Credit: *clairity*, Flickr
By Amy L. Hatch
What happens when you love your BFF — but you can’t stand hanging out with her kid?
I came across a post on the TODAY Mom’s blog that talked about ending friendships because of differing discipline philosophies, and it got me thinking about the ways kids can affect our adult friendships.
I’ve never had this experience, but I know some moms who’ve called it quits with their closest female friends because they just couldn’t handle hanging out with their pal’s children. Maybe the kid just rubs you the wrong way, maybe you don’t agree with the way your friend handles misbehavior (hello, spanking, anyone?) or maybe you don’t even have kids and you get sick of having your girl gab interrupted by potty breaks.
Parenting style can also have an impact. Breastfeeding, attachment parenting, free-range parenting … all of these can be (are) flash points when it comes to relationships.
The blog post I read talks explicitly about how to handle situations that make you uncomfortable, including what to do when your friend spanks, yells at or let’s her kid run the show. How can you combat that influence on your own child when you’re hanging out together? Or should you?
It’s all so complicated, this idea of “mom friends.” How we make them, how we keep them — and how we break up with them. The best piece of advice I’ve heard may be this: Leave the kids at home every now and then so you can hang out with your bestie in peace.
Have you ever broken up with a friend over parenting?
I’ve never purposefully “broken up with” a friend because of her kids, but I know that I’ve grown apart from a lot of single friends once I had kids and from friends with kids because of our very different parenting styles. It’s not that I don’t like those friends. We just don’t have important things in common anymore. It’s really hard to be close to someone when you feel like their kids are a bad influence on your kids. There’s an extra level of compatibility.
I should add that I’ve also grown a lot closer to friends when they (and their kids if they have them) are kind to my kids.
I have never “officially” broken up with a friend over their kids but I have stopped making the effort to be there. No matter how much I might love someone, if it is a hassle every single time to get my kids to do stuff with their kids, it isn’t worth the effort to maintain the friendship.