<p>Hi all…I appreciate everyone’s posts, some hard to swallow but I needed to hear it. But is what I am hearing is that it is okay for us parents to watch our kids be “mean” to other kids b/c it’s typical at this age…and do nothing about it? My younger son is good friends with another neighbor’s son who is autistic. When he gets older and his friends tell him not to invite that “weird” neighbor, shall I just support his decision not to invite him? Whatever happened to “being the parent” and teaching your child what is right. I don’t get it.</p>
<p>We’re having friends over tomorrow night–we used to have two couples over on a regular basis–but they are no longer friends. Their daughters were best friends until an ugly falling out in high school and the mother’s tried for a while to be friendly, but they ultimately just let it die. It’s sad, because I like them both a lot and we had a great time together, but it’s just too awkward because they both feel their daughters were wronged by the other ones. </p>
<p>I think we all make friends when our kids are little based on classmates and friends of our kids. It’s hard to remember when you made friends based on other common interests–but that’s what I’m trying to do these days.</p>
<p>That’s not we are saying. You have control over how to bring up your kid, but you have no control over how someone else brings up their kid. Your son has a choice of not putting up with it (like my daughter) and not allow someone to treat him badly.</p>
<p>No, it’s absolutely not o.k. but you can’t force people and you’ll go crazy trying. My apologies in advance to the popular people reading this, I’m sure there are many kind and generous popular people–but overall, the popular group is not usually the nicest group. You can always speak your mind, but it’s probably falling on deaf ears.</p>
<p>My ds is now 19, and he lives with other really nice kids and he has really nice friends, and the neighbor kid is just another drunken frat guy. I would not want to be a pledge in that fraternity.</p>
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<p>His friends tell him not to invite the neighbor…but it’s “his” decision? </p>
<p>That’s another whole lesson on not cratering to peer pressure. If the years pass and your son grows apart from the neighbor kid, you shouldn’t make him invite him. But if you sense he is bowing to pressure from others, then you would need to get on him.</p>
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<p>And sometimes even the jerky kids turn out okay. My D’s elementary school friend who turned into a “mean girl” from 5th-8th grade, then became a boy crazed troubled 9th grader, now seems like a reasonably pleasant, grounded young woman. I’d rather be me, having to make myself be pleasant to her mother, than to have to have been her mother!</p>
<p>missypie - I get your point about bowing down to pressure.</p>
<p>But I’m realizing what I am really have a problem with: It’s today’s parents who bow down to “but it’s his decision”. Like there’s nothing a parent can do. To me it’s a cop out instead of taking the opportunity to let the child see the ripple effects of their decisions. All that “it’s his decision” attiude teaches is that it’s okay to be selfish.</p>
<p>I’ve also had another thought on this matter…</p>
<p>What if the ex-friend’s mom had insisted your son be invited? He might have been excruciatingly miserable at the party because he may have felt completely out of place or even been actively ostracized by the other kids in attendance…</p>
<p>I think that ages 12-16 are just horrible for most kids. I’m not sure the mean kids enjoy being mean. I know the “unpopular” kids are miserable.</p>
<p>Thank goodness most kids grow out of this stage.</p>
<p>" But is what I am hearing is that it is okay for us parents to watch our kids be “mean” to other kids b/c it’s typical at this age…and do nothing about it?"</p>
<p>No, I don’t think that’s what anyone is saying. I do think, though, it should be child’s decision whom to invite to their parties. If the kids had a falling out, I don’t think that parents should force one to invite the other to a party.</p>
<p>“he said that she discussed this issue with her son before the party and he claimed that my son said something to him that was hurtful and didn’t want to invite him.”</p>
<p>Perhaps, too, this is why the OP’s son wasn’t invited. Things like this happen even by kids who generally are very nice.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! You guys are always helpful and honest…I truly appreciate it and everyone’s input has helped more than you know. </p>
<p>I will take the high road and continue to be friendly with this mother. I will leave it in
God’s hands that my son will live and learn through this. This is a tough age and I give all these kids kudos to have to face these trials everyday…and we can only hope that they all do grow out of this and become better citizens for this world.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>My kids don’t have a lot of birthday parties but D did have one last year. There were a few girls that weren’t on the list that I asked her about…she said that they weren’t really friends and I didn’t pursue it further. If she’d said something obnoxious like, “but she’s so fat” or “her parents are poor”, I’d have intervened with a life lesson, but if they just aren’t friends, I’m not going to push it.</p>
<p>Another thing that becomes awkward with parties is deciding whether to mix groups of friends. Lets say you have one friend from the neighborhood, one from church, one from scouts and 15 from band. Sometimes kids decide to keep it all from one group (e.g. the band kids) rather than invite someone who’s not going to know anyone else at the party.</p>
<p>By 8th grade, these “kids” can have reasons for not wanting to hang with others with whom they used to be best friends. And, a lot of the time the 8th grader is not going to tell you (the parent) the “whys.”</p>
<p>In two seperate events when my S dropped a buddy in middle school, that boy was expelled from the school within a matter of months for conduct violations.</p>
<p>I knew one mom who made her son continue to invite a boy he tried to drop and it turned out that her son and that kid got into some fairly extensive problem stuff.</p>
<p>The ripple effect of that parent’s decision (made without knowing the “real” kid) resulted in her kid getting into a serious jamb.</p>
<p>IMO by 8th grade, dropping a friend ought to be left to the kid.</p>
<p>BTW-- summer 2008 now college S and I went on a father-son trip and during the trip I asked him to tell me the stuff he’d “omitted” telling me back in junior and senior high. I was relieved that my S did drop certain friends once the “whys” were disclosed. I am glad I trusted my S’s judgment.</p>
