Year 7 DD has brought a new friend home, is it the norm to have to ignore them completely after saying hello!

[sandyballs]

As DD says i am beyond embarrassing for asking her 'new friend' such intrusive questions as:

What primary school did you attend?
Are you enjoying secondary?
Pasta for dinner, is that ok for you?

Most odd

Entirely normal! You embarass them by simply breathing so you might as well make the most of it by asking 'intrusive' questions

DD has informed me her friends say I "talk a lot"

Well if their mums won't talk to them...I might as well

Don't speak to them!

Do you want your child to be shunned

Nod, smile, hand them food.

Yes. My DS even hisses at me if we pass one of his friends in the street, I am not allowed to acknowledge them .

I can remember being bored to tears by friends' parents talking to me and quizzing asking me about my favourite subject blah blah blah so I try and understand.

In fact I recently met a friend's mother - bear in mind we are in our 50s and the mother is late 70s and she started quizzing me, actually asked 'How do I spend my time???' - I was (almost) speechless. She just wouldn't stop talking at me .

You don't have any conversation with friends unless they are at table having a meal with you/the rest of the family, in which case you definitely converse with them. If they are not able to do this, you never invite them again!

Agree with others. You can chat if you are all sat round the table for a meal, but other than that, leave them alone

I've so much to learn about this secondary school lark. The days when she sat on my lap and refused to play with a play date are long gone .

Her friend is a lovely little girl, very calm and polite, not really like the girls DD is usually drawn to.

God yes.
We never saw anyone yrs 9 and 10 for tea.
Seems to be different in yr 11. Apparently I am considered "cool" by dd's friends, if not dd.

I spent most of Yr11 feeding ds's hulking great hollow legged 6' friends! Must have 'mug' written all over me

sandyballs Don't be intimidated by DD, its as bad as being an intimidatng parent. It is important to assert your individuality and sense of self now because for the next few years it is going to come under sustained attack as you become ever more mortifyingly embarassing, and clueless, not to mention the "the strictest parent in the world" and your behaviour totally different to every other parent, who is showering their DCs with clothes, money and total freedom to do whatever they like. Year 9 is a low point, as far as your DD is concerned you will have no point. After that you slowly become a human being again and by 17/18 may find their friendship group actually including you in their conversation and even befriending you on Facebook etc. because they have grown up enough to appreciate you for the individual you were all along.

Ah, now we go for the Max Embarrassment factor.

Last time DS had a friend round they wanted cheese on toast for dinner. Except the oven had broken down. So we made them cheese on toast outside on a camp stove, one very small slice at a time...

I picked DD up from her first "new" friends (triplets!) 12th birthday after school tea last night. Was pleasantly surprised to find no embarrassment of me or other mothers turning up - everyone friendly - all the girls desperate to tell us what they'd been doing, thanking us profusely for the presents...was pleasantly surprised...not sure it'll be the same for next year's round of 13th birthdays!

Ha ha - we are going through this atm. Not with Ds1's old friends who have gone up with him from primary school - they're all still quite chatty and responsive - but the new ones just disappear behind a computer screen, lowering their voices every time I appear and hoovering up the chocolate biscuits without a word.

I had the rolling eyes from DD when I tried to talk to her new friend...

Although she was pleasantly chatty at dinner whilst we sat down to eat. I was veru impressed with her spontaneous Thank you for having me as she left.

Yeah me too sandy.

Quizzed DD's new mate last weekend "so where do you live? Really? Why didn't you go to the secondary near then? Oh! You wanted to but didn't get in?"

I sound awful on reading that! I am nice really and not intrusive at all, the school she is at is much nicer anyway!

It gets better. DD1 is in Y11 now and says her friends think I am 'cool'. Based on what I do not know. But it means that is now OK to talk to them and even make jokes. By sixth form I may even be trusted to talk to the male friends.

I havent got teens

Do they let you talk to them if you offer them things like chocolate and cake?

Or is that terrible?
Ill be on a big learning curve in a couple of years!

Offering cake gets 'Thank you's from the guests, but it is NOT a free pass to be allowed to interrogate the I'm afraid

When being a taxi, I'm required to provide sweets, because they know I've been shopping and shut up.

Visits I may ask people if the want drink, food or snacks, nothing else.

I must provide all weird and wonderful requests for spa sessions, baking or whatever else they are up to without query.

Oh unless the visitor is one particularly confident child, who happily smiles, chats and doesn't think I have two heads.

My 14yo DD is proud of the fact that all her friends love me. (Weird child)

At the same age, I used to hide outside in s shop doorway when my mum went into the pound shops in case on of my friends saw her in there and thought that I might be in there too. (Social death at 14).

My DD and her friends actively ASK to come to town with me and spend money on crap in pound land.

I find it odd. Surely they should look at me like I am a creature with green skin, purple spots and 20 eyes whose very breath in the same room would kill them all?

Apparently, because I like 'spanking music' , I am deemed 'sick enough to spend time with'.

My only guess is that I am only 31, most of their parents are in their 40's/50's, and some of them have older siblings my age. I'm not quite old enough to be 'old' yet, in their eyes!

As you can tell, 14yo's speak a totally different language that bears about as much relation to English as Swahili does! Don't get me started on the aberrations that are "well jel" or "oh my days"...

I remember once meeting up with DD1 by chance when she was 14 and all her friends hugged me while DD ignored me. They do grow out of it. I chat lots to her friends now and to DD, it is lovely.

My teenagers' friends seem perfectly chatty and friendly! I've had a couple of hugs from one of them too :-) (This was after I helped her make some Harry Potter robes when the last film came out ...) I really couldn't be doing with trying to pretend I'm not there.