We have a neighbor kid up the street who is my son's age and defaults to us for play dates. The child is in an interesting home situation where he is being raised by his grandparents and has a 19 year old uncle living there too. SO...this child is a thorn in my side. There are many things I could say...but my main gripe right now is...he is teaching my son things HE DOES NOT NEED TO KNOW at this age. We now know the F word because of him, we now know what the middle finger means because of him AND we now know what gays are because of him. I am not an ostrich with my head in the sand...I know that this knowledge would enter into our repertoire but not at this accelerated pace and NOT from a peer his same age. I am torn between banning him from playing with this boy (whom treats my son poorly anyway), to talking to the boy, to talking to the grandmother. All of which are uncomfortable for me.I actually pride myself in not being too much of a helicopter parent but when you have to expose your precious 'bird' to a toxic vulture on a regular basis knowing that there is a risk of some sort of untoward stuff going on....what is a mother bird to do? I know this is not my worst or last parenting issue...but it saddens me that my son is more street smart than he needs to be at this age....boo hoo!
2 comments:
I have a similar, though not quite as bad (yet) situation at my house. Our neighbor's boy is several years older than Ryan or Trevor, yet they play together frequently. He treats them like crap but they idolize him and want to do and have everything he has. They have come home with quite a few things that I've had to explain that we won't say that "at our house". I limit as much as possible, but the interaction is inevitable. In your situation, I think you can easily say no to him going over to the friend's house and relegate yourself to supervising the friend's visit. And I wouldn't hesitate to explain to the boy the rules of your house and send him home if he won't obey. My mom was always strict with my friends and as much as I hated it, they respected her.
I was thinking perhaps you want to have a conversation with this boy. Tell him that while you really enjoy having him over (lie) he needs use better judgement or else the play dates can't happen.
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