to be slightly weirded out that my friend is emailing my 12yo son.

[CoolStoryBro]

Right, this is my first AIBU so please go easy!

I met my friend for lunch earlier and, during the conversation, we ended up talking about my 12 yo. He is physically very mature (we're talking 6 ft, full puberty, etc) but emotionally a regular 12 year old.

Anyway, in this conversation, she asked me how he was getting on with his new girlfriend. I laughed as a) I didn't know he had a new girlfriend and b) he's flipping 12! At this point, she got a little earnest with me and said I needed to talk to him more.

Now, I think my son and I have a pretty good relationship, with waaaaaaay more laughs than arguments but, OF COURSE, we argue at times. He's 12 and I'm his mum.

So, I asked what she meant and she said that they had been emailing for a bit and he had told her he was interested in a girl and she had been giving him some suggestions on how to ask her out.

Now, I'm all for teenagers having another adult to sound out to, but he's not even a teenager yet. He's 12. SO AIBU to be slightly annoyed that this was the first I'd heard of it and it's a bit, I dunno, odd?

'cool'

Brilliant

I've just had a ninja bunny sticker from DD.

I'll treasure it, always.

Hey Cool how did dinner go? You ok?

it's highly inappropriate I think for any adult to email or have serious emotional 'chats' to another persons child without the parents permission.

I am not saying its sinister but rather your friend sounds like a prat who wants to be seen as 'connecting' with your son in a way you can't.

I would ask her to see the emails and then ask her if she thought her actions were appropriate.

chat to your son too. she may have emailed him first and he didn't know what to say.

personality I would drop her, especially over the parenting comment. cheeky bitch.

I agree with the consensus that she has been inappropriate, seemingly in her haste to be the cool confidante for your son (whether he needs it or not). I do think the lurking one-upmanship in her conversation with you is worrying. Did you get the sense she enjoyed telling you something about your son that you didn't know?

It wasn't nice to betray his confidence by telling you, either. Not very sensible all round.

Spindly, I don't think anyone is implying the OPs friends is grooming her son, only saying that it can & does happen, but this sounds more like the friend - who is a new friend, so very different to your situation - is being a bit of a cow & undermining the OP with her DS & parenting skills, so very inappropriate behaviour, especially in the light of the emails being very one sided & the friend doing all the running. I too encourage my DD to talk to adults away from us, but I also trust those adults to let me know that DD is talking to them - from the START

even the ones shes never met & chats to online - which has happened 3 times with old friends & family who don't live close to us - everyone of them as had the grace to check with us that we are okay with it - DD herself spoke to us about it too

it may be acceptable for a 15 year old to chat to a friends mother about life, it would be unacceptable for that friends mother to email her without her parents knowledge to discuss intimate details of her love life.

it's totally acceptable to chat to a friends 12 year old son about school/footi etc, it's totally unacceptable to be emailing him about his 'love life'.

she's wierd.

Somewhere in the world, there is a woman wondering how to handle the email conversation with her friend's son that she has unwittingly (through naivety or stupidity) become embroiled in - I mean, they only swapped email addresses because he was collecting contacts, all a bit of a joke. Should she tell him that she doesn't want to be in this position? (But that makes it look weird, right?). Should she lightly advise him on his current girlfriend situation? (That seems OK, yeah? But that's creating a secret from her friend, and she doesn't want to do that). So maybe she should engineer a conversation with her friend, such that she can casually drop in the fact that she has been in email contact with friend's son, and maybe that he should be talking to Mom about this stuff, not her.

But. oh fuck, now she's made it look like she was ticking Mom off for not talking to her own son.

Honestly? She set herself up as a bit of a confidante and is now regretting it. Am now seriously reconsidering fostering a close relationship with any friend's child, for fear that I might be thought of as a groomer.

I'm very unsure I'd be jumping to "eek a female peado!!" Conclusions.

I would want friend to explain why this is the first you have heard of it. If she's a good friend to you why can she not be to ur boy? Would you feel better if she was an Aunty/god parent?

She should have included you earlier. Don't get the weird feelings though.