Not liking best friends child

[Drymonsoon]

Regular user posting under a different name.

I’m finding a situation really difficult and I’m just wondering if anyone else has been in this situation and how did you get over it.
My best friend is more like a sister. We have been friends since we were just starting school age and are now both in our 40s. Our families are very close as a result. We see each other regularly in the context of family meet ups, so since adulthood it’s never been that we really go out together or do things together, it is very much like a sibling that you see every week and the family weekend gathering.

Friend has 2 children. I adore child one who I will call A. Well mannered, lovely child who I have all the time in the world for. Child B is 5 years old and has always been more difficult- think huge tantrums when not getting her own way etc. She is very bright and switched on and there are no SEN issues. The problem is, friend and her husband adopt the gentle parenting/no demand with her because of fear of her huge tantrums that disrupt every situation. As a result, they have raised a spoilt child. She is rude, spoilt, ungrateful and dominates every situation. They have admitted they don’t like going out in public with her incase she kicks off. Friend won’t take her anywhere alone due to her behaviour. Poor child A is told off constantly if they deem he is ‘winding her sister up’ or doing something that might set her off. He isn’t, he’s just being a child. I can tell he has started to recognise the injustice in this but he takes it all very well.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to be around Child B. Her behaviour and the blatant poor parenting that is causing it, stick out like a sore thumb.
For example- child B had a piece of a family members birthday cake. She asked her dad for more and he said no. She promptly waltzes into the kitchen, sticks her hand in the cake and tears off a chunk that she now is stuffing into her face. She walks past her Dad smirking, to which he just rolls his eyes and goes on his phone.
Another example- Child A’s birthday and he has a small pile of presents off family. Child B dives in and starts tearing the paper off. When told no, she throws herself on the ground and screams like she’s being murdered. Her parents then tell Child A that B will have to help open his presents. Screaming and tantrum suddenly stop and child B starts tearing open poor Child A’s presents.

They constantly allow her to have her own way and give into her to avoid a ‘scene’, but it’s getting worse. I would never in a million years say anything to my friend or her husband, but I’m increasingly struggling to want to be around them or be at family engagements. I love child B, of course, but right now, I don’t like her very much.

I come away from time with them feeling stressed and annoyed, but I love seeing my friend and the rest of the family.
Has anyone been in this situation? Will the little one likely grow out of this? I actually believe that if they rode out some major tantrums and stopped being so terrified of her reactions, she could be a lovely kid. There are moments that she is gorgeous.

Is it just a case of me staying away until she grows up a bit?

Disclaimer: I don’t subscribe to gentle pare myself

Without Nitpicking too much that is not gentle parentIng it’s just “not parenting”.
it also managed to raise one quite nice child.

practically if youngest is 5 now it should be very achievable/ realistic to do adult only stuff so maybe try and grab dinner or drinks or a show? with your friend

how old are your kids?
if closer in age you could maybe try doing stuff with just her and the oldest… things smallest might be too young for

I have a lot of sympathy, OP - used to have a friend with a dd of the same age as mine. Friend would endlessly say no to this or that, because of poor behaviour, but invariably give in after her dd had screamed and roared for 20 minutes. There would then be instant silence and a triumphant beam - ‘I’ve won again!’ It was intensely frustrating.

I’m afraid I never found a way around it - just had to grit teeth and bear it, but it was very unfair on my own dd, when occasionally we’d both threatened the same sanction, but I upheld it.
We’re still friends many years later and it’s some consolation that the friend’s dd subsequently had exactly the same experience with her own!

"She is very bright and switched on and there are no SEN issues".

Unless you happen to be a children's psychologist or qualified in neurodiversity in some other way, then this is rather a sweeping statement.

How have they raised 1 "lovely" child when, according to you, they parent so terribly?

There is a lot more going on here than you are aware of. Perhaps they don't want to particularly confide in someone who is openly so judgemental.

DD is non-verbal and has ASD.

Her behaviour was especially challenging as a toddler and we dedicated our lives and every available resource we had into helping her and supporting her (and still do).

However, we'd never allow her behaviour to impact those around us in the way you described, OP.

There's a proverb in my country loosely translated as "my freedom stops where yours begins".

As much as I adore my DD, her brother, her extended family and even strangers also have needs, feelings and deserve consideration.

