My son has been complaining lately that no one will want to be his friend
because he is small. He just turned 11 and going to 6th grade soon;
he looks like he is just finishing first. His first grade cousin is actually taller than him, but she’s tall for her age. This will give you an idea on his
size. He has never had this "problem" before and was always positive about his height.

But now, he's got this paranoia that no one will like him because he looks
younger than he is. We found out last week that a family with four kids
ages 7 to 12 were moving into our neighbourhood. There are no other school
aged kids in the neighbourhood, so we thought he would be thrilled.
Nope. He said, "Oh, they won't think I'm going to be a sixth grader and so
they won't talk to me."
And
last night, he showed me a project he had done for school -- a progress
packet to send to their 6th grade teachers. He will be in a new school
next year, and the letter he wrote to his teacher said, "I hope the other
kids will be nice to me. I'm very small for my age, and they might not like
me because they think I'm a little kid."

Now, I think this is happening because he is going to the new school, and
he's afraid. I've told him to tell kids how old he is if they don't seem to believe
him. And they'll notice soon enough that he *is* older by the things he
does, like ride his bike out of the block, or simply by the way he
communicates. But he still seems sceptical.

I was one of those rare kids who stayed in one school my whole life, and
except for when I went to college, I never had to walk into a classroom
feeling utterly alone. I have no idea how he might be feeling. Any
suggestions, experience, or comments?

Hi Sannever, This may or may not help your son but my 14 year old daughter who is 5'6 just finished middle school which for us is 6th through 8th grade. I have to tell you, from listening to her talk about the boys that everyone liked the most, popularity had nothing to do with height. In fact, the 2 most "sought after" boys in the 8th grade class were 'smaller' than everyone else! What made them so popular was that they had "huge" personalities! They were out-going, friendly to everyone, confident in themselves.
My now 19 year old daughter is 6'2! All through middle school and the early part of high school, I had the same, but opposite concerns as you do about your son but I just constantly talked to her about being proud of who she was, about her height and about accepting herself the way she was.
She got to a point where a boy's height didn't matter at all in deciding whether or not to go out with him or be his friend. She came to realize that there was nothing on the outside that was as important as what was on the inside. She still feels the same way.
And as for my 14 year old, now that the school year is over her heart is broken, she just found out that the boy she had a crush on just started 'going' with someone else, and he was a whole head shorter than her!
I would say for you to just work on his self-esteem, help him get involved in activities that he is good at, encourage him to see that what is on the outside of a person, whether it be size, height, color, etc, is not nearly as important as what is on the inside.

HI,
I feel your pain. Our 2nd grader is always saying that he is too small. But you would not know he is embarassed b/c otherwise he is very out going and fun to be with. But as soon as he has an altercation with someone, they make fun of his height. We went to church once and he wanted to put a prayer in the prayer box. He wrote on it, "Dear God, Please make me big. Love, Me". When I read it, it broke my heart. Anyway, we decided that we needed to find something he could be really good at. So he could be confident. He naturally seemed to take to baseball. I am so glad he did not pick basketball. So, we practice a lot and he will join a team next Spring. He feels good about it and even teaches his friends a thing or two. Also, we introduced him to another older kid, that has the same issues. Our son liked knowing that someone else out there was experiencing the same thing. We also showed him some super heroes, famous sports people, actors, anybody we could find that was not super tall. He still gets his feelings hurt, but he is more apt to ignore it b/c he can play baseball.