, he tries to fix it. But I think it’s kind of hard for him because he still can’t get over the fact that things he couldn’t control occurred between him and my sister’s Mom. School is better for me because I have a lot of friends there.

Gabriel Frankel, age 12
I’ve been in my school for seven years. There is a bunch of us guys who are all close friends. We usually involve each other and don’t leave each other out.

One time, though, I found out that this kid was having a secret birthday party. Some kids, including myself, weren’t invited. I thought I was close friends with the guy. I was a little upset at first, but then I came to realize that we’re at an age where you just can’t invite everyone. This allowed me to move on from not being invited. I’m still friends with that person; you shouldn’t hold a grudge against people.

Boys can be competitive with each other. They can start by saying things about each other that are not true. This especially happens in sports. Like if a kid is jealous, then he’ll try to put the other kid down. I think a difference between boys’ relationships and girls’ relationships is that boys can forgive each other much easier than girls can. Girls, if they’re mad at each other, they generally stop talking for about two days or more— I’ve seen it happen in my class. But, for boys, about an hour after a fight, they’re friends again.

Tom Harkins, Jr., age 12
There was this time that my friend Nicolas liked this girl. Whenever I went near him, whenever I tried to talk to him, he’d say, “get out of here, Tom; can’t you see you’re not my friend anymore?” He said this while he was smooching up on her.

I had to find a new friend. Couldn’t Nicolas just stick to his guns with me? That was in the 5th grade. I had no choice but to break up the couple. Then Nicolas was begging me to come back and be his good friend. At first I was a bit reluctant, but then I decided to become friends again.

Katherine Cabrera, age 16
Once in my gym locker room, all of my friends were there opening presents. I asked, “Why are you guys opening presents?”

The girls responded, “Oh, we did a whole Secret Santa thing but we forgot to tell you.” I felt excluded because everyone was giving presents to each other, and nobody gave me a present. Nobody had told me anything about it.

I think sometimes boys are different when it comes to exclusion because they’re less dramatic. When something happens between girls, they make a big deal about it. They’re always like, “Oh no, she didn’t!” And all this gossip happens. If the girls arguing do become friends again, they’re often fake to each other and they generally don’t like each other even if they say they do.

If you’re feeling excluded, ask a trusted friend who is not involved in the conflict or an adult for advice. Also, explore your talents and hobbies. By pursuing things that interest you, you’re apt to connect with peers with similar interests— a great way for developing meaningful and lasting friendships, without feelings of exclusion.

Children’s PressLine is a youth journalism organization in Manhattan that trains kids to be reporters and gives young people the opportunity to represent themselves in the media. For more information, visit www.cplmedia.org.