Adults "managing" young childrens' friendships.

[EvilTwinsAteRudolph]

This has been sparked by several threads on MN recently - mostly about parties (that old thing) and Christmas cards...

This thing with parents "managing" their young DC's friendships (and when I say "young", I mean 6 and under) - is it necessary? And is it a new thing? The whole writing Christmas cards on behalf of your nursery/Yr R age child and giving them to every child in the class - why bother? And the parties thing too - mothers wanting to know why their DC has not been invited to a particular party. I'm sure when I was a child, my mother didn't get involved with my friendships. In fact, I know she didn't - there were 4 girls in my class at school, and she couldn't keep up with which of us where friends with who at any point in time (she's told me that), and my point is - why should she? Why are we trying to manage our DC's friendships? I'm pretty sure that I learned a lot from having to manage my own friends, even at an early age - I don't think we're doing our kids any favours doing all this for them.

Bit of a rant, but I'm interested in what others think.

AIBU? Or would it be such a terrible thing to just let our young children work it out for themselves?

I have 'helped' my DS write their christmas cards (they are 3 and 5) but only to the people they wanted to write them to. As DS1 quite rightly says 'I don't play with xxx' or 'I am not friends with xxx' - he is very pragmatic about this as well when it comes to things like birthday parties.

I agree with you I don't think we give our children enough credit for being able to deal with friends (or otherwise) in their own way. They are much more black and white in their outlook and don't seem hold a grudge atall. There is no real politics when they are that young I think the nasty bitchy streak starts later.

I cannot understand how they have time to write out 30 Christmas cards for their children. I haven't done my own yet.