Sympathy for Childrens' Friends

[wenmc]

Deleted

 

[brockash]

I completely feel the same way with a lot of my ds's (8) friends. Sometimes I think maybe I'm just really naive or a little crazy, but I swear I just want to adopt all of them. He has a few friends that have what I call "normal" childhoods, with good parents ect. Those are the friends houses that I let him go to. There are a lot of his friends though, that there's no way I'd ever let him go to their houses, although thankfully, he's only been invited once and I just made up an excuse. I feel so bad for these kids, and they'll ask all the time to come over and sometimes they end up spending the whole weekend with us. There parents just don't seem to give a crap about them, and in some cases are just plain mean to them. I really just don't know what to do, or what you can do. I mean, I don't think there's any physical abuse going on or anything, but still it's just not right and I feel so bad for them. On the other hand, I sometimes feel bad for my ds, because sometimes I won't let him go over to one of his "better-off" friends or let him invite them over, because I feel bad and have him invite one of the other kiddos over. I don't know, it's so sad.

 

[Colleen27]

I do sometimes. Our community is pretty old fashioned and mostly good parents who try their best, but some of them have so much to deal with... DS's best friend from our old neighborhood has been through foreclosure, moving 12 hours from everyone he knows in with grandparents he only saw for a week a year for the first 10 years of his life to avoid homelessness, and now his parents are divorcing because the marriage just can't handle the prolonged financial difficulties and the living with inlaws.

And as with any neighborhood, there are a few bad apples. A family recently moved in here that just breaks my heart. They have 5 kids; 11, 9, 8, 7, and 1. Right now, none of the kids in the neighborhood are allowed to play with them because of the way their parents act, and it just makes me so sad for the poor kids who are just stuck in the situations their confrontational parents create. But at the same time, this is a quiet neighborhood and none of us want to be the next target of these people calling the police and protective services over imagined slights and personal grudges so no one wants to have their kids around.