We've been good friends for 8 years and met through our boys (both only just turned 13) who quickly became best friends. The issue isn't exactly about my friendship with her, but more so between our boys and their wider group of friends as well as her very lenient parenting style.
Generally when our boys are together one on one they're fine. They like the same activities, mess around and have a great time. This has slowly started to decline as the boys have been in secondary school and my friends son has become more influenced by a few of their other friends.
Long story short, it's now got to the point where my sons best friend (my friends son) is heavily influenced and joining in on antics with the other boys (whom my son has pulled away from as they're not very nice a lot of the time, even though they all still hang out as a group).
This was all highlighted when my son came home incredible tired and sad after all of the boys had spent the night at my friends house. She's a single parent, and works incredibly hard so I get that she's tired. She wasn't very present on the evening which meant the boys were left to their own devices from about 10pm. She's pretty clueless about social media and what her son gets up to date to day.
My son has told us that during the sleepover the other boys (not including him or my friends son) were chatting online with random people through a game of some sort and were influenced to drink alcohol. So the other boys snuck into the fridge and were drinking a bottle of wine. All of the other boys (including my friends son) have tiktok and Snapchat and asked if my son wanted to see 'nudes' and then showed him which he found quite upsetting, one of them also got an erection and showed my son which again he found a bit distressing, the boys were picking on him and hitting him with toys and things quite hard (they made it out to be a game, but my son got the brunt of it) and they snuck of the house from 2-4am (my son didn't want to and was scared and tired, but was pressured into it from his friend and the other boys and were calling him a wimp).
And so as not to be accused of drip feeding, I believe my son most likely has ASD (Asperger's) as do I. So neither of us are great with reading social situations and interactions, but we still like to be included. We do better with friendships in singles rather than groups.
I'm now in a situation where my son's only real friend is pulling away from him when they're in a group, my son is upset at what he's seen (he's quite an innocent and caring boy) but he still wants to be friends with these boys because he's been friends with them for years and doesn't have other close friends and struggles to make new friends easily.
I'm not sure what to do in this situation. I won't be allowing my son to go for group nights at her place again. I don't feel like I can say too much to her because I don't want to offend her. Can I remain friends with her while I try and limit my son's interactions with her son and the others? She'll often message and ask if we all want to do something together. The boys are mostly fine on their own (for now at least), but I do worry about their friendship in the future.
My husband blames me for much of this because she's my friend and "it was my responsibility" to have make friends with the other school mums when the boys were younger and to have arranged play dates. Something I wasn't very good at due to my own social issues and busyness with full time work.
I know this has been long, but I would appreciate some advice. Please no rude or snarky comments. I just want to see my son happy, but I'd also like to keep my friendship.