To think forced friendships stop people making real friendships?

[ClairesFriday]

As a child my mother forced friendships on me and shouted me down if I was less than enthusiastic about this. These friendships were always with posh girls as my mum was a Hyacinth Bucket! She called me selfish just for liking my own company.

I went along with these friendships just to placate mum and got bullied badly by my peers because they felt I couldn't say no. I learned from my mum that friendships were about obligation not real desire. I often went into friendships I didn't enjoy cos it's what I thought my mum wanted.

AIBU? Was my mum right to harshly force friendships?

Well obviously she wasn't reasonable. Parents are human and no-one ever parents perfectly.

But, honestly it was probably years ago. Forget it and move on.

Thank you for responding and yes you're right

It really, really annoys me when push their kids to socialise one to one with another child that they don't actually like. Most adults wouldn't want to spend an afternoon with someone they find incredibly annoying and have nothing in common with, so I don't see why a child should have to do that either.

Obviously it's important to teach children that there will be kids at school or in their sports teams or at Brownies or something that they might find really irritating, and that in that kind of group situation you should be kind and polite and not leave them out. That's just teaching kids to be decent and tolerant. But insisting they have them over to play, for example, is unfair and counter-productive.

Some people have this weird notion that all kids need to get along is for them both to be kids of roughly the same age. As if kids don't actually have their own personalities and preferences and interests that differ wildly from child to child!

@ManateeFair - totally agree with you and what I can't understand is that don't parents know that forcing friendships would be terrible for kids' self esteem??!!!

The other thing I think is that parents are supposed to prepare their children for adulthood. I was a teenager when my mum was forcing friendships so not far off adulthood. Thing is in adulthood NO ONE has the authority to tell us who we should be friends with and how often we should socialise so forcing friendships is very poor preparation for adulthood

No she wasn’t right to force these relationships upon you. It was about her and her relationships not you and yours.

Interesting this question came up today as two of the kids in my eldest’s primary class, a boy and girl, are forced to walked to school together by their parents now they’re in high school. They don’t talk on the way there or the way home and they’ve done this now for 4 years. The sadness on both their faces is extremely visible, when both would rather be with their actual friends. It broke my heart this morning. Then I remembered the weird mum-club they all had together from p1 onwards and how they’re probably trying to justify keeping their friendship going and using their kids as odd pawns in their relationship.

I’m so glad they all hated me and mine.

Thing is OP you could have your own friends in school away from your mum and that’s how these two cope with the awkward school walk by realising once they’re in school they’re with their real friends.

I do wonder if you could try to find a silver lining from this to stop you ruminating, you will have skills to get on with coworkers you can’t stand and who can’t stand you that many others would not have and not be able to cope with?

It sounds like your mum was treating you like a pre-schooler. I would have found it very irritating too, but there is no point in holding a grudge now. You don't need to be resigned to the fact that you can't make friends off your own back. It's fine if you're happy in your own company but I wouldn't hold on to these experiences as an excuse for not putting myself out there.

Clearly your Mum was in the wrong.

I had issues with MIL insisting our children would love to play with her friends children and GC because they were the same age.

Our kids are actually fairly shy and were happy as a group and the kids IL used to regularly at one time babysat for were hostile and jealous of my DC as IL belonged to them their minds. DH and I ran a lot of interference to avoid such situations over the years.

What if there is a child who is left out because they have SN? Would you make your child include them then even if they didn’t particularly want to?

DS is 3 and we’re already seeing this - eg parents trying to push girls together to become ‘besties’. My son’s best friend is a girl but that girl’s parents (mainly dad) are doing this too and DS often comes home really sad as she’s been told to only play with girls. He’s now organically building his own friend circle based on his interests but it’s still very early days.

My DC whether influence of their primary school kind inclusive polices or their personalities tend not to exclude other kids - and oddly enough their close friends have often had physical disabilities or been ND or had some form of SEN.

DN ended up in an awful situation at her primary - she had SEN and physical disabilities - at time requiring operations the school forced team her with another SEN child - they got on initially but other child slowly refused to allow her to be friends with others and started telling on her is she was unhappy with DN and school found it easier to tell DN off. Mother of other child was so pleased that every outside group DN went to she joined - DN started refusing them and then started refusing school. School couldn't see the issue and in end other child ended up physically attacking her for talking to another girl and DN was one told off and DN parents, not on best of terms, had to go in and not back down citing bullying procedures.

It's not always straight forward to sort such situations out.