Friend's child bullying mine

[Astigmatic]

I wondered if anyone had some words of wisdom about a friend's child who is borderline bullying my child who is two years younger. She turns a blind eye to a lot of behaviour as her daughter is very challenging but the other day my child was so upset and it turns out this girl had hit him and called him names in front of others and turned them into a gang against him. He has very low self esteem as it is and now I don't want to see them any more but this is very difficult to manage as she wants to do stuff quite often! Feel trapped!

Hi, that's not on is it? I think next time she wants to do something together u must raise this as forcing ur poor ds to play with a bully will just undermine his confidence in u.

That's a really good point, Gigi - thank you. I have been worried about offending the mum but think it's gone far enough now. Didn't want to make waves in the friendship group but things are pretty bad anyway because of this.

It's hard that's for sure, been there done that and much as u try to play it down (which u shouldn't ) the other mum will still take offence. U have to prepare yourself for this friendship to end... X

Does this happen at school or when you are having time together with just the mum?
If it's at school, deal with the school and try and avoid it becoming something between you and the mum if at all possible.

If these things happen out of school, then you need to stop your DS seeing this girl. I had to do this with my own DD who was being belittled by my friend's DD every time we saw them. She is, frankly, a mean child who mimics her dad's nasty behaviour. (That's a whole other story). It would have been very hard to monitor the situation (as kids disappear off into the house or garden) and I just saw tons of hassle in the future. I also felt that I was enabling the bullying by forcing her to see this child just because I happened to be friends with the mum.

I explained it to my friend by saying I 'didn't feel the chemistry was there between the two kids, and that it wasn't fair really imposing them on each other'. I said we should try again when they were older. I kept being friends with my friend, we see each other in the evenings or coffees, but my DD never wants to see the other girl again. This solution worked well for me, and for DD.

Thanks Gig and Snowspot this is really helpful. It's not happening at school but we are part of a friendship group based on older kids being in the same class! This incident did happen when the kids were upstairs away from the adults and it would be very hard for me to monitor all the time. It's really encouraging that you managed to stay friends with the other mum, Snowspot. Lots of food for thought!