It is driving me mad.
Friend is very, very intense about her son. He is nearly 4. She worries about him a lot. She thinks that he is different, not like other kids.
The thing is, she reinforces this all the time.
As soon as any food comes on the scene, before her son has a chance to say whether or not he would like to try it she will say "Oh dear, I know L won't want to try anything green! Will you L? L absolutely refuses to try anything green."
When we were talking about how some cartoons can be scary for young children, she spoke at length about how L was absolutely terrified of X and Y and Z, and L was standing right there listening to how terrified he was of everything. I said something mild about how my dd went through a phase of being scared of things so we used to take our monster spray out with us, and Friend immediately countered with "Oh no you see, L is FAR too intelligent to ever fall for any of those Mummy tricks, we can't fob him off with anything like that".
She also talks a lot about how L won't ever try new things. He won't try to ride a bike, he won't try to write his name, he won't try jumping in the swimming pool, he won't try new food. He must stand there listening to all of this, thinking "hmm... that's me, I don't try new things". Surely it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy?
She also often says that "L has to get everything perfect, or he won't do it at all. If he's colouring and it goes outside the lines that's it, he screws it up and won't try again." It seems to me that must be a lot of pressure to put on a 3yo.
All of what she says may be true. I don't have any issue with her wanting to talk about her son with us Mums, but I feel so uncomfortable with her talking about him in such negative terms in front of him all the time.
She absolutely adores him. She is so anxious and desparately wants him to be 'normal'. I wonder if perhaps he might be if she calmed down and backed off a bit.
It is incessant.
I've reached a point where I'm going to say something without thinking it through. I don't even mind too much if it does affect our friendship.
Should I say nothing? I don't want to be unsupportive, and for all I know he really is an impossibly difficult child and she is at her wits end with him. He seems normal to me.
I know that if my dd heard me telling people that she did or didn't do something she would be hugely influenced by that.
Your thoughts? Please. Thank you.