For supporting my autistic child's decision and blowing up my own friendship?

You and your DDs behaviour and expectations of this texting business and friendship are not any better than Jane and her DD.

You and your DD need to not get worked up and demanding over being left on read on a message. People can do what they like with messages they receive and they don't have to reply.

Going on to a game to confront someone over a message that hasn't been replied to isnt the best thing to do and worse still you supervised her while she did that.

This isn't a friendship that brings the best about in any of you and probably is best cooled off. You have all been unreasonable, you and your DD too. Neither of you parents is handling this well and it's not helpful to the DDs in learning about the social skills friendships and relationships required.

You are not willing to accept the replies you are getting on your post here either so feel the need to details Jane's DDs behaviour in great length in order to get people to agree with you.

The mum sounds half the problem.

block mum on whatever too and ignore the drama

DD will be better off focusing on other friendships where it is not all one sided

Two mums.

One sticking up for her daughter.

The other sticking up for her daughter.

Mumsnet has made me eternally grateful that my mum hardly knew any of my friend's mums in senior school, and kept right out of any spats we had.

I'm pretty sure if she'd got involved everything would've been so much worse and a lot more dramatic.

OP I think you are being unreasonable and you're just as bad a as Jane at getting defensive and thinking your DD does no wrong. I actually think based on what you said that your DD was being a bit much. Regardless of how they usually communicate, the friend asked to be left alone, and your DD kept depending an answer. I agree with PP who said you could have explained it is friend's prerogative to spend time how she wishes and DD cannot demand responses or not to be left on read.

One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given when my kids were school age waa never get involved in their fall outs (unless something very serious) and never fall.out with the mums. That advice served me well over the years 😀

@Tryinghardtobefair
Firstly I think it’s positive that you have asked for opinions here.
Secondly I too am ND, as are a number of my family, including adult children.

I think that it would have been wiser to accept that your DD didn’t wish to continue the friendship with the friend at that point in time without getting into the details of “who was in the right”.

You can support your daughter’s decisions because they are what is best for her, but not push the idea of being “objectively right”.
From an outsider’s viewpoint it seems as if both girls were struggling and that they both had aspects they could work on to do with compromise.

If your mum friend asked anything about what happened you could have simply said that the girls didn’t seem to be getting on at the moment, and leave it at that. By trying to push the point that your daughter was “right” and her daughter “wrong” you have soured your friendship, needlessly.

For future reference I would try to explain to your DD that people all have individual characteristics, including her. If friends do things she doesn’t appreciate, she has the right to not continue the friendship, but trying to force someone to modify their behaviour, because your dd feels it’s objectively wrong, is unreasonable.
In this case I would have considered your DD’s behaviour, ie entering a computer game to confront me about why I haven’t responded to text, as unreasonable.

Everyone in this situation is being unreasonable. However, the two DDs are children.

The messages between you and ‘Jane’ are enbarassing and completely blown out of proportion.

This isn’t how you support your DC.

It’s the right thing for this unhealthy friendship to end, and I suggest you put your effort into helping your DD to form more positive friendships. But take a step back in future from direct involvement, or discussing with other parents.

Both girls sound equally difficult in different ways tbh. Early secondary id have said parents should stay out of petty squabbles.

Shame you and the mum have lost each other over this. Seems unnecessary.

In that case, tell Jane you ate not getting involved in your dd’s friendships anymore as she needs to learn to manage her own relationships. So you re simply not going to discuss how many times she messages or how she responds to them. If Jane’s dd doesn’t like it, then maybe the friendship has run its course. And stop obsessing about messages left on read, the pair of you.

They were both bring unreasonable in different ways. It was a toxic dynamic. Best to move on.

The girls need to work things out between them, or not, without the adults getting involved, otherwise you will have a lifetime of this. I would tell Jane not to contact you to pass on messages - if/when the girls want to apologise or reach out, they can do it directly. At the moment, they have no idea how to navigate their friendship because someone else steps in to fix it for them.

Best all round that the friendship ends - it was not working for either of them.

Tbf, your friend (the mum) also sounds ND so unless you have the energy to be bending yourself into a pretzel all the time, I would just let it all go. And I say that as an AuDHD person and mum to two AuDHD people.

You can spend years (as you have) trying to meet each other’s needs because you think the fault is yours/related to your child’s ASD, but really it just means you are incompatible. NTs have this too and move on when friendships are not working. Just because both DDs are ASD doesn’t meant they should actually have anything else in common - as we keep being told and keep telling others - no two NDs are the same.

Just move on. This wasn’t working for any of you. Neither DD needs the drama, and nor do you.