I would lower contact for some time. One of my DD´s best friends is similar. She has been taken to psychologist and psychiatrist and they aggree there are no additional needs and it is simply a case of being extremely willful and quite intelligent. When this little girl was between 4 and 5 they had a really rough time with her. The tantrums were out of this world. She had one in the Madrid metro that lasted an hour by the clock, on the floor screaming and raving. The mum could do nothing with her. Until a metro worker walked up to her, looked her straight in the eye, and very calmly said: "that-is-enough". It was like magic, she stopped immediately. She resumed when they got home, and no pesky metro worker she couldn´t control around. Now she is nearly 6 and it has got a lot better. She is still wilful, but the mum says nothing like it was. At school we were told that by 6 proper tantrums as such should disappear, if not, it has to be looked into.

No one can 100% know if this child has SEN, but what we do know based on the couple of examples OP has given us, is that the parents aren't giving proper boundaries and sticking to them. If OP had said they watch her like a hawk, pull her up when she does things wrong, follow through on punishments etc and this level of behaviour was happening then maybe it could be attributed to SEN of some kind. The saying like chalk and cheese exists for a reason and some children are just differently natured and respond differently to the same parenting- hence the chilled out little boy vs the very angry girl.
OP I think all you can do is distance yourself, which is a shame but tackling your friend won't change anything because they won't accept there is a chance they are doing anything wrong. Alot of parents take any hint of criticism (imagined or otherwise!) of their children very badly.

But the child quoted doesn’t, apparently, have any SEN, so it’s not really helpful to say how life is with an autistic child. It’s totally different. . 🤷‍♀️

If you've got an impeccably behaved child and a more 'wild' one I think it's naive to blame parenting and not consider any Sen.

So neurotypical 5 year olds are all ‘well behaved’ and all all autistic kids are ‘badly behaved’ my point was that a children’s behaviour is not always a direct reflection on the parents.

I think the child's behaviour is a red herring here.

It's the parents' reaction to said behaviour that seems to be causing the issues.

At this point, it's almost irrelevant WHY the child is ruining her sibling's birthday or trying to destroy other people's property... It's about the parents encouraging the behaviour

Walker389
I am so sick of hearing 'all behaviour is communication' as an excuse.
You are right the child does need help. Her parents are letting her down by allowing her to have her own way constantly. It is not cruel to say no and stick to it sometimes. Why assume sen? There is no indication other than a misbehaving child.

I wouldn't like or love her tbh. It's not compulsory because she's your best friends child. She sounds utterly horrible.

I'd have to stop seeing them I'm afraid. You can either be honest and say why, or just be busy for the foreseeable. It would ultimately change the way I would feel about my friend too due to their shite parenting.

Love this proverb and I hope to remember it.

It's a great way of explaining to people why ‘freedom of speech’ can’t always be marched in whenever someone says something racist/sexist etc. Like, yes, feel free to say what you think but consider how others will feel about you saying it.

If, as you say, she's in mainstream education and is bright, does she behave in school? If there are no issues with he behaviour in the school environment then she is capable of understanding appropriate behaviour. If not, there may be underlying problems. If you cannot ignore this child's behaviour, you'd better limit contact with us our friend to school time or evenings out.

So much to unpack here.

But for me, my heart breaks for her brother. That poor child! The incident with the birthday presents. I mean, in which universe would that EVER be considered good parenting? It's downright abusive and neglectful surely?

Will that poor boy be able to remain sweet and nice natured with such god-awful parents? Children feel injustice even more than adults IMO. And he is powerless.

In your position I would talk to the mother but I know you don't want to do that.

I would back off, only meet without the child and I would invite the boy out on his own sometimes to treat him like a decent person and how he deserves.

You could be a hugely important person to him growing up - he needs to know that his feelings and needs are seen .

@ByHardyRubyEagle but it is the OPs business. For example when the child was about to break the gift she brought, and every occasion she is present it is her business. It's this attitude that only a parent is allowed do anything that has caused extreme bad behaviour like this.

@Drymonsoon you were right to intervene that time. I think you shouldn't be afraid to speak up when it involves you, otherwise I would back off a bit and avoid being around the child. Hopefully your friend will query this and you can explain how you feel. How she deals with that information is up to her.

As for the potential of SEN, does it matter really, it's still shit parenting. A child with SEN more than anyone needs strict boundaries. Children will SEN are not allowed take someone else's cake or open someone else's present. The difference is they may not understand why this is so and they may have an emotional reaction when told no, but they still need to be told no. There is no scenario in which this isn't incompetent parenting.

Honestly I'd just suggest kid free catch' ups for the moment and hope she outgrows ir.
I have my doubts though given her gentle patented approach.

