dds not wanting to see old friends anymore

[Friendsoftheearth]

I feel fortunate that I have some lovely old friends with dc, and mostly over the years we have all grown up together with the children playing when they were younger and it has been great, but just lately it has become quite strained.

DDs (13 & nearly 16) do not want to see my old friends' children anymore. They tell me they have nothing in common and don't enjoy it. I dds are old enough to decide who they see, so I have since tried to organise just adult evenings and days out with my friends, and this is where the difficulty lies.

My friends for a multiple reasons really are insisting on doing things with dc still.
Some have dc that don't have many/any friends and so really want to see my girls, others see my eldest dd as a good influence and want their dc to hang out with her to keep them away from what has become a troubling period. One other set have a dd that is really quite unkind to my youngest dd. So we obv avoid them. Others have younger ones and can not organise babysitting because of lockdown! I It has become really fraught now we are out of lockdown, and friends want to catch up.

Do I:

1. Insist on adults only get togethers and if I don't see them, that is fine
2. Take tc and make it short and sweet
3. Distance from it all for a while, see more straight forward friends
4. A solution I haven't thought of! Am I being unreasonable or selfish?

This is causing some tension between us, because I don't want to say outright and hurt anyone's feelings that my dc are no longer interested - and probably never were really, so I have been saying dc are busy with sports, revision etc but then they ask for the next free date!!

How do others manage this transition?
The whole group gathering just doesn't work anymore..

Yes ops comments as quoted above are slightly concerning - this child’s social issues not your problem in the slightest and certainly not your daughters responsibility to fix. Boundaries not strong enough here imo.

Be careful you don’t want your dds to resent you using them to be mother Teresa towards other kids.

mini The honest answer is that S has always liked my dd, and wanted them to hang out as much as possible, my dd is/has never been very keen on her.

My dds enjoyed the days out for the ice cream and fun of being out when they were young, rather than seeing the girls. S is quite hard to get along with, for all sorts of reasons that I can't get into, and has been hard work all the way through. She is my gd and I have known her all of her life, so I care very much for her, but I do acknowledge she is not the easiest person to spend the day with.

So I won't be asking my dds to see them anymore if I they don't want to, and we haven't for a long while anyway. Lockdown is now over, and Christmas is on the horizon and the subject has come up yet again with my friend.

t's also mildly insulting that your friends don't value your own company enough just for yourself Yes quite!! I am just about to see who really likes me, and who just sees us a travelling circus for their children's entertainment I am genuinely interested to see what will happen. I will either end up old, grey and friendless or we will move on to a brand new chapter of fun nights out with no kids!

bono people seem to be finding lots of ways to navigate the rule of six, mainly by leaving dhs behind!

@ktp100

I would do as suggested and just give a flippant 'They're off with their friends all the time now, they don't want to spent time with us any more!' and hope they leave it.

I was trying to think of a way to say what I wanted to and you summed it up perfectly!

mini The honest answer is that S has always liked my dd, and wanted them to hang out as much as possible, my dd is/has never been very keen on her

Ah ok. In that case, I retract my previous answer as I’d thought they had been genuine friends.

I have a “hard work” DD and I wouldn’t want other DC to spend the day with her reluctantly.

I can relate to your DCs situation. My mum's friends were not my type of people, and their kids were completely different from us in every possible way.

My own DCs had the same problems with their cousins, who are all younger. They were so keen to see their 'big cousins' but DCs had no interest at all in childminding playing with the little ones. Even an age difference of one year can be quite significant in terms of development.

Your friend is not thinking about your daughter, she's thinking about her own and what is best for her.

You need to think about your own and she is telling you that she doesn't want to go anymore.

Your friend sounds a bit of a user.

Some have dc that don't have many/any friends and so really want to see my girls, others see my eldest dd as a good influence and want their dc to hang out with her to keep them away from what has become a troubling period. One other set have a dd that is really quite unkind to my youngest dd.

The conditioning of girls into being helpful and being a good influence starts young, doesn't it

adelaide Sometimes people change, and I think my once very lovely friendship has lapsed into the 'using' kind, the insistence on dc being present, that we meet up and on her terms and only when it suits her, she expects me to always put the effort in (in terms of presents etc) but does not do the same in return.

I think the whole friendship has become very one sided over the years. When I frame the demands for my kids as well, it is making me rethink whether this works for me at all now. Some people become more selfish with age and life stress and my friend is one of those. She has become quite grabbing generally, and it is not something I really value in her at the moment. The dds getting sucked in is just another example.

have the only thing is my dds are not having any of it! They are not afraid to say no that is for sure, and do not lack assertive skills in any shape or form, I am mostly happy about this

Good! I am quite conflicted about the “be kind” movement tbh no normal person advocates being unkind surely and how far are we (and our daughters) supposed to take this “be kind” thing?

I don't advocate being kind as such (I don't really need to, as they are already) I am a bigger champion of 'be honest', and that means with yourself as well as with others. It is harder than it sounds, and I have always tried to say be true to yourself, and with others and you won't go far wrong.

'Be kind' is a little annoying and patronising, if you are pushing for others to be to change the way they are it is probably not coming from a genuine place anyway, going through the motions, rather than any meaningful taking place.

It is now a very overused slogan TS

I find it difficult tbh my own daughters have been pressurised by other parents to “be kind” to their children but the “kindness“ asked for is frankly at my own children’s expense. Not easy!

How often do you meet up? If it's like once or twice a year, not unreasonable to ask kids to act civilised for a few hours of their time. If you want to do this regularly, keep it to adult only.