^^ This!
When my 18 year old was 6, he had a playdate with one of his friends from school. Now, the boys have known one another since they were 2 and at nursery together, so I knew that the friend could be a little... wild, shall we say? A little naughty, a bit cheeky, but generally a really sweet little boy. I knew the parents, actually liked the parents, but we were friendly because our sons were friends. So, I collect the two boys from school, we walk home and they're both telling me about their days, who had crisps in their lunchbox that day, who got to push the lunch trolley from the classroom to the canteen, who'd played what games with them during break... typical 6 year old chattering. We get in - and this was the first time this boy had been to our home - and I set them up at the table with the after school snacks that my son and his sister always had pre-supper: crackers, some cheese, sliced apple pieces and a beaker of milk or water, and the TV on in the background as a treat. My oldest is 8 years older, so I thought I had playdates under control...
Oh, how mistaken I was! The friend insisted that they bounce on the sofa, whilst eating their snacks. I was in the kitchen trying to deal with my then senior school age child's latest problem and pondering what to feed them with for supper, because I'd been given a long list of things that the friend would/wouldn't eat. The giggling alerted me to sticking my head round the door to check on the boys - as they were bouncing on the sofa.
HUGE "no-no" as far as my house rules were concerned. The sofa was brand spanking new, we had a trampoline outside that they were told they could go on when they were finished with their snacks, and they still had shoes on. My son clocked the dog slinking into his crate, turned his head and saw me silently eying the scene before me... and he stops mid-bounce. Off the sofa like a little rocket. The friend keeps bouncing. So I go over, and I'm trying to be kind thinking that he doesn't live here, how could he know the house rules, he's too little to understand that bouncing with food in your mouth's a massive choking hazard, not my son, be kind 13, be kind...! I explain to him that in our house, we don't jump on the sofa, not even with our shoes off, not even because it looks bouncy... if he's done with his snack, they can go outside and bounce on the trampoline... and i go to lift him off the sofa. For him to spit the chewed up cheese in his mouth into my face and tell me to fuck off...
Well, it's a good job his shoes were on, I can tell you, because he was being marched to his house after that, playdate cut short, me mentally banning him from darkening my doorstep ever again and how to convince my own son (who really liked this boy) from being friends with him... His mother answered the door, all surprised - yet I suspect not - to see us on the doorstep. So I told her why her son was being returned within 30 minutes of school kicking out for the day... to have her go ":tinkly laugh, oh, we don't ever tell (friend) that he's not allowed to do or say things - it damages his self-esteem and it's really unkind to him!"
The boy never set foot in my house again, although they tried to instigate more playdates - "oh, I have to take (older child) to the dentist, and I've no one to look after (friend)..." got a resounding "not my problem!" response (but then, they're a 2 parent household, and mine is a 1 parent household, so if one of my tribe had an appointment somewhere, we all trogged along to the waiting rooms!). Didn't stop my son from being friends with him, but I certainly didn't encourage it either, and... eventually the problem resolved itself, because in Yr 8, friend was expelled from their senior school because his mother had allowed him to take her craft knife into school one day!!! Of course, it wasn't their fault - it was the school's fault for being so strict for a one time offence (although I have my suspicions that there were a lot of minor infractions building up to this major one), or it was the fault of the other boys in the friendship group for making him feel so insecure and vulnerable...! The boy ended up in our local school for kids that are excluded for all sorts of reasons for a few months as his parents desperately tried to find another school to take him. The only one that was willing to give it a go was the one his parents had sneered at for being "too working class for (them)!".
I'm still sort-of-friendly with his mother, who still can't see that her inability to tell her child "no" and to teach him to have basic respect for other people, their belongings, their right not to have a craft knife brandished about them was precisely what caused her son to end up a lonely, virtually friendless (the school he was seemingly too good for - which is a decent school, actually; I have friends who went there, and a godson who was there when this boy was, and they've all turned out decent members of society - is 10 miles away, so he couldn't have friends home, and he never seemed to go to friends houses after school), unhappy individual. He sits in the front room his parents "gave" to their sons (so that they didn't have to spend time with them, I suspect) and online games all day, every day. My son gets the odd text from him, and has gamed with him in the past, but... even he says the lad's too entitled for his taste. And it's actually really sad, because he was a nice little boy - until his permissive/gentle/absentee parents ruined him by not giving him the basics of how to behave in the wider community/society. They allowed him to truly think that he's never to blame, never at fault, for anything... it's always someone else's fault. 