To feel sad about DS loss of BFF

[Celeste123]

Is it common for long standing childhood friendships to end in secondary school?
DS had an absolute best friend all through primary school, from reception to yr 6.
They were well known as being best friends and people used to say to me "They'll be friends for life those 2" because they were so close. My phone is filled with pictures of the 2 of them smiling and laughing together all through the ages from age 5 till 11.
Our families became good friends and we all spent days out together, meals at each others houses, birthdays together, met up in school hols, BBQs, camping trips, pub lunches, etc.
At the very end of yr 6 DS and BF hit problems and began to fall out. DS didn't like the way BF had suddenly started to behave towards him and towards other kids at school. BF suddenly - from around Easter of yr 6 onwards - developed lots of shouting, ordering around, setting extreme rules, name calling, mocking, put down comments, aggressive behaviour, controlling behaviour, paranoid thoughts, obsessive behaviour, threats, began telling a lot of lies about DS and then after all that he dumped DS to go and hang out with what he saw as the 'cool boys'. DS started pushing back at him at start of yr 7 and it led to a fall out, culminating in BF hitting DS.
BF's mum tried to repair their falling out and kept asking me if we (DS, me, her and her DS) would meet up for a sit down discussion about their friendship problems. But DS didn't want to do this and very clearly said to me that he had been treated really badly by BF for months by that point (turns out it had been going on for longer than I'd realised) and that he didn't want to sit down in a meeting and talk through friendship issues when his friend was treating him so badly that DS had started to develop anxiety in response to all the shouting and aggression and being lied about by said friend.
Me and DH completely agreed with him on this and became angry that the mum kept pushing for a meeting to talk about their friendship. I saw it as my duty to stand by DS's wishes and respect him not wanting to meet to discuss these problems. His BF's behaviour was already causing him anxiety and the thought of sitting down with him and his mother caused him even greater anxiety. I completely understood why he didn't want to have this meeting, and I didn't want to have a meeting either because by now I didn't want to repair their friendship, I wanted to keep DS away from his behaviour, not meet up to put him back in to a toxic situation.
When I declined to meet up, the friend's DM, by now a good friend of mine, kept pushing to meet up for a talk. The more I said No, the more she pushed. Ultimately that led to her getting cross with me and we stopped talking and our friendship came to a halt.
Then I found out she was talking about my DS to mutual friends and telling them things about him that aren't true (lies that her DS had told her). This made me livid. I never said a word about her DS's behaviour to any mutual friends as I considered it morally wrong to speak about another person's child's bad behaviour to mutual friends.
Anyway, we've now reached the end of year 8 and the 2 of them haven't spoken for the past 2 years. They're at the same secondary school together and are in the same classes for some subjects. And as adult friends we haven't spoken either.
I asked DS the other day how he's feeling about ex-BF now, and he simply said "I dont know him anymore. He's a completely different person to the one I was friends with through primary school. He really hurt me badly and that lasted for a long time, but I've moved on now and I'm getting on with my life".
When this friend first dumped him, DS was lost and very upset and went through quite a horrible time for the first few months of yr 7 because of it. His BF was going round school telling everyone he wanted DS to die, and everyone was reporting this to DS and it had a pretty bad impact on him.
But over the past 18 months, DS has made new friends at school and has strengthened previously existing friendships. He now has a variety of different friends, instead of 1 significant main best friend. These friends call for him, invite him out, make plans with him, he gets birthday party invites, goes for days out with them, has sleepovers with them, and they're all different friends so he hasn't got one particular set of friends.
Yet still, I can't help feeling sad about DS losing his BF like that, and in that way.
I'm sad that a friendship that DS loved so much through all of his younger childhood years ended so badly and no longer exists. They've got so many years of shared happy memories up until the age of 10/11. DS genuinely loved him up until his behaviour towards DS radically changed in second half of yr 6.
So.......what I'd like to know is, is it common or uncommon for long standing (as in years long) primary school best friend friendships to die a death at the start of secondary school?
I don't know anyone else in this situation.
I see so many children in DS's year group all hanging out happily together at the park, who are in yr 8 now and have been best friends since they started primary school or even nursery.
Feels like DS is the only one this has happened to which is what's making me sad for him.

