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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the gist of this thread can be summed up as this:
Parents, have your own friends. And let your kids have their own friends. Those kid friends might be completely unrelated to your friends and that's fine.
This culture that has developed of "friends who are like family" is controlling and exclusive. There are countless threads of people upset they don't have this. I think it's because most kids don't have local family anymore and parents want to develop these cousin like relationships. Your kids should of course be polite to your friends kids but they don't need to be best friends and certainly not their only friends.[/quote]

I sort of agree with this. But actually, it is *because* my spouse and I have our own friends outside our kid's school and activity communities that she has "cousin like relationships" with those kids. She hangs out with them because we are friends with their parents, and over the years the kids have learned to play together and have fun even though they are different ages, go to different schools, live in different neighborhoods or even towns.

I think the key is avoid making your kids' school or extra-curricular community the center of your family's social universe. We are friendly with families from the school, but most of my friendships go much further back and are based on deeper things than just having kids the same age in the same class. No one at my kid's school knows me that well, and while I see them socially at school events and birthday parties and can chat with them and enjoy their company, we aren't vacationing together and I'm not getting together with all the moms for girls night or anything. I wouldn't want to do that because I don't want my social relationships with the parents to impact my kid's relationships. Sometimes she's friends with kids whose parents aren't really my jam, and it's fine because I can coordinate with those parents for playdates and things but I don't need to be best friends with them. There are other kids she has no interest in even though I think their parents are very cool, and there's zero pressure on her to become friends with those kids just to facilitate me getting to know their parents better. And that's how it should be.

I view parents at the school the way I view colleagues -- I want to have good working relationships with them. I am respectful and open minded about them because it's a large community that exists for reasons well beyond my personal social needs. But I also keep people at a bit of arms length because I don't want it to impact our work (parenting). Also, just like in any job, the likelihood that we will all be working together like this longterm is slim -- people change jobs and schools, kids move on to there activities, this is not a static situation. If you keep the relationships professional, there are no hurt feelings and it doesn't upend people's lives if one family goes private or the kids head to different middle schools or someone moves.[/quote]

Even the Obama kids and the Biden grandchildren formed a bond from the family experiences. You can't stop bonds from happening. You also can't force bonds.

But trying to police when people with bonds get together isn't going to work.[/quote]

It doesn't matter if your kid is friends with Sasha and Malia. If the Bidens and Obamas decide they're tired from running the country, and they're just going to do a White House Halloween party, they get to set the invite list.[/quote]

OP knows she sucks for doing this, which is why she feels so guilty about the confrontations. [/quote]

OP should just move on. Just like the Obamas would.[/quote]

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