Child being excluded by friend's parent

[RTchokeheart]

I feel so powerless in this situation. My primary-school aged DS is being excluded from play dates with his larger friendship group by the parent of his friend. The friend's parent is very pro-social and has connections with most other parents. When I tried to arrange a play date with other kids, she arranged an alternative play date and pulled rank. Her DS still plays with my DS at school, but pretends they aren't friends when his mum is around. I've never known my DS to hit, hurt, or be mean to another kid - this is the feedback I got from nursery and school as well. His friend loses his temper regularly, can be extremely unkind and falls out with other kids constantly. TBH, I was hoping the friendship would wane, but it seems as if we have the worst of both worlds, as he is still friends with the kid, but is being socially excluded by the parent. I don't really want my DS to spend time with these people, but he wants to see his friends outside of school and he cries about it. I feel so guilty.

I had a mum complain to me that her daughter wasn’t playing so much with another girl, because my daughter was, and they had known each other since nursery and lived near each other.
I explained to her that my daughter and the friend only played at school, and there wasn’t much I could really do, they were in Year 1 .
We lived some distance away so no socialising after school.
The woman was really frosty to me, but I’m not sure what on earth I could do

Not really the same situation I know, but some parents are really odd.
Later we had issues with a Queen Bee type with my youngest child, but she was very strange, you just have to let them get on with their weird weird intrigues.
And hope they don’t start inventing things about you.

There are really odd people about, and I’m sorry that you are affected by it too.

I personally could expend any energy on being horrible to people on purpose, what must their lives be like ?

I personally COULDN’T expend energy on being horrible to people.

This happened to us. Ds actively excluded by 2 of the parents when ds thought he was best friends with their boys.

Best thing that could have happened. We encouraged other friendships and now ds is in a big group of lovely boys, whilst the other 2 have isolated themselves.

Oh and both mum’s now worry that their boys do not have many friends and never get invited to birthday parties.

Awful at the time, but remain positive, bright and breezy as another poster said, it will pass. I also mentioned this to his teacher - she was already aware!

We had something similar not from a school mum but a neighbour. She made it her life's mission to exclude ds1 from the kids that played together with him and her son. Her motive was driven by the fact her own Ds behaviour was terrible (swearing, spitting, hitting, punching and kicking every kid in site from the age of 4 onwards) and she was determined to cover up for his behaviour by blaming my DS and lying too neighbours about how badly behaved my DS was to take the attention away from her son's behaviour. She also tried to turn every neighbour against us and abused or harrased me and my DH everytime we walked out our door.

As much as I laugh about it now it was horrible at the time and DS1 became quite isolated socially as she would deliberately take all the kids away to the park so he was on his own. However one by one everyone around us started to see how crazy and nasty her behaviour was as she started nonsense of other people's kids too. Now nobody will talk to her and there kids are all banned from going near her or her DS. If this woman is behaving like this to your DS she will start to do it at some point to others. I just kept encouraging friendships for DS away from our area, kept him busy and reassured him this woman's behaviour was not his fault and far from normal.

I think it's really important to push outside friendships away from this group of kids and try one to one play dates. Other mums may have concerns but they are not voicing them yet.

OP I have just re read this is it all the mum's and kids being kept back from your son? If so I think you need to have a serious conversation with a few parents about your son's behaviour. Ask them honestly if he is behaving unacceptably or has he done at some point. I actually checked with various neighbours about my DS behaviour when our neighbour started her excluded my DS and made it clear that I have no issues with any parents approaching me if his or any of my kids behaviour is unacceptable as I would address it. However if this mother is doing this to be controlling keep your DS away as people like that only get worse not better and it's not good for a child be around that.

That's awful have you tried arranging another one and see if she does it again? If she does it again I would confront her about it and ask her if there is a problem

Or, what about arranging play dates with the mums individually, privately through messages?

