When does a proactive approach turn into helicopter parenting ? It isn’t always easy to make the distinction. And while all parents claim to work in the best interests of their child — sometimes this isn’t the case .
Recently, a mother and Reddit user made the hard decision to ban her daughter’s accident-prone friend from the house. Now, she’s wondering if she may have taken things too far.
Reddit user throwRA_secretslice says that her 10-year-old daughter is a popular kid in their neighborhood.
The mother begins by explaining how several of her daughter’s friends are welcome over to her house at any time, no questions asked. The agreement is based on mutual trust and respect.
“These few trusted friends of hers are also those she’s allowed to have over when I’m not home,” the mother explains.
During those times when her daughter is home alone, she gets pretty bored. And whenever she gets bored, she often seeks out friends in the neighborhood to play with.
Typically, her daughter and her friends play soccer at the park down the street.
If they aren’t playing soccer, then the girls are usually riding around the neighborhood on their bicycles.
throwRA_secretslice also believes that if her daughter initiatives the hang-out, then she is the one responsible for the girls — even if she’s not home.
throwRA_secretslice says that only her daughter’s most mature and trusted friends are allowed over when she’s not home.
The mother also reiterates that she has a good standing relationship with each of the girl’s parents. “There is one friend who is unfortunately just… super accident prone[sic],” she laments.
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Apparently, the young girl is always finding new and inventive ways to hurt herself.
throwRA_secretslice says that the girl is constantly falling down/off things, bumping into walls, and cutting herself. It happens even while the mother is supervising the girls at home!
throwRA_secretslice explains that the girl is perfectly nice, just incredibly clumsy and lacking in common sense.
For example, “we we[sic] making dinner and she tried to catch a falling knife.” Another time, her daughter’s friend jumped into the shallowest part of the pool.
“One time she was just carrying too much stuff to see over so [sic] wandered into a hole, twisting her ankle,” she explains.
If something happens to any of the girls while at her house — she’s the one responsible. Because of this, throwRA_secretslice says that she doesn’t feel comfortable with her daughter having her clumsy friend over unsupervised.
throwRA_secretslice communicated her concerns to her daughter, who seemed to understand.
“The problem, perhaps one I should have seen coming, is that it’s a small neighborhood and the girl has noticed that my daughter invites her to hang out way less frequently now,” throwRA_secretslice says.
The girls parents also started noticing and decided to call throwRA_secretslice to see what was the matter.
throwRA_secretslice explained to the girl’s parents how she felt that their child was accident-prone; it did not go over well. Both mom and dad denied that their daughter was clumsy and accused throwRA_secretslice of alienating their daughter from the group.
Despite the awkward encounter with the girl’s parents, throwRA_secretslice is inclined to hold firm.
She says that she doesn’t want to worry about getting a panicked emergency phone call from her daughter about how her clumsy friend has fallen out of a tree. Yet at the same time, she worries she might be overly cautious.
A fellow Reddit user called machigo1came up with an alternative idea.
“I’d suggest that maybe your daughter can be the one going over to the friend’s house when she gets bored,” they explained. “At least there will be an equal treatment for all the kids and there will be an adult watching over your kid just in case she/he gets hurt.”
h/t: Reddit