How do you filter your children’s social circle?

[Anonymous]

If the other kid drives me nuts I will not bring their name up for a playdate suggestion but would not say no to it. If I like the kid and family I will suggest them regularly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a gross, weird question. I let my kids play with any kid who is kind, respectful, and who they want to play with. If I don't care for the parents, I invite the kids for drop-off playdates at our home or meet up somewhere with an escape plan and good entertainment. I do not "filter" their social circle.

Another + for this.

Op don't be so classless.

You're both missing the point. The first PP ANSWERED OP'S QUESTION after slamming it for being gross and weird. Pot, kettle, enjoy each other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a gross, weird question. I let my kids play with any kid who is kind, respectful, and who they want to play with. If I don't care for the parents, I invite the kids for drop-off playdates at our home or meet up somewhere with an escape plan and good entertainment. I do not "filter" their social circle.

Well, isn’t this how you filter them then? Based on the character of the child? I do this too. Also based on the character of the parents, though. There are a few kids who have snobby, materialistic parents and I try to steer my kids clear of them. They’re young, but I’ll bet the kids take on those attitudes in due time. No thanks. Related to the PP above, I may filter out a family if they have a fancy mansion. I don’t care if you have ungodly amounts of money, but if you live in a showy home you do not share my values. Obviously as the kids get older I won’t be able to nudge them.

Way to teach your kids to judge books by their covers. Not sure your values are so great, despite what you think.

Sure. Sorry your Tesla doesn’t buy you friends.

Are you trying to be on the "right" side here? By saying that you wouldn't be friends with someone because of their car?!? I couldn't care less if my kids' friends' parents drive a Tesla or a Tercel. You people are such hypocrites, it's amazing.

[Anonymous]

I don’t filter, but I don’t do play dates either. My kids hang out with the kids of my friends when we get together. And if I don’t have time for that, play dates are definitely not happening.

[Anonymous]

Netjets is okay.

[Anonymous]

When the kids were little, they played with my friends’ kids. In early elementary they played with classmates, then with neighborhood kids. I didn’t let them go to the racist Trumpsters house, but those kids were welcome at my house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t filter, but I don’t do play dates either. My kids hang out with the kids of my friends when we get together. And if I don’t have time for that, play dates are definitely not happening.

We look forward to your "my kid has no friends" post in a few years.

[Anonymous]

I encourage my son to have a wide circle of friends. I don't care who they are, as long as they are not mean and do not use racist, homophobic, or ableist language. I only intervene to the extent that my son tends to obsess over one or two kids, and not keep a broad group of friends, which I think can be better. You never know when you might have a falling out with a friend at that age, so best to not limit yourself to one or two people (ok to be closer with a small group, but keep options open).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a gross, weird question. I let my kids play with any kid who is kind, respectful, and who they want to play with. If I don't care for the parents, I invite the kids for drop-off playdates at our home or meet up somewhere with an escape plan and good entertainment. I do not "filter" their social circle.

Well, isn’t this how you filter them then? Based on the character of the child? I do this too. Also based on the character of the parents, though. There are a few kids who have snobby, materialistic parents and I try to steer my kids clear of them. They’re young, but I’ll bet the kids take on those attitudes in due time. No thanks. Related to the PP above, I may filter out a family if they have a fancy mansion. I don’t care if you have ungodly amounts of money, but if you live in a showy home you do not share my values. Obviously as the kids get older I won’t be able to nudge them.

Way to teach your kids to judge books by their covers. Not sure your values are so great, despite what you think.

Sure. Sorry your Tesla doesn’t buy you friends.

Are you trying to be on the "right" side here? By saying that you wouldn't be friends with someone because of their car?!? I couldn't care less if my kids' friends' parents drive a Tesla or a Tercel. You people are such hypocrites, it's amazing.

+1. PP is clearly a wannabe queen bee with “loads of friends” but is the parent everyone avoids bc she has a personality disorder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a gross, weird question. I let my kids play with any kid who is kind, respectful, and who they want to play with. If I don't care for the parents, I invite the kids for drop-off playdates at our home or meet up somewhere with an escape plan and good entertainment. I do not "filter" their social circle.

You are literally filtering your child’s social circle by using these restrictions.

And honestly kids who are not kind and respectful are often the ones most in need of kindness themselves.

