In with the 'wrong crowd'

[turquoise50]

My DS (10.5) is friends with an awful group of children and I don't know what to do.

Our next door neighbours have a son who's six months younger than DS (but in year below because DS is a summer baby; also this other boy goes to a different school but they all walk the same way to school). DS and this boy have been close friends for five years. Just after Christmas they fell out over some silly thing, but tbh that's happened a million times before so I thought nothing of it, although I was surprised by the vehemence with which DS refused to make up with him this time.

Now I hear from the boy's mother that my DS's two closest male friends in his class have been repeatedly beating her son up on the way to/from school, apparently at the behest of two girls, one of whom is my DS's 'girlfriend'.

DS swears he wasn't involved and I believe him, if only because he's always running late in the morning LOL and gets to school just in time for the bell, way after his friends do, and I won't let him hang out after school with them for more than five minutes. However it looks likely that this bullying started at least partly because of the falling out which he had with this boy. It seems he told his thug of a pal at school, who promised to beat up the neighbour kid 'for' my DS. DS told him not to, and was trusting enough to assume that was the end of it, but apparently these other kids went ahead and did it anyway.

Now I have to deal with the mother coming round here tonight to talk to me about it! I don't know what to tell her because I hate these kids and want DS well away from them, but of course he won't hear a word said against them, especially the girlfriend. He says he doesn't condone their behaviour but he's not exactly acknowledging that it's wrong either.

They're in year 6, and DH and I had planned to move him away to private school next year so that he doesn't have to go to high school with this same crowd. But DS has been so upset at the prospect of leaving his friends, to the extent of it seriously affecting his mental health, that I was all set to capitulate and say we wouldn't move after all (just waiting on that school places announcement next Monday!!).

Now I feel like I REALLY want to get him away from them ASAP, but am worried that this will just alienate him still further. He's been a nightmare at home with outbursts etc and saying he thinks he has depression, and he's lost all motivation at school. Do I let him stay with them or what?

[uhoh2016]

You will probably find when he goes to high school his set of friends will change anyway. You may be able to speak to the high school ahead of September and ask for him to be in a different form to the ones in the wrong crowd.