How to deal with DS (9)'s over persistent friend

[Flyonthewindscreen]

Will call him X, is a nice kid, lives very close to us, is one of DS's best friends and they get on very well. X has other friends apart from DS as does DS but none of the other yr 5 boys are in convenient calling distance. However over the last few months he has been so persistent that it is becoming a nuisance.

An example, Sunday teatime, after DS and X have spent the afternoon playing in and out together, the phone rings, we ignore it. When I check it afterwards it is X's mother asking if DS wants to come for a sleepover that night. DS has been for a birthday treat sleepover with X which was fine but am not happy about random spur of moment sleepovers so texted her to say thank you but not tonight. At 7pm I was in the bath and the phone rang, DS answered it and ran upstairs saying "Its X, please can I go for a sleepover". I get out of bath, quite peeved and speak to X's mother, "Didn't you get my text" I say, "Oh sorry, she says, "I did, didn't realise X was phoning you". Not sure why she wasn't annoyed with her DS for going behind her back when I had already said no. So I said no again and had DS furious at me and nice cosy family evening spoiled. Texted X's mother the next morning to say DS would not be playing out as had been at A&E first thing (whole other story), X still phoned three times in an hour to speak to DS, the friend I had visiting could not believe he was being allowed to call so continually.

X's mother jokes that X is DS's stalker and laughs that if we are away he patrols back and forward between our houses to see if we are back yet. I often get back to find multiple silent messages on the phone from him. It is too much, apart from move house , what can I do?

"More generally, I don't understand this attitude that many MN posters seem to have (and I haven't really come across in RL) that somehow family time is repellent to children and to be sneered at."

Where has anyone said that?

"Where has anyone said that?"

that's how your posts came across seeker, particularly the one at Mon 31-Oct-11 22:25:47. I thought it was very aggressive and criticial.

Anyway, back to the OP. I suppose you can just make sure he knows that you enjoy time with guests and you also enjoy time when guests have gone and that all good things - like days playing with friends - come to an end. Stock phrases like "all good things come to an end" may be useful as they won't cause offence if he happens to repeat them to the neighbour's mum (who sounds from her attempts at jokes as though she is painfully aware that her son is a little bit needy just now).

Coming back to this because it's on my mind. "Family time" is wonderful and important, a vital bit of "family glue". But it cannot be prescribed. You can't say, unless your children are very little, "tonight is family time night" some of the family might want to do something else, or might want to be on their own or spend an hour in the bath. You have to be flexible or, as kids get older, they will start to resent being expected to "do family time" to order.

For example, in our family, Saturday has always been home made pizza and crap telly night. When the children were little that happened every Saturday and it was lovely. I still love it and wish it could happen every week, but now it doesn't. Because the children have their own lives. This Saturday, for example, dd is going to a gig, and ds is going to a mate's house for a Wii fest. I would have loved to say to him " but you can't- Merlin's on!" and he wouldn't have gone, but that would have been enforcing family time, which would be completely counter productive. Our Saturday nights will continue in their current form as long as the children live at home, but sometimes they will just be dp and me (good practice!) , sometimes one or other child, sometimes both, sometimes a friend or two...the thing is that they do it happily and willingly and enjoy it and recharge their batteries. Without resentment or feeing the they have to because it's "mum's special thing' or feeling guilty for not doing "mum's special thing" this week.

If we were just sitting down to Merlin and ds's friend called for him, for example, I'd say "Of course you can go" and wave him off cheerfully. The family will still be the when he gets back, and there's always next week!

I also had an overbearing father who refused to permit any sleepovers (because he found the idea inconvenient), and we had a lot of forced family time. And, like MI, I now avoid spending time with my parents whenever possible. I'm not saying I let my dc do whatever they like and have sleepovers every time they ask, but for me it is important to take their friendships and wishes about their activities seriously. And that often includes sleepovers, which are quite important in friendships, it's embarrassing as a child not being allowed to invite children back for the night when everyone else is doing it.

We have a lot of children visiting, being babysat etc in our house so we have quite strict House Rules which work well for sleepover guests.

I don't think any of us are rigidly imposing family nights (or 'mums special thing' whatever that may be..enforced Ludo perhaps) on our dc.

This is about saying 'no' sometimes because it doesn't fit in round everyone. If you feel it's ok to let your dc do whatever they want when they want and have an open house policy then great.

But I don't think the inference that because some of us don't operate that way we can expect poor future relationships with dc burning with resentment, are miserably inflexible, are overbearing and have somehow failed to tap into the meaning of childhood is true. It just shows we all do things differently.

I think most of us do have sleepovers. Sometimes. But some of us don't want to have them all the time and like a bit of notice. Gawd knows dh and I do tons of stuff for our dc, they come first no question.

But if I say not this week to friends to stay because we (perish the thought) just don't want to and fancy a quiet weekend that should be ok. Dh and I are part of the family too; dc seem to accept this without too much trauma.

We had dd's friends over for a sleepover the other day for her 13th birthday. By 3am we gave up any hope of sleep. Ok, they were all excited, but do I want to do that regularly? Not really it was exhausting. I do find sleepovers hard work, it is difficult to relax in your own home and to pick up on an earlier point it does impact on siblings because we're v pushed for space.

I had to ship dt's out to make room for dd's birthday sleepover. They looked quite upset about it too

I do think you are missing my point! The op said that the reason she said no to her ds going for a sleepover (not having somebody for a sleepover- going to one) was that she wanted family time. I am saying that by the age of 9 the child concerned should have the choice. And if the child wants to go on the sleepover and is not allowed to, how is that not enforced family time?

the thing is though seeker, none of these "subtexts" or prescriptive behaviours that you're being so critical of are apparent to me in any of the OP's messages, and this thread is supposed to be about her family, her issue.

She said that her ds was asked to go on a sleepover and she said no because she wanted the evening to be family time. Seems quite clear to me. What am I missing?

Well, the point of this thread is that an overexcited slightly needy 9-year-old couldn't quite realise that playtime was over one Sunday night and managed to wind up the OP's son into a big strop and spoil the evening the OP's family had all been enjoying. What's more this lad has a pattern of doing this and his own mum clearly considers it to be a problem.

Somehow you managed to turn that into an attack on the OP.

I haven't attacked anyone. If expressing an alternative point of view is considered an attack, conversation become impossible. And if you read the op, the original invitation, which the op refused on her ds's behalf without consulting him because sh wanted family time, came from the mother.

The points I made about family time being something that cannot be prescribed, and must be handled with tact and sensitivity once children reach an age to want their own social lives is a valid one. One which I, as the mother of older children feel I am qualified to talk about. I would be sorry if it was subsumed in the full on attack of a straw army.

I don't think sleeping over is particularly recent. My friend and I practically lived together in one house or the other during the school holidays, over 25yrs ago.

When there are loads of children staying over, like for a birthday sleepover, lack of sleep is an issue but they don't miss out on that much when it's just one friend, do they?