<p>You’re so right, 07Dad. There were a couple of times where I chided my D for not being pals with certain girls…the ones I remember as being just adorable in preschool…only then I found out that those were the girls who had very advanced “dating” lives quite early on…</p>
<p>missypie–I have a niece and she has confided in me that she ultimately made a wholesale change of friends in junior high over substance experimentation and (as you put it) “dating” issues. She just wasn’t going to tell her mom because she felt that the details of what life really is like for a 13-15 year old girl would have set a lot of things in motion with her mom.</p>
<p>I don’t know if she was correct about her mom’s reaction, but I know that a good kid made a good decision. I told her that I was proud of her and that I knew that her mother would be proud of her, but I kept her confidences to myself.</p>
<p>Anne Lamott said something about 7th grade once–and I’m paraphrasing so bear with me. She had found herself unexpectedly pregnant by a man who had since moved on to someone else. She was a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict. She’s a writer, so no real steady income, no benefits etc. She had many serious concerns.</p>
<p>Anyway, she says the thing that she most worried about, the thing that had her waking up in terror in the middle of the night----was the fact that she was bringing someone into this world who would eventually have to go through the 7th grade.</p>
<p>I did try to talk to mean kid’s mom once and I tried to be very diplomatic. I suggested that perhaps her s didn’t understand he was hurting people’s feelings because he had an older brother that teased him relentlessly, so he had to develop a pretty thick skin. She concurred, but clearly she was allowing the meaness and teasing in her own house, so she sure wasn’t going to be worried about my kid.</p>
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<p>Here’s what I think it’s important to get. In life we are all going to choose friends. As others noted, early friendships are often driven by parents, where you live, what park you play at.</p>
<p>These kids are now at an age where they will choose friends on their own using factors they consider important. If your son still sees this woman’s son as a good friend, perhaps he needs some help with reading social cues. This boy has made it clear they are not good friends, and your DS needs to move on and find kids he has more in common with and form new friendships. As these kids are being discerning, for better or worse, in selecting their friends, he needs to be too. This is hard for some kids. The lesson to teach here is that you want to choose friends who treat you right.</p>
<p>Not being friends with a kid because he’s autistic is a whole different subject, and yes, teaching tolerance for differences and understanding of disabilities is important. And so is teaching a kid to understand the realities of the world and the meaning of real friendship.</p>
<p>I think it’s also important not to create a family feud mentality. Your son needs to see that you can be perfectly friendly with Johnny’s mom even when he and Johnny are no longer good friends, and that he should still smile and say hi to Johnny.</p>
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<p>I agree with you, OP. Eighth graders don’t do parties all by themselves; they need help, and parents have the right to impose standards.</p>
<p>In allowing the 60 kid party to happen down the street from you, that family has to understand that your son’s omission was deliberate and you and he will reasonably take it as a snub. From here on out I’d be cordial to the lady, but not friendly. Why bother - she obviously was less than honest with you when she told you about not liking the fair, and who knows if her claim of your son’s hurtful words was even true (I doubt it, frankly). She’s only concerned with her kid’s status, and probably will have her hands full in a couple of years.</p>
<p>You couldn’t PAY me to go through 7th grade again.</p>
<p>Like so many others, I experienced this when my kids were younger - the parties they weren’t invited to, the friendships that cooled down (or exploded in public), the hurt feelings, the awkwardness between the moms. In two cases, we moms continued as friends after a rocky moment or two. But in the other instances, I chose to see the moms as acquaintances, not friends, and stopped calling or seeking out interaction. Know what? I haven’t missed having these women in my life at all. Just mentioning this as a possible option for the OP - you don’t have to salvage the friendship with this mom unless you really feel it’s worth salvaging. (Even if you have to attend the same social events, you can be perfectly pleasant - and ever so much classier than she is.)</p>
<p>I agree with the others on this thread that adolescents should have the right to choose their own friends - I see many drawbacks to parents controlling this aspect of teen life. I think it’s worthwhile to discuss ways a kid might resolve a problem with his friends if the kid is open to discussing it with his parents. I personally would never “insist” that one of my children try to resolve a problem or salvage a faltering long-time friendship. When my kids were in 8th grade, I had enough trouble insisting that they put their dishes in the dishwasher. :)</p>
<p>Ginger, your son will probably be a more considerate and socially aware person than most because of this incident. If the friend’s mom would "do anything to make sure her kids are with the ‘in group’ ", she’s going to be a sorry mess sooner or later.</p>
<p>Been there, done that too. The thing is that I found I needed to separate MY friendships with the friendships of my kids. The reality was that when the kids were little <em>we</em> chose who to invite to parties and also which parties we would attend (usually as a family). As the years went by, our kids remained friendly with one or two of OUR friends’ kids, but by and large, they went their separate ways. Our kids had friends and we had friends…and they usually weren’t in the same family!! In one particularly awkward situation, one of our kids remained good friends with a friend’s kid, and our other kid did NOT remain friends with their other kid. We parents are VERY good friends!</p>
<p>As the kids got older, my husband and I sometimes felt a bit sad, but we realized our kids and the kids of our friends really deserved to choose their OWN friends…didn’t need the parents being involved anymore. </p>
<p>When our kids weren’t invited to an event (and YES…that did happen)…we never inquired. It was a kid to kid thing. </p>
<p>We also have the opposite situation. Our kids are still friendly with some kids and we USED to be friends (we thought) with the parents. Oh well…our kids never ask their friends why the friends’ parents aren’t inviting us (the parents) to picnics or parties:) .</p>