That may be true, but I am wary of having my kid around them.

For instance, my preschool aged child came home from school and mentioned one of his classmates wanted to "squish a bird". You better believe that is a huge red flag for some kind of trouble in his home or behavioral issue, and I absolutely want to protect my kid from that. No playdate with that family.

Eh… I get where you are coming from, but I would meet the kid and get to know him a bit before judging too quickly. You don’t want to teach your kid to be close minded and what are you going to do if your kid says or does something weird one day? Preschoolers are random and it could mean absolutely nothing. I would even go so far as to say that it’s normal for them to explore many things they don’t understand at that age, including death and power. If the kid was 7 or 8 and saying that stuff that is a bit weirder but could still mean any number of things.

There are also some fidget toys that are shaped like birds, and the child squishes them in their hand. I would want to know the context, but if the chidl is truly wanting to kill a live bird? Yeah no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I encourage my son to have a wide circle of friends. I don't care who they are, as long as they are not mean and do not use racist, homophobic, or ableist language. I only intervene to the extent that my son tends to obsess over one or two kids, and not keep a broad group of friends, which I think can be better. You never know when you might have a falling out with a friend at that age, so best to not limit yourself to one or two people (ok to be closer with a small group, but keep options open).

You forgot sexist, xenophobic, misogynist, classist, and ageist.

[Anonymous]

1)Kindness
2)The hosts have a safe home for my child to visit. It doesn’t need to be fancy or in a great neighborhood. I worry more about unsecured guns and alcohol/Rx meds in the home than anything else. When my kids were little, we hosted in our apt or at the park because we didn’t have a backyard, playroom, etc. There are also unsafe people. The teen stepsister of one child was unstable and cruel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What a gross, weird question. I let my kids play with any kid who is kind, respectful, and who they want to play with. If I don't care for the parents, I invite the kids for drop-off playdates at our home or meet up somewhere with an escape plan and good entertainment. I do not "filter" their social circle.

So what would you do if your child was friends with a disrespectful, mean child? You would probably do a little filtering yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a gross, weird question. I let my kids play with any kid who is kind, respectful, and who they want to play with. If I don't care for the parents, I invite the kids for drop-off playdates at our home or meet up somewhere with an escape plan and good entertainment. I do not "filter" their social circle.

So what would you do if your child was friends with a disrespectful, mean child? You would probably do a little filtering yourself.

Nope. We would meet at the playground and the child would have to find others to play with. Eventually the requests for playdates would diminish on both sides.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nice kids who my kids play with well.

This. That's reallly all I care about. DS has friends with a wide variety of backgrounds. As long as the kids are nice and respectful, I don't really care about anything else. Even if the kid came from a not so great background, I would be happy to host the kid at my house.

+1. We live in a very wealthy area, where our 1.3M house makes us one of the less wealthy families. So, like someone else wrote, by those standards we've done a lot of filtering already (something that I kind of regret). That said, we haven't had reason friends. My daughter just turned 2 and she has a cute little group of friends. My daughter is very active, curious, and relatively adaptable/easy-going, which makes her a great play-date/friend as she models a lot of good behavior naturally. She doesn't have issues taking turns or sharing, she loves to hug, and is very verbal, creative, and dexterous. One of her friends is struggling with sharing (she throws toys at other kids instead of giving them toys when it's their turn). Her other good friend can be a little rough when playing (the "thrower" kid is the rough kid's neighbor and actually hid from the rough kid for a while when it was time for play dates, not exactly a ringing endorsement! However, this little girl has an older brother who can play roughly with her and just had a younger brother and I think may be struggling a bit with the latter). My daughter somehow manages to play well with both of these little girls and they both like her and rarely act out with her (they more so act out with each other). We could have just cut these kids off, but we monitor play dates and understand that they are still learning how to be respectful.

Due to the pandemic and our being relatively new to the area, we aren't amazing friends with any of my kid's friends parents. They are all super rich and relatively nice, but also seem somewhat humorless. That said, I would never try to cull my daughter's friend group just because I wouldn't choose their parents as my best friends.

Holy shit. Come back when you have a second kid.

Lol, +1. I was laughing reading this. Kids don’t even really interact at age 2!!!

+2. So sweet, so innocent, so funny.