Your kid's friends

[Mr. Scot]

Question primarily to the moms and dads of teens, but other age group parents are free to chime in.

What do you think of your kid's friends? Decent? Worthless? Booster? Slacker? Good influence? Bad influence? What?

Give examples.

(also specify if your kid is actually the bad apple of the bunch) :unsure:

[Chimera]

My son's best friend is a Dolphin fan and wears skinny jeans. But he's a straight A student, doesn't leave the house a mess like other kids, and says please/thank you/etc.

I'm cool with him coming over. The more he talks, the more it seems his family is pretty dysfunctional so I welcome him any time.

[Rise of The Hive]

I don't have a kid or friends. :(

[Kevin Greene]

Good kid/Good kid.

But it is amazing how much they apparently communicate by smart phone and how it's like I've seen you yesterday after not seeing each (in person) other 10 days.

That make sense?

[Mr. Scot]

Good kid/Good kid.

But it is amazing how much they apparently communicate by smart phone and how it's like I've seen you yesterday after not seeing each (in person) other 10 days.

That make sense?

 

As soon to be dad of a teenage daughter, definitely.

 

I'm amazed the phone has lasted as long as it has.

 

[WilmyWood]

I'll bump this thread in 9 years :)

[Mr. Scot]

Yeah, I'm not really looking for "my kid's friend annoys the kindergarten teacher" or "he's always cranky around nap time" type things :lol:

[rayzor]

back when my wife and i were essentially foster parents to 4-6 troubled/abused teenage girls at a time, i could honestly say that i didn't like many if their friends...mainly because of their friend's parents who didn't pay attention to their kids and/or thought their kids weren't getting into trouble...meanwhile their kids weren't just stealing from their parents or trading stuff their parents gave them for drugs/cigs. the big thing they were doing was raiding their medicine cabinets and grabbing either the meds that had been over-prescibed or meds that had been left over when they stopped taking thier medicine and didn't discard of them properly. parents of "good kids" from "good homes" wouldn't pay attention to what they had left in their cabinets and the fact that their kids were stealing them and taking them to school and trading for other stuff, sharing them with their friends, or selling them.

 

thats where my "bad kids" who had fallen into addiction because of neglect got their drugs when they were with us...from other kids who were neglected by oblivious and naive parents who didn't think they had to worry about what their kids were doing or who their kids were hanging out with as long as they weren't hanging out with the bad kids like the ones i was taking care of.

 

point is, don't assume you've got good kids that you don't have to worry about. do your due diligence and keep meds locked up safe from your kids, monitor the amount of pills you have and should have, and get rid of meds that you aren't taking anymore. your kids aren't any different than any other kid. tbey are all trying to find their way and who the are and they are going to be exploring their limits, good or bad, at some point. you aren't going to be able to keep them totally protected from all bad things  and i don't even think that would help them, but do your best to cut back some of the temptation to get sucked up into harmful stuff by keeping that away from them.

 

sorry for the soapbox. you mivht and probably do have good kids, but being a good kid doesn't mean you aren't going to be doing the right thing all thebtime and that they aren't going to be making mistakes. just try harder to keep those mistakes from taking your kids down some very bad paths that they spend. a lifetime fighting to find their way back from. that's not stuff that happens to other people's kids. it's stuff that happens to your kids.