Reply to To what degree are you involved in your 6-year-old's choice of friends?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I always feel it's fine to control who is welcome in my home. I've told my DD what makes me like a kid and what doesn't. She knows which kids are welcome here. If the kids who aren't welcome here invite her she can go.

Sometimes we find out the kid is nicer than I thought, and sometimes DD finds out the kid is just like I thought and she drops them.[/quote]

I would completely avoid this at all costs. Try not to single kids out but do explain what behavior is okay and what is not okay. Kids don't have filters. I had a friend do something similar and the kid ended up sharing with their friend and the friend told mom. All the mom knew was "Larla is not welcome in our home."[/quote]

NP: It really depends on your kid, you kinda have to know them.  My DD at 5 had friends who didn't treat her that well, and definitely didn't treat other classmates well.  When she'd tell me the latest troubling events, I had many conversations with her about what a good friend acts like and feels like, and encouraged her to find friends who made her feel good about playing with them and to ignore the bad behaviors of these other friends.  I also flat out told her that she should really be careful of one girl who was proving to really be a problem (pushed my daughter off a jungle gym and pushed another girl backwards on some stairs - fortunately both were ok but I was done after those events).   My DD never told the girl in question.  She did tell the other kids she didn't want to play with them because they weren't being nice, and I'm fine with that and fine if they tell their parents my DD said it.  But the one who I told her to really stay away from, she hasn't said anything to that girl yet and it's been almost a year.

OP, whatever you end up doing with playdates, communication with your son is key.  Ask him about the behaviors you've observed in his new friends, ask him how other kids respond, whether they ever treat him that way.  Ask him how he thinks other kids feel when those kids tell other kids they can't sit with them.  Get some age-appropriate books on exclusion and bullying and "mean girls" (or mean boys) types of behavior.  Use it as an opportunity to broaden his ideas about how classmates treat each other.  And watch his own behavior on playgrounds etc.  My own DD, who was always sooo sensitive to whether other kids wanted to play with her or not, I once observed her telling a girl (she was 4 at the time) that she couldn't play with her other new friend (she'd just met both that day).  When the other girl tried to follow them, my DD pushed her away physically.  I pulled her aside and had an immediate talking to her abotu all the things she'd learned in PS about "friends being kind - you don't have to like everyone, but you have to be kind to everyone".  Made her go apologize and told her that she could either be nice to the girl and include her, or we were leaving immediately.  Haven't observed her acting like that since (there were several other follow-up conversations).  But when kids hang out with other kids who aren't kind, IMHO as parents we have to either limit access to the mean kids, or have ongoing dialogue with our own kids about what they're learning, how they're acting, how it feels ot be left out, etc.[/quote]

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