Tricky friend situation

[Wantingwiseadvice]

I have a friend who has a son who has been friends with my son since reception. They are now both in year 7 and have very little in common. My son is into gaming, hers into sports. Her son doesn’t have many friends and is always getting into trouble at school. They go to a different school to my son. My friend is really pushy about getting the two of them together. I think she thinks my son is a good influence on hers. I try to limit their meet ups to actual events, but she’s always pushing for my son to hang out afterwards. My son is really thoughtful and is happy to go along with the events, but asks me not to arrange hang outs as they are awkward. The problem is, the mum won’t take no for an answer and keeps pushing and pushing.

I’ve run out of excuses. How can I say my son doesn’t really want to hang out if they’re not doing something specific without being hurtful? And if that’s not possible, should I be hurtful anyway? My son won’t say anything unpleasant but they are really only meeting up at all to be nice. I don’t actually want to teach him that he should put others in front of himself, as he could do with sticking up for himself a bit more, not less. He says the son isn’t a bully, but it’s really bossy and never does anything my son wants to do.

I'd suggest that meet ups between the boys could now be arranged between the two of them now ( presuming they both have phones)
Her son may not want to hang out with your son either. If it's left for them to message each other it might just not happen

Yes something like above, how strange for her to be organising a 11/12 year olds social life.

Unfortunately, I’ve tried that, and she still gets in touch every couple of weeks to arrange something else. I don’t think subtlety is going to work. I think my choice is between saying, no, my son doesn’t want to spend that much time with your son doing nothing, or carry on constantly looking for excuses, limiting the time as much as possible, but still having my son spend far more time with hers than he wants to.
My son has no idea if her son loves these meet ups or hates them.

I had the same situation with my son and a friend's son. The boys had been in primary class together and had played and had play dates. But as they got older their interests diverged. My friend's son struggled socially so I think the continued investment in getting them together was because of that. In the end I had to just say, "your son's lovely but the boys don't share common interests at the moment and mine is doing other things at the moment". It was fine byt them my friend is lovely.

I’ll try to have a chat about the boys next time we go for a coffee. Hopefully I can be as tactful and she will be as receptive as your friend was, literal.

I know this is going to be me in september ...already my dd is drifting away from my friend's child and l am ok with that but her child really struggles socially at school and l know she will want them to continue meeting up.

How about being honest and telling her that your son hasn’t enjoyed the recent times and that they don’t have much in common now so you don’t want to force them into spending time together?