Same thing happened with my DD. She's a lovely popular girl but some of the parents really disliked me so my dd was excluded from everything. Sadly you can't change this...Mo's people are sheep and cowards terrified to go against the group. I'm sorry this is happening.

*most

A primary mum took against my Dd - pure jealousy sadly. She allowed her Dd in year 5 to invite all the girls to a party and they all stayed over - except Dd! She came home in tears Dh who did the pick up was furious. The other mums adored Dd so know it wasn’t her behaviour she’s always been easy going and polite. Now at secondary Dd is most popular girl at school this mum bloody hates it. Success is the best revenge. ..

"Most popular girl" 😆

Speak to teacher. Arrange playdates yourself.

I think it’s really hard to step away from your own feelings as a parent whose child is being excluded, but it’s what we need to do.

found out today my daughter isn’t invited to a party that all the other children in her class are invited too. Parent says it’s because a few weeks ago my DD and her DD fell out and her DD felt mine was unkind. That’s fair enough really. It’s a horrible feeling as a parent, buts it’s life that if you don’t get on with someone then they won’t invite you to things.

I think parents need to step back from their children’s friendship. It’s really odd when people try to force their children to be friends with/not be friends with others based on their own relationship with that child’s parent.

I think with time this issue will become less significant because as they get older children naturally sort their own friendships and are less lead by their parents.

found out today my daughter isn’t invited to a party that all the other children in her class are invited too. Parent says it’s because a few weeks ago my DD and her DD fell out and her DD felt mine was unkind. That’s fair enough really

That's not fair enough...it's really horrible and cruel to leave one child out of a whole class party. Kids fall out all the time in primary school and it's forgotten the next day... unless your child has been incessantly bullying her daughter, she really should have invited her.

I think it is fair enough. I lovely daughter and I don’t think she means harm, but she is very intense with people and overpowering to other children. This child is quite timid and quiet. I’m obviously helping my child develop skills around respecting others boundaries etc, but I can’t blame this parent for not inviting someone her child has not liked being around.

I don’t think my child had bullied hers but she is a very dominant personality.

She can't arrange playdates with every single dc at the same time. If you keep inviting different kids, some will be available. Then make sure they have a nice time, get to know the parents etc. Just keep plugging away.

The blew up and I can see now that it is not at all an uncommon experience. I think my DS has good qualities that will help him make and keep friends and I just need to offer him opportunities to meet other kids. I don't want to take him out of school and I don't want to try to compete. I just need to try to connect him with kids that live a bit further away and maybe start him in a club. Thanks to everyone who responded with advice.

Well said! I have a neighbour who behaves in similar way. The best method of dealing with these types is to deflect.

I remember this happening to my DS when he was in primary school. A friend who he really liked had a party and invited all the friendship group except him. He was so brave about it and explained to me it was because of ‘numbers’ but really I knew it was because they mothers of the other boys were really close and I wasn’t in their gang. It bloody hurt. Roll on over a decade and DS has a massive circle of friends and party boy lives a very isolated and incredibly sad life. He spent many years smoking weed in his house after his parents separated. It’s pretty heartbreaking to be honest. I don’t think he developed the skills to make friends on his own terms whereas DS is brilliant at making friends

Just to update, in case anyone in a similar situation stumbles on this post. I enrolled my DS in some clubs and set up some playdates to distract him from not being invited to play with the friend group outside of school. Eventually things blew over and he started being invited with the rest of the group again. He has formed new friendships with other kids. He still likes playing with his best friend from before, but recognises some of his negative qualities better and says he prefers playing with others now - less drama. Overall, DS has a lovely friendship group now and the parents are very nice and very keen to include all the kids. I don't worry at all about him being left out now. The mum of the old best friend is still the social centre of things. For anyone that was suggesting my DS was really the trouble maker and I was not seeing it, you were barking up the wrong tree. I mostly to have parents telling me that DS is a good friend to their kid, kind to younger siblings, easy to have around, no trouble at all etc. So my advice would be clubs and activities to distract and opportunities to make new friends.