Anything for a Friend

by Linda

As a child, having friends is a primary concern. Not necessarily how many friends, but access to friends. Is the calendar booked with play and social opportunities? If yes, life is great. If not, life is a miserable, torturous event to be survived with much moaning and groaning.

I remember this myself. There were three girls, close in age, who lived on our end of the street: Becky, Kim and myself. Becky and Kim were only children in their respective families, and as such, had many more toys (as well as a very different relationship with their parents) than I did as the oldest of four kids. They were also allowed much more freedom than I. They could ride their bikes all the way to the end of the street. I was only allowed to ride to a point four houses down. They were allowed to play outside after dinner, we were not (it was time for showers and bed). They were allowed to watch TV during the day and evenings. I was never allowed to watch TV during the day (except Saturday morning cartoons after my chores were done), and evening television was a special occasion. Their bedtimes were later than mine – even though I was a year older. The list goes on and on. The point is that because our family rules were different in many ways, this impacted our friendships. This would seem very obvious, as why wouldn’t they rather play just with each other, than to include me, and have to abide by my restrictive rules of engagement.

I remember fighting with my parents over their restrictive perspectives and considered them to be the most unfair parents in the world. But what hurt most, was that my ‘friends’ many times did not include me, as I was not worth the effort it took to restrict themselves to my parents rules. That message, while not exactly in my mind in those words, came through loud and clear.

But another message was imprinted loud and clear; that was the fact that my parents did not budge on their rules. They had their reasons for setting the rules they had, and it was not their problem that other people could not understand it or agree with them. They did not apologize to anyone about it and as far as I knew, they never explained themselves. At the time, and actually until recently, I could never understand that. How could they be so hard, so firm, so . . . uncaring about what other people thought? And I did not think of this in a positive way – more like “how sad”.

The attitude and rules continued through my childhood and created continuing problems for me and stressed my relationship with my parents. As we all became older, my friends (yes, I remained friends with Becky and Kim and added a few others to the list) and I figured out ways around some of the rules, and just simply ‘dealt’ with the rest (meaning, I was left out when we could not get around them).

All of this experience should have prepared me for being a parent. You would think. After all, we ALL know that when WE are parents that WE would do things better than OUR parents did. We know everything – right?

So now, I have my own experiences. Those of trying to accommodate other people’s rules, attitudes, perspectives, so that I am not the one stopping my children from having the friendships they want. But now - I see at what cost.

My basic philosophy has been live and let live. I have my own set of boundaries for my kids, and I respect other people’s boundaries. But I have learned that in many cases, other people do not respect mine. I have heard through the other child, and even from my own, what other parents say about me! And I don’t mean nice comments. Their opinion about this rule, or that decision, or some freedom (or lack thereof), or what we have or have not. I have been repeatedly stunned and hurt. I would never speak to my child about another parent if only for the reason that I know that it will be repeated; but more importantly because, if I have an issue with another parent, I will have that discussion directly with them.

How many times have I had to dry tears and administer damage control to fragile egos and confused minds over judgmental comments made about our family? Too many. All in the name of trying to be ‘nice’, trying to let things slide, so my kids can be friends without worrying about parental issues.

Well, today I have decided that I have had enough. It has only taken me twenty years to figure out that my parents were right. The first time another child’s parent overstepped boundaries – that friendship was over. There were no explanations, no negotiations, no talking things out. I now understand their wisdom. It is very simple. Anyone who does not respect you enough to come to you as soon as a problem arises, they will not respect you to ‘work things out’. What’s worse, many times they are manipulative, hurtful individuals who not only want to hurt you, but take pleasure in hurting your child.

The first time I ran into this was with my second daughter, when she was about 7. I was so clueless as to what was going on with this other parent and why she was so cruel to my daughter. But her daughter and my daughter were friends. So I tried to minimize the contact with the other mother, and let the friendship continue. But it was a losing battle. Eventually, the girl also began being mean and disrespectful, not only to me, but to my daughter, and by then it was a mess. We were neighbors. Everyone in the neighborhood had witnessed the development of the mess. And I had no idea of how to solve it. In the end, we moved. Not because of this situation – but it ended all the new daily insults. Of course it did not solve the problem – and the pain remains for both myself and my daughter more than ten years later.

We have had other minor situations, but two most recently have totally provided me the wake-up call I evidently needed. The first was at a homeschooling event where a simple misunderstanding had blown up into a totally ridiculous situation. For the past year, I have tried diplomacy, mutual friends, and other strategies to ‘fix’ the situation. All to no avail. I even foolishly thought if I ignored it, it would eventually go away (you know, like a bad rumor that someone starts about you . . . well – it never worked in high school, why would it work now? Duh, Linda!). The second was a more indirect hit, when a parent obviously did not like me (but did not have the decency to simply state “I don’t like you and I don’t want my child hanging out with yours”), and decided to take that out on my daughter in somewhat subtle ways (until today). 

Suddenly I thought:

What the heck am I doing? Why am I allowing these people to mess with my head, my daughters’ emotions, and create havoc in our family? I do not deserve this; my daughters do not deserve this. If these people don’t want to be friends with us . . . then DON’T be friends. But don’t say you are, when you are not.

And then I did something that I have never done in my entire life. I politely informed the other mother that we were ending our relationship - in one sentence. No explanations. No discussion. No reasons.

And remarkably – she did not come back and ask for any. She made a few statements of her own - which I allowed to 'wash over me' like a wave at the beach - and then she simply accepted the decision. Perhaps that is what she wanted to begin with – for me to end things so she would not ‘feel like the bad guy’.

I have promised myself that I will try to identify these situations much more quickly. If we are unwelcome, unwanted, not respected – then we are out of there. On the first occurrence; not the second or the third. Responsible, caring people will respectfully address problems, concerns, and questions as they arise, with the other parents. They understand their own patience and tolerance – and decide what they can work with and what they can not. They do that the first time. They don’t pretend that all is okay and later sabotage the child or talk about the family to other people.

I have learned, finally, that it is not okay to let others knock you down, just so your children can have a friend or two. It is not worth it – it only results in a lot of headaches and many heartaches.

Linda is a multi-tasking (translation: crazy) mom of three, homeschooling since 1992, world traveler, dreamer, writer (baker, chef and bottlewasher).

Comments

[Summer]

You're so right. There is no point sticking in a "friendship" where they are not really your friends. I wish I had known that in high school.

[Eleanor]

"My basic philosophy has been live and let live. I have my own set of boundaries for my kids, and I respect other people’s boundaries. But I have learned that in many cases, other people do not respect mine."

I have noticed this as well. I'm reassured that my cutting people like this out as soon as they show they are unwilling to listen to me or respect my decisions as a parent is not an over-reaction. I'd rather have no friends than people like that.

My kids are still very young (4 years, 20 months), so it hasn't quite got to an issue that includes their friendships so much, but I will definitely file these thoughts away for later!

[April]

Although I'm not a huge Dr. Phil fan, his saying that we teach people how to treat us is so true. I am finally learning this. I haven't had any real problems yet with my kid's friends, but I will not let them endure the things I had to as a child for the sake of having a friend. It's so true as kids you don't understand but you grow and learn and understand. It may sound awful, but I would rather my kids have no friends than "friends" who bully and beat them. That's not to say my kids will never have friends, as they do have many.