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[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]

Why is it controlling and exclusive? Why does it bother others so much if people have friends? [/quote]

Here’s an example. DD has several girls her age in our neighborhood. It’s great because she’s friends with them and enjoys spending time with them. However, in the past year or two a very exclusive socializing clique has formed and these girls families have become apart of this clique. It’s fine, we’re friendly with the parents, but we also have an older son and don’t have as much free time to socialize with neighbors as the families in this clique. This clique has become not very welcoming to including others. So on multiple occasions, I’ll reach out to the mothers to see if their daughters can come over and get together with my daughter, and I’ll get “Oh sorry, we have plans” and then they roll up at a house of another clique member across the street. So the adults wanting to socialize is preventing kids from hanging out with their actual friends. The other clique members kids aren’t even the same age, and they’re not friends. I’ve seen these neighborhood cliques go bad in the past, but it’s frustrating when it’s impacting your own kids. [/quote]

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