To not want my child to go to a friend's house when I haven't met the parents.

You can be comfortable with it or you can not be comfortable with it but you will never stop children from experimenting with the concept of "having a boyfriend/girlfriend." You can, of course, forbid it, to ensure they continue as normal but tell you nothing about it.

I said I can't have children in my house with the parents not knowing, she said her mum does know as she texted her. I said sorry but I will need to check can I have your mums number,
yes you're the odd one, has he never played out? kids popping in and out to play in the house or garden?
My house has always had a stream
of pals in and out, I'd never be done checking!!

Exactly this. And also what @BollockstoThis1 says.

We have a lot of involvement in DSDs life but literally probably know one or two of the parents of the (many) kids she hangs around with. She goes to and from school herself (meeting friends along the way). She has two after school sports clubs but even then she'll get herself home as they finish before 5. They don't do birthday parties anymore and the kids make arrangements between themselves for after school / weekends / sleepovers. It's just not the same as primary school at all. I suppose a lot has to do with phones these days as they can all just arrange stuff so easily with each other that it negates the need for parents involvement...

The only time we ever come across her friends parents is either when we're dropping her off or picking her up from their houses and even that's rare as we usually get a phone call saying "can you pick us up at the park / from the shops / at some completely random location we've never heard of".

Plus she changes her "best friend" and friendship group every week currently so we can't even keep up with her friends, never mind their parents! I think once she gets a bit more settled in high school this will change but for now it's just letting her find her feet a bit...

*How do you befriend secondary school mums? It's not like primary school where you see them in the playground every day.

And no, I don't want to have a coffee with a random mum of a child that mine has become friends with. If they want to pop in and say hello when they pick their child up, that would be fine. I can hide my axe murder tendencies for 5 minutes. *

Less about what I want to do (coffee with a stranger) more about what I should do. You befriend by making an effort to chat at drop off and getting to know the families DC is hanging out with. Don't you see parents at school events or local things or dropping off at parties/shopping trips/cinema?

If a parent cannot be bothered to chat over coffee, it says a lot to me about their attitude to risk. If they don't care about where/who their child is with, they won't care about mine and our values are likely very different.

@FateReset that might be great in an ideal world. But secondary school really isn’t like you imagine in most cases. For a start friendship groups change frequently, you don’t bump into other parents at the school gates (most kids walk, use public transport or get dropped off around the corner), at sports days or kids birthday parties etc.

You might meet another parent by accident at an event, in town, picking up from a sports club or hobby or when dropping off or picking up but thats fairly rare. But anything else and an 11 year old’s mum insisting they want to meet her 11 year olds new friends mum isn’t cool and may not go down very well.

My DD has made 2 friends at high school and I've met their parents from drop offs and picking up. But I agree they decide more between themselves. I think once they are secondary age the idea is if there was an issue they could leave/phone you to pick them up or whatever.

That’s a whole lot of anxiety there. You need to be able to manage risk, not over control due to some issues you have, as the odds are you will damage your child before anyone else does

In order to manage risk we first have to identify the risks, assess and consider ways to reduce them. Otherwise it's just ignoring the risks and hoping for the best.

How do you see a child being damaged by a parent who is aware of the risks and sets boundaries?

Children benefit from socialising and visiting friends houses, but we can enable this by restricting whose homes they are visiting when they're preteens, then gradually giving them more freedom and responsibility as they get older. Hoping that by the time they leave high school they've had mostly positive social experiences, are able to make wise decisions about risks independently.

Such a huge gap between never letting a child go to other's homes... and being so busy/overconfident/naive that you let them go anywhere as soon as they start highschool!

Risks can't be eliminated but they can be drastically reduced.

I think your DD2 must be the friend who wasn't allowed to come to my DD's 18th birthday party on the basis that her mum had never met us.

We thought that was ridiculously overprotective (particularly as it was just 6 months before said friend was off to university). Your behaviour is also so. Is DD2 ever allowed to leave home?

You might be, but that's not your fault, it's the child's.

My DD has a friend who we invited over, she wasn't allowed because they have never met me. Fine, but no effort to arrange any meeting, so no after school visits. A shame, you can see our house from the school. This was Yr8!

Surely you teach your child how to handle situations? Ask appropriate questions: do you have dog? springs to mind.

We also have a safety strategy. My DD's can text me a safe word and where ever they are, whatever they are doing, I'll come and collect. No questions. I will call to say I'm coming and that it's a family emergency and she needs to be home. I take the blame, she is safe.

I’ve said the same. I had an absolute nightmare one evening when my daughter’s 12 year old friend turned up quite late, I let her in as it was dark out and said only for an hour as it was getting late. When she went to leave I asked her how she was getting home, turns out she is fostered and had run away and refused to give me her foster parents details and wanted to just leave. I was hours on the phone with the police and the duty social worker both passing the buck to each other. There’s loads more to the story but now I always check !

How do you befriend secondary school mums? It's not like primary school where you see them in the playground every day.

