Pitfalls: Friendships with your kids’ friends’ parents

It makes a lot of sense to be friendLY with the parents of your kids’ friends. You need other parents in your life who can help you out with rides or in a pinch when something comes up. And, when your kids reach the complicated teenage years, you want to be able to text, “Are you really going to be home when they said you’d be home?”

Many a group of friends has been founded among the parents of kids in an organization - club teams, theater groups, orchestras, etc. Kids, and thus their parents, can spend countless hours together as the kids practice or compete on the road. Good relationships with these parents make all of those hours more enjoyable. And, as the parental dynamics in these groups can get political, it’s just smart to be friendly with other parents.

Generally, though, I think it pays to proceed pretty cautiously when it comes to establishing true friendships with the parents of your kids’ friends. I’ve just seen it go wrong too many times. I’m not referring to moms’ groups or to faith-based small groups, for example - groups in which the kids become friends because the parents spend time together. In these cases, the parental relationships supersede those among the kids. I’m talking about becoming actual friends with specific adults mainly because of the relationship shared by your kids.

Sometimes a friendship between kids ends naturally with the close of a school year or with the added time commitment of a new activity. At a certain point, your child(ren) is/are going to discontinue their participation in most of their current groups - they’ll move schools, change clubs, age out, or try something new. Perhaps you can maintain whatever actual friendships you’ve forged with parents when your child is no longer seeing their child, but few of us have the time to be able to do that. The best you’re hoping for in this scenario, if you’ve made actual friendships, is to quietly suffer their loss through abrupt cessation or gradual fading of time together.

Potentially more painful, though, is another scenario. Kids’ relationships can be volatile and tend to be transient. Sometimes your kid gets hurt. It can be difficult to overlook that hurt and continue a friendship with the parent of the child who caused it. You always hope there are going to be apologies and behavior corrections and that everyone is going to see the situation the same way, allowing all parties to move on and stay friends. But, that’s some advanced friendship stuff, right there. More often, feelings get hurt, and people either simply stop talking or harsh words are spoken making matters worse.

One of the things I love about the realm of friendship is the infinite number of permutations within it. If you’re reading this and you’re like, “But, what about … “ or “That’s not my experience ...”, great! Your reflection on your friendships as you read this - giving them the attention and intention they deserve - is what I’m after here. I want you to have the number and depth of friendships that’s right for you. Because appropriate boundaries can be healthy, though, I’m simply advocating for caution when you consider fishing for actual friends in this particular pool in your life. You have lots of pools. You can stay close to the surface in this one. Prevent peril by being intentional about where you direct your energy and attention.

Thanks for reading!