Fallen out with friend over childs behaviour?!

[geneveve]

I was wondering if anyone else had found themselves in this position.
I became friends with a lady that I met through my antinatal classes and ever since having our children, which would be 2 1/2 years ago, we have met twice a week for playdates. This was all fine until about a year ago when I really started noticing major differences in the way that our children played. My friends son is lovely but is very quiet and seems to only be interested in playing with his mum. My son is very outgoing, loves children of all ages and at times can be very boisterous (not sure I spelt that correctly)

My friend approached me just over a week ago, whilst at my house for a play date, and said that she no longer wanted my son to come to her house for playdates. When I asked her why? she replied that she didn't like the way my son played and that he had broken a couple of toys. When I asked her what he had broken she looked a bit"put on the spot", and the only two things she came up with were a piece of cardboard packaging that housed jigsaw pieces, and had been previously ripped by her son, and a replica car that isn't meant for 2 year olds, should be for display purposes only, which had a cracked back window, this too had been previously damaged. Now I am not saying that it is ok for my son to damage items further, and on both occassions he was told off and said item taken away from him, but I do feel my friend has overreacted a little and feel a little put out that she didn't approach me before to outline any concerns and just went straight to banning my son from her home.

To make matters worse, shortly after we had had this disscussion her son broke one of my childs toys and very little was said about it from her?

I don't want to fall out completly over this, or for it to remain a permanent problem but it is obvious that now our children are growing up they are developing very different characters. My son loves to play and if he approaches my friends son he either gets shouted at, pushed away or the other boy cries, when my son hasn't done anything to warrant this reaction.

Any ideas what I should do? x

Had almost the exact same situation with my DS and a person who I thought of was a friend just before my DD was born, so a couple of years ago now.

Was coming towards the end of my nightmarish pregnancy and had been having about 4 hours sleep a night - and I was frankly too knackered to get into the whole 2 year old sharing thing on somebody else's patch. She invited us over to play which my DS was very excited about for the whole day. My DS took a couple of toys of one of her DDs which I replaced by offering her something else. Big mistake apparently.

The next day, she phones up (post-vomit, luckily or would have probably started all over again) and says she doesn't want to see us again. Hormones raging and all, I spent most of that day in tears.

Came across a MN-posting that very night from her trashing my ability to parent my child, saying how incompetent I was, she never considered me as a friend and that she was only really inviting us over to 'kill some time'. Gee - thanks. Really laid into me over the wires - having said nothing of this to my face. I was so gobsmacked, and very, very upset. To hear somebody slate you so vehemently behind your back when you had no idea they thought this way was a huge, sick-making blow.

After then, she completely blanked me whenever our paths crossed. Even when DD was born she never even said a word of congratulations. Luckily she's moved away since then and I haven't seen her again. Am a lot more wary and cautious when it comes to friends, which is my own problem really.

I'm living abroad so the world is a lot smaller here when you have small children in a foreign place away from your own family and friends, and things like this, though not really significant in the scheme of things, cast a long shadow over things, ridiculously.

So, frankly you're probably better off without her to be honest. It truly is not worth the hassle.

Reading between the lines of what you say, it's possible that your friend is keen to hang out with you, but her DS is wary of yours and easily upset your DS' more boisterous nature, desire to get stuck into his toys etc. (all very natural at 2 and a half, I might add!)

So perhaps she's suggested doing it this way round so she can scoop up her DS and get him home if he appears to be finding it all a bit much (much easier than asking someone you've invited into your home to leave).

Some toddlers are more timid than others and lack confidence to just get stuck in - I don't think it's fair to blame him, it's just the way he is at this stage. It would probably be better for him to have his mum nearby rather than out of his line of sight when he's feeling insecure, otherwise he will probably get more anxious.

I agree a proper talk with your friend to try and get to the bottom of exactly what's concerning her would be a good idea.

I hope you sort it out - it would be a shame if you both lost a friendship you had previously valued.