And no, I don't want to have a coffee with a random mum of a child that mine has become friends with. If they want to pop in and say hello when they pick their child up, that would be fine. I can hide my axe murder tendencies for 5 minutes.

No you are not being unreasonable. My younger two are 17 and 18 now. The first year of senior school I would always check and regularly had parents check with me too.

That’s a whole lot of anxiety there. You need to be able to manage risk, not over control due to some issues you have, as the odds are you will damage your child before anyone else does.

Now feeling like a very negligent parent! I can't say it has ever entered my head that my dc's friends parents might be drug taking child molesters! I've also had numerous dcs' friends ( I have 4dc) at mine without meeting their parents.
I think it's a bit different if it's a sleepover as I would prefer to at least spoken to a parent before hand ( dd2 was mortified when she was invited to a friend's 18th (dd was 17) for a sleepover when I asked to speak to a parent. She refused and she didn't go!

At 11 I was certainly communicating with my sons' friend's parents to ensure they knew their own kids were at my house.
No way was I taking the word of an 11 year old I didn't know when they said they had let their parents know where they were.

You are "pretty liberal" only within the context of a bubble.

"Playing out" and being in and out of each others' houses (which you said you wanted your DC to have) is not the same as organised play dates.

Be thankful this has happened now, so you are prepared for secondary school when your DS will (or should at least feel he could) message you to say he is "hanging out" after school or going round random new friend's house for a bit.

He's never gone out independently to meet friends before

I think it's all happened quite quickly.
To go from never going out independently to dropping by friends' houses with your parents not knowing their parents in the space of days is quite a lot to take on board.

Usually they start to learn a bit of independence by e.g. walking back from school alone, or going out with mates for a defined period of time or going into town with friends. You then learn how mature they are, what issues they're struggling with and can help them deal with the unpredictable.

It’s completely normal to go to your mates houses. It’s completely abnormal to want to know the parents and text them like this. He’s 11. You need to loosen the apron strings as you will damage his social life and friendships.

When DS was in Yr 7, he had a "gathering" for his birthday and a (nice) group of friends came to the house. At pick-up time, we invited the parents in for drinks and to say hello. They were all very nice and friendly and it paved the way forward.
Those boys are all now in their late 20s and still great mates.

When I was 11/12 it was the norm to be in and out of other kids houses without parents knowing where we were, if we weren’t back for dinner then my mum would start calling around looking for us but most of the time she didn’t know who’s house we were at. Luckily we grew up in a village and my parents did know most of my friends parents so it was pretty easy to locate us if needed. Obviously we didn’t have mobile phones so couldn’t text parents to say where we were, they just trusted that we were safe and being sensible.

I know things have changed but we also have the added security of mobile phones now, it’s much easier to know where are kids are and keep in contact with them. I’m sure this child had messaged her mum to tell her where she was so mum wasn’t too concerned, her daughter is probably sensible enough.

Just think of it as kids being kids! The majority of 11/12 year olds are still massively innocent and don't think of relationships in the same way that adults do.

DSD will have friends to sleepover and I'll go into her room to take them a snack / drink in and they'll all be giggling because one of them has been kissed on the cheek by her boyfriend as a dare and it's the most hilarious thing they've ever witnessed.

Plus if we said to DSD "we're not happy with you having a boyfriend" she just wouldn't tell us!

I think I'd make a big effort to befriend some of the mums, especially the ones who know lots of others. Surely other mums would also feel more comfortable knowing who their child is with?

I'm very safety conscious and believe it's too easy to get sucked into thinking all the kids do this and that.

I worry about older siblings or mums' partners being dodgy as well as the safety of the area, large dogs in the house, chaotic lifestyle. Sadly lots of families are dysfunctional or lack the boundaries or morals your child may be used to. Even leaving 11 year olds alone in house or letting them watch inappropriate movies would bother me.

If a parent was reluctant to meet me for coffee or happy to let their 11 year old come to my home without knowing anything about our family, it would ring alarm bells to me. I know people are busy, but 11 year olds are still children, in need of a responsible adult supervising (even from a distance).

Fair enough. I wouldn't be comfortable with it personally but maybe I'm overthinking.

Not really because they're not real relationships!

DSD (12) will announce she has a boyfriend and then a week or so later he's dumped her / she's dumped him. One of them used to put his arm around her whilst he walked her home and another once gave her a hug (which she told me whilst blushing when I asked if said bf was a nice boy) and that's about the extent of the contact!

We have DSD (12) every weekend and without fail each weekend she asks if she can go to stay at a friends or have them stay at ours. We've usually not even heard the kids name mentioned up until that point (there's 2 or 3 girls she's been friends with since primary but we've had a stream of "new" high school friends who come and go and we never see again!).

We just always make sure the friend has spoken to her parents, tells them where we live and say we'll drop them off (we live a bit further away from her school area) / pick up the next day but that's about the extent of our interactions.

And yes, it is a short sharp change from Primary school where you're doing all the running round and arranging plans! You literally have no involvement in their social life whatsoever😂