Friends bad habbits

[SouthStar]

What is the best way to handle my son picking up his best friends bad habbits. Obviously everybody sees childrens behaviour differently so what I may see as a no no someone else may not see an issue with it.

Anyway, everytime my ds (4) spends time with one of his friends he starts doing things that I think needs correcting.
Like his friends mum lets her ds run from school into the car park and get into the car himself. Where I as will only let my ds run to the gate where he has to wait for me but he has now ran straight into the busy carpark a few times. Ive sat him down and explained the dangers and why he HAS to wait for me but all he keeps saying is but my friend does it.
His friend also gets away with calling his mum a poo poo head..... again thats a big no for me, its just a childs way of swearing at his mum. Four weeks on and Im still trying to get my ds to stop saying it and now my dd is saying it aswell.
Lastly my ds came home from school and asked me to hide a post it note saying his friend tried to take it off him and he doesnt want his friend to see it otherwise he will keep punching him!
My ds is fairly boisterous as it is but it goes to extremes when he is with this one friend. They are alot alike so sometimes its almost as if they are competing to see who can be the most boisterous.

Now i dont want this to come across like my ds is a saint and cant do anything wrong, far from it. But with spending so much time at school with his friend im finding it hard to correct the things he is picking up from his friend. Ill say no you cant do/say that and he goes to school the next day to hear or see his friend doing it again so he thinks its then acceptable.

Any ideas on how I can approach this as I dont seem to be getting anywhere at the minute.

Sorry, but no shortcuts to this one: it is your job to correct any habits in him that you find unacceptable and to let him know that you don't care what his friend does- these are his rules. Just tell him that what his friend does doesn't matter.

Take some comfort from the fact that there will almost certainly be some other mum in the school with even higher standards than you who is struggling to eradicate bad habits learnt by your son.

My dc have learnt that I have different rules and expectations. I live abroad, as they say, and it is hard to be the one who is parenting differently. I often have to stop mine from doing things that their friends are doing right in front of their parents faces. Like my pre-school dd is not allowed to eat in assembly, every other pre-schooler is eating but as I don't want her having a load of biscuits at 9am I don't let her.

Hi,
I taught my son that "different Mummies have different rules", and he has to do his Mummy's rules. This first came in when he was about 2.5-3 and the other Mums let their kids run to pre-school, on the busy main road. This was far too stressful for me, my rule was hold my hand or go on the buggy board on the main road at least. I kept to my guns and he was very good at doing this. Would let him run with the others on the quiet roads (until he ran over a side road then he got banned from running for some time.....

I would say pick your battles though- the poo poo head thing if you make too much fuss they will say it more and more as they will realise what a strong reaction they get=result in kiddie book!

Yes I am aware it is my job to correct his behaviour Cory, hence the reason I am asking for tips because whatever I am doing at the moment just isnt working.... kind of the point of the thread!!!!

Thank you Tgger i like the different mummies have different rules line. I think the poo poo head thing is coming to an end as I heard ds tell dd she isnt allowed to say that as its not very nice. So atleast I know its sunk in and next time he says it he is just doing it to get a rection from me.

What I did was just to keep plugging away, pulling them up every single time and just accepting that it was going to take a long time.

If my ds ran off once I would make it clear that he would have to hold my hand and not have that freedom at all until he could be trusted. If I then (at a later date) tried trusting him and he ran away again, I'd put him on reins and humiliate him in front of his friends.

If he said his friend was punching him, I would tell him he had to tell a teacher at once; I would also make it clear to him that the other children should tell a teacher if he was punching. I would have a quiet word with the teacher and ask her to keep an eye.

Not sure I agree that calling someone poo-poo head is the same as swearing: don't we all have mild expletives that we use instead of swearing. He is probably doing it to get a reaction. I would stay very calm and either tell him every time in a deep firm voice "no, you are Not allowed to say that" or alternatively just tell him: "yes dear, I heard you, but that really is very babyish language, you should be too old for that now".