If you're not allowed to say No to their DD, regardless of the circumstances Op, then I'd stop seeing her with the DC. In your place I'd actually be offering to take the boy out on his own to give him a lovely day where he came first, but I don't imagine your friend would allow that. It's a shame but I can't see this friendship lasting much longer

I have a theory that ND children, especially ones that are not "obviously" ND are often parented extremely badly which exacerbates behaviours.

That's not to say your friend's child is ND necessarily, it's just a point.

If you are as old friends as you say you are, can you talk to her about it? Couch it in the context of concern about child 1 and that his needs are being subsumed into his sister's?

Otherwise, I'd advise distancing youself from extensive family type events for a while.

I kind of had this with my childhood friend of 30 years and I wasn’t able to meet without her kids until they were at school so there was no escaping it initially while I still wanted to hang out with her.

I wouldn’t say I don’t like her kids but the older they’ve got I realise she is always making excuses for them.

Constantly being “that parent” in every school they’ve attended bar one and challenging every single decision the school take and complaining about the teacher’s disciplining her child (but she was super chill when her kid hit a primary school teaching assistant!) .

As well as laughing along when her now teens are rude to teaching staff. I held an event a few years back and I watched her middle child (the worst one) try and bully my other friends much younger kid. It was just not nice behaviour.

I had to back off her not because I don’t like the kids - I know in this case their behaviour is a reflection on her so I can’t blame them as such. I don’t think they’re bad kids, they’re just over indulged.

really I had to admit I didn’t like this aspect of her character so my issue was with her and this is why we rarely talk now. There were other issues with her as well tbf so it wasn’t just how she parented.

Thanks for the replies. Those who are insistent she has SEN, she really doesn’t.

My friend approached the school (around the time they fell out with a family member about her behaviour) to see if there were any issues in school with her. The teacher said they had no issues with her other than she was a strong willed little girl who sometimes had to be reminded to share, but she was very bright and quite noticeably further ahead than her peers academically. Her first school report was glowing.
Her brother is also very academically able and extremely bright, but is very sensitive with it.

I really do believe the behaviours are a result of the way she is parented, but I do know a lot of SEN ‘experts’ are going to shout me down and tell me she will have an undiagnosed issue.

Im not a vile person. I adore my friend and her children, but I’m finding this really difficult to navigate. I also feel desperately sorry for the little boy, who I feel is unnecessarily blamed for things.

I have similar with my best friend's DS. 28 year friendship. Her DS has a lot of similar behaviours to how you've described but he's a few years older. He has more focus on asking to be given and bought things all the time, and wanting to see what he can get out of every situation. I have found him very hard to like all his life and my DH can barely cope with him.

One example is being told certain snacks that had been brought out after the kids were all in bed were for adults only. Posh crisps kind of things. He will ignore this, grab some, crunch them with his mouth open going Ha Ha! and his dad will just roll his eyes and his mum will say, ok just a few more of the grownup crisps then off to bed. Which he then drags out more. This is one example of this type of stuff that's all the time. Lots of parents backing down on rules and not following consequences.

My friend actually does a lot better than her DH but does back down too much. She has tried to teach him things like, don't kick off when you're disappointed by a gift, don't demand a party bag the second you arrive at a party. She does try.

I deal with it by doing lots of lovely adult only stuff with my friends and not going on family holidays with them. Keeping the kid inclusive things to small doses and hoping things improve. I've doled out bollockings a few times but nothing serious just "Hey, your mum said No so No!!" when I really can't help it. Not had any backlash.

Sounds like shit parenting. Poor child is going to hugely struggle the older she gets.

OP, you have my sympathy! This is tough! We have very similar with a good friends child (similar aged DC ourselves). I now mainly see them in the evening without our DC. In the long term it preserves the friendship, even though in the short term it means we see less of them.

But you aren’t causing any trouble @Drymonsoon your friend has already caused trouble for you and anyone who has to deal with her lack of parenting. Your not doing yourself or anyone else any favours by keeping quiet.

There is absolutely no way a child would be behaving like this in my home, I’ve had spoil undisciplined out of control children in my home they are told in no uncertain terms they don’t behave like that under my roof especially if they want to be invited back. I’ve done this directly in front of their parents and one case grandparents who had no control of their granddaughter.

I also have a lot of SEN children here, there is a clear difference in behaviour, and even with multiple SEN needs the parents DO NOT make excuses or allow bad behaviour, the first time they are removed from the situation.