Reply to Neighbor girl comes over everyday to play, every day

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]At least where I and I think other posters are pushing back is the idea that kids playing everyday together after school without planned play dates is somehow “abnormal” — so much so that multiple posters have said OP should report the situation to child protective services. In our experience, a kid coming by to play is not a sign of abuse. It’s simply a sign of a normal childhood where we come from.

For me, it’s also confusing that OP expects the neighbor kid’s mom to proactively tell her kid that she can only go knock on the neighbors’ door a certain number of times a week, without any further instructions about how often and what days. For many of us, a kid spontaneously asking or expecting to play with a friend after school is “just fine.”

If your post had specifically said that the behavior you mean is not “just fine” is the crying, then I doubt you’d get much pushback. I think the crying would probably be solved if neighbor girl understood the rules, which is impossible right now because it’s arbitrary. It seems like OP wants her kids to spend less time with neighbor kid, and isn’t being clear. There’s no indication that OP’s kids want less time with neighbor kid, so that’s probably even more confusing and upsetting to the kid. If OP is clear that her kids can only play on specific days of the week, I think neighbor kid will get it and adapt and stop crying. She’ll understand it’s not that her friends don’t like her, it’s that her friends’ mom has different rules about playtime.

It’s totally fine for OP to have different rules about playing after school. But there will be many of us who think it is just fine to play everyday after school and to let our kids knock on a neighbor’s door until we are told by said neighbor that practice is unacceptable. So I think she’ll have to find a solution that takes into account these differences in opinion — in other words, she can’t expect neighbor kid’s mom to just understand there’s a problem here. [/quote]

I think that people are bring up CPS only because the girl who is coming over every day sits on the porch and cries if the kids cannot play. People are seeing that crying on the porch as a sign that something is wrong with the neighbors home and the girl does not want to go home. It is possible that the girl is crying because she really wants to play or she is crying because she is trying to avoid something nasty that is happening at home.

It is not really up to the OP to understand what is happening at the other girls house but she might be coming over to escape boredom or a sister who is really mean to her or parents who are some how abusive.

My Aunt had an open door policy for the kids in her neighborhood. There was a family with a single Mom whose husband died when her kids were young. The Mom was working and overwhelmed. My Aunts home became a second home for her kids who were able to use that support and friendship to help find their way as adults. The kids became family and the two families are very close.

My Aunt had no problem allowing the regular play and kids being over, that was her choice. She also saw that there was a reason for the kids being there and saw that by being available she could help two kids who needed a bit more structure and love. It created a life long friendship.

If the OP wants to have a bit more structure then she needs to talk to the other girls family in order to establish some form of communication so that the child understands the boundaries. It is fine to do that but to expect a young child to understand that is a bit of a reach. The OP needs to talk to the parents. Maybe in the process she'll figure out what is driving the girl to come by and be sad when there is no time to play. But it sounds to me that the girl might need a refuge of sorts.[/quote]

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