The majority of my friends have kids, all within a couple of years of age of each other. Whilst it’s lovely to get together with friends and their kids for days out etc, we all love our child free time together.
I have DS (5) and one friend in particular (not in my main friendship group) has DS (4), we were friends for a couple of years before having kids but now she always wants our plans to be centred around the kids.
When my friend brings her DS over to my house , he trashes the place - he will empty out ALL of the toy storage and not even touch the toys, just makes a mess. We’ll ask them to stay downstairs but he always manages to make his way upstairs to my DS bedroom and again empty any toys he can find out onto the floor. I even considered putting the stair gate back up to stop this happening..
My first issue is my friend or her DS will not even attempt to tidy up any of the mess he’s made up at my house. I usually end up asking my DS to pick a few things up to encourage her DS to do the same. They will leave my house without helping at all.
Not only does this annoy me, but it annoys my DS and DH too as we’re always left tidying up another child’s mess..
I’m now avoiding play dates at our house with them.
The second issue: my friends DS is a lot more on the “wild side” than mine. I can see he loves to test his mums patience. My DS is very aware of his surroundings, I can trust him to go off by himself in our local park (not very big) and he will always come and check in with me every 5 minutes or so. However, friends DS would literally make a runner out of the park. We met in the park the other week and my DS went to wander whilst we were sat on a bench, of course her DS wanted to follow so she went after him - this turned into a game of them hiding/running from her but I stayed sat on the bench where DS also came back to and told me her DS was playing “hide and seek” from his mum. When she finally caught up with them, her DS got a big telling off and marched home. I felt a little bad as we clearly parent differently and if I didn’t trust my son to go off by himself then her DS wouldn’t have followed and ran riot, but I wasn’t going to end our morning out due to this and I think my friend was shocked that I wasn’t going to tell my son off or discipline him.
My last issue.. our most recent meet up was a play date at their house. My friend is very house proud and they only have a small box of toys - swords, guns, some animal figures and a big car. Her DS definitely did not want to share his toys but they ended up playing with the swords and guns. My DS often sits down to take a breather and have a minute to chill, however when he did this her DS would literally jump on him as if they were playing WWE. It was very one sided and I wasn’t going to tell her son off for it so i would ask mine to come and sit with me for a few minutes. There was a time where my DS was lay on the floor and her DS jumped on his head - my son was now hurt and upset and it was definitely our time to leave.
I love my friend to pieces and spending time with just her but I really don’t think our sons are compatible as friends, not at this age anyway. I don’t want to avoid her but she’s a very “mum and son package deal” (not a single mum and has a good village surrounding her, so doing stuff without kids is easily an option) but she’s definitely trying to encourage them to be the best of friends and I don’t see it happening. My DS is by no means an angel or the best behaved but I feel like he’s being led astray somewhat when playing with my friends DS and he’s also not keen on how her DS plays as he’s very full on and will also become hysterical if he doesn’t get his own way. My DS also never asks to see this child, whereas he quite often asks to see other of my friends kids.
I feel like if I’m honest with her about this she will definitely be offended and likely damage our friendship of many years.
How on earth do I get around this?
Or do I just suck it up and have very restricted play dates to maintain our own friendship..