Do Your Children's Friends Play A Part In Bad Behavior?

I certainly think to some degree that friends can have influence on your own child's behavior. Recently my 11 year old daughter had a few difficulties at school. Whereby a group of other girls in her class were bullying her friend!

I'm not saying my daughter is perfect by any means. She certainly has her bad behavior moments. But she stood by her friend. Through all the isolation, tears and so forth. I also backed my daughter and her friend, went to the school and said my piece about the other girls! (Being the over protective mother that I am!)

Anyways a couple of months down the track I noticed my daughter was becoming very grumpy. She seemed to be acting out more towards her brother and sister than normal.

I wasn't too sure if puberty was kicking in or whether things were going wrong at school again.

I wasn't prepared for what I was about to learn. A whole number of issues came to light about the girl she had befriended at school. I was in complete shock. Because I had realized that I made a huge mistake and judgment in character.

It turns out her friend continuously swears at her parents. She refuses to do general things they ask of her. And she is very argumentative. She calls them names, she tells them how much she hates them etc. She screams at her mum and dad more often than not.

One day my daughter had suggested that she apologize for what she said to her mum. Her friend replied with - "they can get stuffed". Then her friend began to attack the character of my husband and I.

My daughter became very upset by the whole thing and she was very hurt not only by her friend's behavior but by what she had said about us. As I said earlier being the over protective mother that I am - I stopped the friendship all together! I didn't want my child to be around another child who had bad behavior issues.

In my mind we had put far too much work in to our own children to let them be influenced by this type of behavior. Bet your knickers I was going to stop the friendship! I didn't want things to get out of control for our family all because of another child. Besides all of that my daughter was terribly hurt and upset.

Does it mean that I am too controlling? Or that I shouldn't have intervened?

Of course my answer is going to be NO!

Before I made the decision to stop the friendship. I sat my daughter down and explained what I thought of her friend's behavior. It was a complete open floor discussion. She was able to talk about her feelings, thoughts and views. There was no yelling or aggression involved.

At the end of the discussion we both came to the agreement that her friend wasn't a very nice person. And that she had other friends through social activities and at school who were a lot kinder. All in all it was a great result.

However, I don't know how well this will work when she reaches the age of sixteen!

Through this I really realized how lucky we are to have great kids! We put the hard yards into raising our children when they were young. And we have a huge amount of trust in our children.

Another friend of mine has a 14 year old. She was befriended by a 18 year who had left school with no qualifications and without a job. He dressed as a "Punk Rocker"(does anyone still use that term?) I hope someone knows what I mean. And he had no desires to achieve anything in his life.

Now I know we shouldn't judge people by their circumstances. But when it comes to our children maybe we should be more thorough. My friends daughter is now 16 with a 1 year old child. Where is her friend - long gone!