I think I have lost a good friend due to ds's appauling behaviour. Am I unreasonable in feelin really upset about it? Any thoughts about this situation warmly welcomed, but please don't judge as i

[Sonflower]

This is a bit long and complicated.
I am a single mum with a 12 yr old ds. My ds has social/behavioural problems (anger/defiance issues as well as being very anxious in new situations) He has had group and one to counselling to help him, through our local CAMHS. 2 years ago I went to a parents' support group at CAHMS and met another single mum whom I subsequently became good friends with. We had both experienced similar problems in our pasts, had many common interests, but the one thing that probably bonded us together above all else was the fact that we both had very little other support in our lives (no family etc).

Over the last 2 years that we have been friends we have gone out any times with our dss, and have both hosted sleepovers. Our dss, though 3 1/2 years apart in age,(my friend's son is younger) get on very well, and have various interests in common. We have also offered each other emotional support on a number of occasions.

As we all seemed to get on so well, we decided to go on holiday together this summer.
As we were booking the holiday, I jokingly said " I hope we don't fall out spending so much time together"

Those words have now come to haunt me.

The holiday was made extremely difficult and stressful due to my ds's appauling behaviour. I make no apology for it.
Although he was rude and dis-respectful to me my tactic was to ignore him as much as I could as I thina lot of it was attention seeking. So i figured if I ignored him, he wouldn't get the satisfaction of having "upset" me.
My friend however, could not ignore him, and criticised my way of dealing with him, and kept saying how spoilt and rude he was behaving. I didn't disagree with her assessment,just in the way to deal with it.
There were a few times when my ds's behaviour directly affected her, but for the most part it was directed at me.
One incident,which I was not present at, involved her ds. Her ds had apparently run up to my ds and jumped on him as a "surprise". My ds, taken by surprise, re-acted by punching her ds. I wasn't there so I really don't know how violent a punch it was. The first I heard about it it was when my ds came to find me looking a bit anxious, and then my friend came following him, and in front of a room full of people shouted quite loudly " you bully, XXXX is much younger than you, if I ever see you do that again, I'll hurt you more than you can imagine"
Although I hadn't been present at the incident, I backed her up that my ds's reaction had been unacceptable if he had indeed punched her ds.
I have to add that in the 2 year's we have known each other, as far as I can recall, my ds has never been violent to her ds before.
It basically went from bad to worse after that and the more my son felt he was being judged/disciplined by my friend the worse he seemed to behave, and nothing I could say or do seemed to stop him.
By the end of the holiday my friend and I were virtually like strangers (difficult when you are sharing a hotel room together!) and pretty much doing our own thing and I felt I had to spend the whole time trying to appease evryone and keep the peace. Not surprisingly, it was very stressful, and I didn't have much fun.
Although the 2 boys didn't get on as fantastically well as I hoped , apart from that one incident there were no other arguements or friction between them. The problems were mainly between my friend and ds.

Anyway, we got back from holiday, and my friend has completely ignorned me since. I texted her soon after the return and asked her directly if she still wanted to be friends, and she said she needed time to mull over the events of the holiday.
A week or so later, after not having heard from her, I texted her again and just enquired how she was, and mentioned we hadn't been in touch for a while.
No reply.
I guess I now have to accept that she no longer wants to be friends with me. Obviously I find this very painful and distressing.

While I fully admit my ds behaved in a vile way at times, I feel as if I am being doubly punished by my friend "abandoning" me due to it.

Am I being unreasonable in feeling really, really sad and upset by what has happened?

Should I just accept we are not going to be friends anymore and just move on?

I just want some impartial comments on this situation as it is bad enough dealing on my own with a child with challenging behaviour and now losing friends over it too :(

I can't help , but just wanted to say that I am so sorry for your situation and hope you can make things better with your friend.

I fell for you.

It is very hard to lose a friend.

I won't comment at all on the situation which led to it.

I can understand, however, that anyone would choose not to bring their children into situations where they feel uncomfortable.

She feels uncomfortable with how you parent- you choose differentw ways and it can be hard to parent one way in the presecence of another parenting style.

Her son feels uncomfortable around your son. That could probably change again but she may not be likely to want the children to spend much time together in the near future.

It must have been incredibly akward and traumatic for you both.

You should fight for your friendship. It may be based solely on you two at the start, or indeed that may be the basis of your friendship.

But you need friends too. I hope you can work it out.

feel for you obviously- I have no romantic intentions towards you I promise

I think that having known this lady for the past 2 years should have meant she would have some understanding of your son's challenging behaviours.

DS has high functioning autism and ADHD. if someone came and jumped on him he would have reacted in a similar way to your son.
I too would have told him off for violance and explained that although he may have been frightened that is no excuse to hit out.

I would also have explained to the other boy that although he shoud not have been hit that DS does not like that sort of contact and that in future it is probably a good idea not to do it.

I would not have allowed someone to speak to my son the way you say your friend did.

I think that it is best to allow you both some time and that for the forseable future you arrange meetings without the children.

I don't really have much advice I'm afraid, but I just wanted to say of course you're not unreasonable for feeling how you do. What an upsetting sequence of events you poor thing.

You sound quite generous and understanding in your telling of the whole thing (have to say your friend's reaction to the punching incident was a bit ) so I guess it's just a case of giving it time. All you can do is communicate to your friend how you're feeling and let her respond or not as she will.

