The topic today stems from this morning at Chub's award ceremony. Before I had sat down a parent from one of his close friends from his previous school came and pretty much got in his face. She started asking him what was going on, why he had stopped playing with her son? Then she flat out told him that her son had come home crying numerous times because nobody wanted to play with him, especially Chubs who had been his best friend before. Chubs was caught off guard and I could not figure out what she wanted out of him. She even said that the only one who was still nice to him was Chub's friend who was seated on the other side of him.
Chubs said I try to talk to him every morning when I see him. "I say hi to you" Chubs said to the boy directly, the other little boy said "no you don't", then Chubs said "I say hi to you, but you are always messing with your Pokémon cards." I noticed the kid had a photo book full of different cards and then a thick deck in his hands. Chubs went through the Pokémon phase a couple years ago, but lost interest, I don't recall him asking for cards in a long time. He might go and look at the cards at Target, but he never asks for any.
The mom finally turned to me as about pleaded "they were best friends and now they don't even play because so and so don't like my son." I said we encourage our son to play with everyone, we don't like him to exclude anyone. She said they had heard of our son having sleepovers and her son used to come over all the time last year.
I really do feel bad about it, I said "we have mentioned why doesn't your old bestie come over anymore?" He has said to us that he is a control freak who only wants to play what he wants to. He wants to dictate to whatever group he is with like he is the leader and you can't always be the leader.
I didn't want to tell her there in front of a bunch of other kids that her son is kind of a dick, I just said kids do grow apart, they develop new interests. All I could add is we don't have a problem with whoever comes over, if he has four or five or six, they are in his room stinking it up over there, the boys don't bother me or my wife.
I was left thinking "was this cool?" Should a parent dictate who is who's friend? Kids form new groups by their likes and dislikes. Band kids hang out with other band kids. Jocks look for other jocks. Gamers look for gamers, there has to be something in common. Is it my place to tell her that the kids don't play with her kid because he's hard to get along with? In the end I just sat there, told her that her kid is welcome at our house if my son invites him. I said we would discuss this more at home, but what is there to say? If a person has a problem with everyone, the problem is probably with the guy in the mirror, not everybody else.
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