Both girls sound as bad as each other, in their own way. Parents should not be involved to this level though, it’s unhealthy

Let them sort themselves out, guide and mentor from a distance, don't read and (mis)interpret the messages between them. Your approach should be high level, guiding your dd to explore how they feel and what they can/cannot change, what they feel their boundaries are, and so they can decide what to do.

It certainly should not be texting the mum and micromanaging their relationship.

Definitely best to keep this break permanent. I’m not sure you’ve acted in your daughter’s best interests by encouraging her to maintain this friendship after years of it being the other girls way or the high way. Whatever the issues involved, you’ve enabled her to tolerate being pushed around because Jane thinks it’s acceptable for her daughter to be so controlling and you’ve considered it a price worth paying for Jane’s friendship.

Friendships should make life better, not be a constant source of angst and drama. WhatsApp for immature tweens also seems a bit daft tbh.

Can you not let the girls work it out? Why are mothers getting involved, making it worse and interfering? I get both kids are ND but they should not be running to mummies and getting the pair of you to get into arguments about how they should text each other. They are not 5. Tell your dd you are not getting involved anymore-your dd can carry on being friends if she wants to but if she doesn’t, it’s up to her.

I completely agree @waterrat . I have experienced a similar situation although the children involved are much younger, which make a difference. The mum in my situation was totally unable to see her child "rejected" in any way. I use that term in inverted commas because her child was never rejected, but could not tolerate someone wanting to play differently, wanting to play separately, wanting a toy which belonged to them back, having another child become cross with them etc etc. In the end (and I know of two others who have experienced the same treatment) the mum will withdraw her child from seeing the children who have upset hers for extended periods, causing quite a lot of hurt, as in all cases, she has also engineered strong relationships with the other mums and their children have been big parts of each other's lives. She removes this with no thought at all for the impact on others. The child in question is not at fault - they are in fact delightful and neurodivergent. They need support to navigate social situations and not to believe that cutting a friend out is the right way to manage what is normal social behaviour for young children. Unfortunately, it is a long standing pattern of allowing the child in question far too much control.

In this situation, the girls obviously have different needs which makes some of their interactions difficult. They're a lot older than what I have experienced, so it might be one of those where you've all tried over the years but the friendship just doesn't benefit them. Alternatively, it might be the case that you and the other mum could be a wee bit more adult about the situation and teach both these girls how to consider the needs of others as well as their own. It's an important life skill for maintaining any friendship.

Your daughter was overbearing by continuing to text and stalking her on Roblox. But neither of them are mature enough to deal with the other’s needs so best to let this cool. The mum sounds like hard work so you’re better off without that kind of friend. You’re a bit too involved as well although I get that this might be due to your DD’s ND.

Don’t get involved! My DD tries to get me involved in all of her over dramatic (probably ND) friendship dramas and then it all blows over and I am left pissed off

What I’ve learnt from my kids friends who are autistic or have ADHD is that these things go in waves, with some choppy bits and some calm bits.

I’ve tried my best to educate my kids and if things get a bit intense I always say to take a step back and to be fair it often blows over in time because it’s how the child was at the moment in time.

I fully get how it’s hard for your daughter and this friendship did sound a bit one sided.

we had a situation recently when Wicked 2 came out at the cinema and my daughter (age 10) wanted to go and wanted to ask her friend who had autism.

we saw them as they live near us and I asked them if they would like to come and Mum said she needed to check her calendar - messaged later to say she didn’t want to say earlier but that her daughter can’t cope very well in the cinema as it’s too loud and she doesn’t like the big screen I said oh ok that’s fine and just took my daughter with another friend. I valued her honesty.

In the meantime this girl said to my daughter at school that my daughter should WAIT for it to come out on dvd as her Mum was getting her the dvd so they could watch it together and basically said she wasn’t a very good friend going without her! This was a
bit unreasonable really as my daughter was desperate to go and loves the cinema.

Thankfully my daughter said to her “I can still come to your house to watch it again because I love wicked but I know you don’t like the loud noises” and we got her one of the limited edition popcorn buckets with some packets of popcorn in to take when she went round which the mum said was a lovely gesture but it’s about the middle ground, it can’t all be one sided can it?

Honestly. I think there's problems with how the parents have been managing this.

They have been interfering rather than letting the girls work it out.

This has resulted in both girls repeatedly getting upset.

They aren't helping each other, the parents aren't helping and honestly you all need to stop it.

Obviously I can't comment on the previous fall outs, but going onto a game chat to start an argument with someone because they're busy playing and don't want to text right now, does seem a bit intense. I think after your DD received the first message explaining that the other kid wasn't upset with her but didn't feel up to replying right away, she should probably have left it.