Really hard, though. I guess one way of looking at it is to realise that no friendship that puts such pressure on your relationship with your DS (and your self-confidence as a parent doing a tough job) is really that much of a support, so it may be time to let go. Or maybe she just needs time and you'll be able to have some honest discussions about it in due course.

For now you just need to concentrate on being as kind to yourself as you can. Easier said than done, I know.

I think my advice would be to email her and explain that you too felt that your DS behaviour was out of order too but that given your 12 years experiance at being his mother you feel that ignoring the name calling is the best course of action.
that whilst you understand that she has a very different approach to parenting you would hope that your friendship means enough to move past this.

It's a shame. It sounds like you are doing your very best for your DS under the difficult circumstances of being on your own, with no family to help, plus his social/behavioural difficulties.

You & your friend are both right to feel the way you do, (although I think your friend could by now be a little bit more forgiving). Could you invite her out for a coffee & chat without the DSs? If she won't speak to you, write her a short but nice letter. Your DS probably acted out of character because of the unfamiliar setting and intensity of being with other people 24/7. If he has been fine on many other previous occasions, then you would hope she can overlook the holiday incident and if she doesn't respond to that then I would leave it and look for more friends.

In the meantime, is there any help or advice you could get, regarding techniques to deal with your DS, so you are more equipped, especially as he's getting older and presumably bigger and harder to control/handle? Did your friend have anything useful to extract regarding how she would have handled it? Are there any behavioural books or DVDs the CAHMS group could recommend to you?

You sound so sad . You also sound like an excellent caring mum and friend. I hope things get better for you.

I should clarify: not that I feel your friend is right to feel the way she does, more that that you have your opinion and she has hers, so that's the starting point.

Holidays with friends often end in broken friendships IME, you are outside of your usual "context" with one another and it can all just be too much.

Having said that I have had to end a friendship over the kids. My friend's DS was violent and just horrible towards my DS, even though my friend would try to deal with it, I made the decision that it wasn't up to my DS to be her DS's punching bag regardless of his issues.

I did try to maintain the friendship by trying to seeing her without the kids but as we met through them it was never going to happen.

It is probably more the holiday effect though than the kid effect.

Her comment about hurting him was wrong but TBH it sounds as if she's had her fill of the bad behaviour and snapped. You say some of his behaviour affected her directly. That should have been punished and not ignored IMO. I had a friend who used to allow her child to rough play with her dog. She then sat there while he put his hands round my cats neck.It was a disgrace and I lost all respect for her on the spot. You can't ignore bad behaviour directed at others, sorry.

And you say you make no apology the holiday was ruined . Presumably she paid to go?

I hope you and your friend work it out, but I'm coming at this as a woman with an Aspie who used to be very aggressive in stressful situations.
You have to look at the pressure you put your son under for an extended period of time. He was in a different situation for a week? 10 days?
I'm not attempting to excuse or blame, just offer an explanation of why he might have lost the plot and gone beyond any previous bad behaviour. The hitting, and the fact he targeted you is something I recognise from my own experiences with my son when he's pushed beyond his limits.

I really feel sorry for you.

Its very hard coping with a child with behavioural problems and unless you live it 24/7 no-one can ever understand.

If you lose her as a friend she wasnt the friend you thought she was-sad but true .

All you can do is wait and see and maybe use this as an example to your ds how his behaviour can affect things.

My own very good friend parents vv differently to me and its now turned around in that her SEN child reacts better to my different standards and approach - my friend leaves him to calm down and then approaches him with why his behaviour was wrong - I straight away say I will not have this he is to stop right now then I leave the room with him and stay with him until hes calm then he tells me what went wrong,my way he seems to be 'in control'- so a lot of the time I support my friend with her ds.

I can sort of give you the perspective of your friend if you'd like?

A good few years ago, I got very close to a woman who, like me, was a single parent. I have 2 DS's and she has one, our eldest boys were the same age and attended the same school.

We were very close. We shared a couple of holidays together, and everything was fine, and then we decided to go away again.

Well, it was a nightmare. Her son (who had no SN BTW, but I think was fairly damaged by the very very messy breakdown of my friend's marriage) drove me to complete distraction. He cried when he didn't get his own way, he acted very arrogantly most of the time which displayed itself in being very rude to me on more than one occasion, he taunted my youngest son continuously and was spiteful to my eldest child as well.

My friend sat and watched all of this going on and never once told him off, and I felt very frustrated, and, well...let down I suppose. I felt as though her DS was completely running and ruining all our holidays, and I felt that he should be reined in. The thing is that as a single parent, I could ill afford a holiday at the time, and I just felt....grrrrr. I know that it seems petulant but I wanted to say "LOOK, This is OUR holiday as well, and I realise that DS is having problems - my two aren't exactly having a whale of a life at the moment either - but PLEASE, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS" DYKWIM?

Anyway. When we got home I just sort off distanced myself from her a bit. I didn't feel that I could have it out with her as critisising someones parenting is never going to go down well is it?

In the end she phoned me one day after school complaining that my son had hit her son in the playground and that was it for me. I haven't spoken to her since.

It's very hard to lose a friend. I do feel for you, honestly I do, but I think you need to give her some space and see if you can re-visit this in a little while.