When children and teenagers talk about feeling lonely, that may feel confusing to us because they don’t seem alone. They may have friends at school, people to sit with at lunchtime, classmates they talk to and activities they’re involved in. From the outside, they look socially connected, but their experience of those relationships may be quite different. A child can have a group of friends and still feel the absence of one close friend who really knows them and just gets the

I’ve been thinking lately about how strange adult friendship can be. You can have people you really like, people you would describe as close friends, and still only manage to see them every month or two. When you do catch up, it’s great. You talk easily, fill each other in on what has been happening and probably say at some point that you really need to do this more often. Then you get the calendars out and realise that between work, children, family commitments, weekends awa