Both my children had best friends from primary school, that ended in year 7. It's natural. Kids are often forced to become friends because that's who they're sitting with for years. When children grow and mix more with others, they prefer friends with similar interests. Most friendships fizzle out after primary school. I'd leave your child to it and he will find his own people. Forget his ex best friend, he is irrelevant. People will see how horrible they're behaving and steer clear of them.

You are looking at your son's friendships from your experiences. He is happy to move on.

The other difficulty is that things didn't end well and the other mum got involved saying things about your son etc

I am still good friends with a few mums one of my children hung out with in Primary but drifted away from. There was no drama there though which is probably what makes that possible.

One of my kids lost their entire friendship group at Secondary school over sone vile gossip. It was awful to go through but a move for sixth form has sorted that.

Lots of kids go through difficult times with friendships at Secondary and I wonder if it's more common now that they are all so connected on social media that gossip & drama spreads like wildfire.

I would leave it for now but maybe in the future when the dust has settled & both boys are older too you might become friends with the parents again, especially if you are neighbours.

Only one of my (adult) DC is still friends with someone they were at primary with. They were thick as thieves, but puberty, emerging personalities, changes of interest meant that they drifted apart from primary friends. They are, however, still very close to people they were at sixth form and university with when, I suppose, something more close to their adult personalities had come out and less change was being undergone.

My DD is actually marrying her BF from primary school. I joke that we've known her partner longer than we've known my youngest child (who was born after they started at primary).

This happened to my older dd.
It was very hurtful at the time but it was the best thing that could have happened.
Having only 1 good friend isn't great for young people imo.
Older dd is still friends with the people she got to know after being very unceremoniously dumped by her bff at the start of y8.
Shes 23 now and these friendships are still going strong.
Sadly, the dd who dumped dd has rather lost her way and as angry as I was at the time, its sad.

Especially at transitional ages friendships go wrong all the time. For some the old friend reminds of them of who they used to be and they want to get away from that. Unfortunately with kids that can quickly turn to bullying.

The added complication in this was your closeness with the other family which unfortunately didn't allow for the boys to just not get on which probably prolonged the treatment your son was receiving as he wouldn't have felt able to speak up easily.

Your son has moved on so it's time to let go and move on yourself.

Tangential, but it sounds like the other boy had some sort of psychological problems. It is sad but your DS has got new friends now.

My dad always used to say never get involved in kids friends falling out because often kids make up or don’t and once the parents are involved they won’t ever make up. So yes agree with everyone, adults shouldn’t get involved. Of course kids friendships change - kids change and want different things / have other influences etc

Thank you for posting this- it really resonates. My own DS2 of similar age has had pretty much the same experience. Only in his case, he decided to cut his losses and lose the whole friendship group rather than entertain any of the bullshit. Lots of lunchtimes at the end of the school year spent alone, having been soooooo sociable all of his life.
I’m trying not to worry as it’s his life - and also because the ex BF was always an absolute bellend anyway!

I can see why you feel sad, a normal reaction to things changing I presume.

I try and hold my own good friendships separate from my children, with mum friends.

so the two oldest mum friends, we never meet with children, the kids do not get on, we do. That became very clear by about age 8.

my youngest child is four and is best friends with MY Best friends daughter. It’s not ideal. However, we know each other well enough to pull up either child and muddle along. I can see it being a delicate area for years though, and we make sure to meet without girls often.

maybe reach out to the mum if you miss her friendship, otherwise reflecting is good, it’s ok to miss them. But things have changed and hopefully you will find that again.

Secondary school is a time to join clubs and find more like minded friends.

I had a similar situation with my DD (yours is more extreme but along the same lines). They ended up at different secondaries and occasionally at events the ex BF would cause problems but eventually it settled down. Seems to me that it’s clear where the ex BF got his toxic behaviours from in your situation (his mother) and your son has dealt with it maturely and admirably. However, YAnBU to feel sad about it. That’s not to sad you should or could have done anything else about it.

I don't think its unreasonable to feel the way you do OP but you should focus on the fact that your DS has a good friend group and is settled now as well as the memories of the good times he and you all enjoyed.
Sadly these things DO change as kids grow up and I think that even when we think kids are BFF's sometimes we don't really know everything thats going on in the friendship

Completely normal. DS isn’t in contact with anyone he went to school with, even though he had known many since they were 2.

OMG so long!

Yes, it is very common for children who have been friends for years to break that friendship at some point during their school career.

My DD is 24. She only has one friend left from primary school that she still sees regularly (and is, infact, still her BFF) but loads from secondary. University and beyond.

