Friends that are a bad influence on your dc

[craziedaisy]

My son is 6 and sadly although he is a bright and friendly little boy he has struggled to make many friends since being at school. I find the school gates very clicky and many of the children in my son's year are younger siblings so friendships have been made previously to joining the school. He has one friend but I am finding him rather a bad influence. He has come home to tea tonight and he is very rude and cheeky. I can already see a differnce in my son's behaviour. His parent are both academics but feel their parenting leaves alot to be desired. He encourages my son to be cruel to my younger child and don't feel I leave them all to play in the same room.
If my son had lots of friends then I would not of course not encourage this friendship but I am want my son to be happy. I have tried to encourage my son to play with other children but he says that they are not willing for him to join in at play times at school so feel it would be silly to try inviting anyone to play if they didn't want to play at school.
Any suggestions?

Calm correction of visiting child's behaviour (with explanation to the parents if there query it) and a firm reminder to your DS that his behaviour is not acceptable - if he doesn't behave properly when his friend is there then his friend won't be able to visit.

I wouldn't hesitate to correct any child visiting my home, I would also support any parent who corrected one of my dc when they were visiting a friend's house (reasonable correction, not smacking etc).

I don´t think that it is silly to invite home children who don´t want to play at school. If he´s struggling, I think it is probably the only way forward. My dd didn´t have any friends at school and no one played with her in the playground. The only way I managed to break this situation was to invite children to our house. After they had played one-to-one, they got to know each other a bit - probably without the peer-group pressure - and then did play in the playground. Now dd is happy at school with enough good friends.

There are some children who have been like this at our house (and still are). I really need dd to have some nice friends. She sometimes also gets annoyed by these children - and her behaviour after they have been here is terrible. I would really work on trying to make more friends for your son - maybe a bit kinder children!

Sorry. I wrote "there are some children who have been like this at our house". What I meant was, children who have acted in the way that you describe with your son´s friend who is a bad influence.

What I have sometimes found with ds is that he and another friend have been winding each other up, so that I've thought the friend was a bad influence and the friend's parents have thought ds was a bad influence, when in fact both were getting overexcited and acting out of character.

I find the clue is to make it absolutely clear to your own child that you are not interested in what anybody else does: if he misbehaves he has to face the consequences and you will come down on him like a ton of bricks.