My DS is 21. He still sees two friends from primary fairly regularly, but his BFFs are from secondary and University and work.

If you don't learn to detach a bit, you will find life very hard when your son starts dating.

It's a tough transition stage. One of my daughters close friends and her fell out, both equally to blame. They themselves changed alot during y6 - y8 they had little in common. Ended up really disliking each other.
I am still friends with the Mum, we still catch up. We didnt try to control our children friendships, and that drama didnt become our drama. They both 22 now and still don’t speak, if they happen to be in the same room (we both had second children same age and in school together) on the rare occasion paths cross.

I think it's super weird that you refused point blank to even meet with the mother to have a chat over coffee. Had you done this, you could have probably fixed it.

Also super weird is the dramatic behaviour of the boy. Normally close friendships just drift apart rather than have so much drama - especially with boys. Has the boy ever explained or apologised for his behaviour? I guess you could have fixed this if you had met the mother but you refused, so no point crying over spilled milk now.

This happened to me at the end of year 7. My best friend and I just drifted apart (it wasn't as extreme as what happened to your DS). She matured faster than me and that meant she had different interests and wanted to do different things and I was still very much still into playing in the garden and make-believe type play.
Her mother warned mine that my BF was moving in a different direction before it actually became obvious to me. She just said that things change and children develop at different rates and that we'd had fabulous times together. And then my mother relayed this to me gently too and everything was fine.
I think neither you or the boy's mother handled this particularly well. She shouldn't have been pushing for the meeting and perhaps you could have agreed to a meeting of just the two of you and just gently said that the boys were drifting apart and it's best to just leave it because things change at that age, without any sort of discussion about the other boy's behaviour which absolutely wasn't ok.

You need to leave it now. You are overinvested in this.
It happens to a lot of children around that age.

Common, but it sounds like your ds now has some other good friends and is enjoying school. Therefore forget the ex-friend and enjoy the here and now.

If I could quote this a hundred times on EVERY MN thread - even on a completely different topic - believe me I would.

my mum tried to push kids I don’t like on to me - it led to me being a people pleaser and unable to say no which in turn led to me being horrifically bullied and humiliated!

DON’T. DO. IT.

I get it, OP. They didn’t just drift apart, it ended really nastily with this other boy bullying your son. That’s difficult to deal with.

It is normal for kids’ friendships to end as they get older, though. For example, I was friends with a girl for about ten years, from four to fourteen, but at a certain point I realized that whenever I saw her, we had less and less to talk about and she irritated me a lot.

I think it’s time for you to quit mentioning this other boy to your son, and the other boy’s mother definitely shouldn’t have been trying to arrange a meeting.

Yes friendships change and sometimes very dramatically. It’s sad that your son had to spend the last months of primary feeling bullied, those should have been fun months. BUT he’s settled now, he’s learned from the experience and is ok. So focus on that!

I do find it strange though that you refused to speak with the other boy’s mother though. You were good friends with her, your families went on camping trips! So why not have a coffee and chat it through, even if the ending of that coffee is to say ‘what a shame they don’t get on like they used to’ and leave it there. That may have helped your feelings on it.

Two children got on well at an immature and superficial level as appropriate to their ages, and before their characters formed. Encouraged by the happy coincidence that their parents liked each other so they spent additional time in each others company.
Bluntly, you are overly romanticing this with your best friends forever ideas and you're looking through rose coloured lenses at a relationship that evolved to cause your child unhappiness. Luckily, your son has moved on and seems to be doing a better job than you of putting his early childhood playmate into perspective.
I think you need to rein in your sadness, because its actual sentiment, for something you've built up, rather than reality. And definitely don't talk in these terms to your son. He was bullied and excluded by this child remember, so it may not sit well to have you feeling sad about the loss of his 'best friend forever'.
Your son will form, break and lose many relationships over his lifetime. You need to learn take your cue from him as to how sad or otherwise that is rather than projecting your own feelings.

It’s totally normal. It sounds like your DS has dodged a bullet OP as his old BF looks to be going down a path you don’t want your DS to take.

DD had a friend from nursery school all the way up to Y7. The friend had a complete personality transplant and decided to hang out with the rough crowd at school. After 9 years of friendship, that was it. I have no qualms about it. I’m glad they’ve parted ways. It’s just part of life and growing up.