Can you weed the bad seeds from your kid’s list of friends?

The question

My eight-year-old daughter has a friend from school who comes from "the wrong side of the tracks." Both her parents are in jail and she lives with extended family. I know nothing of her home environment, but know that she has problems and "behavioural issues" at school. To be honest, having my daughter hang out with this kid makes me uncomfortable. This friend asks me (literally) every day if they can have a play date. I don't feel comfortable sending my girl over there so, after running out of excuses, I let her come to our home. She was a well-mannered and lovely guest. But I find myself torn, wanting to give this innocent child (who, through no fault of her own, was given a rough lot in life) a friend and wanting to isolate my daughter from the influences that ruined this girl's family.

The answer

I know exactly what you mean.

When my middle child was in middle school, he befriended a couple of kids who were, to use your quaint and old-fashioned (which I mean as compliments) terminology, "from the wrong side of the tracks."

And it was hard to know what to do. Because, as you point out, it wasn't the kids' fault that their parents had various issues – so often, it seems, having to do with alcohol or other substances.

And they were "good" kids, in the sense of having good hearts – but also leading my kid down the primrose path to all kinds of trouble. Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Police.

These kids – you could see that, unless something drastic were to change for them, it would not end well for them. They would be either dead or "in the system" long before the age of 30.

And of course, they had their influence over my son. And, of course, his mother and I as his parents did not want that.

But what can you do? He was long past the age where we could (successfully) attempt to dictate with whom he could and could not hang. And of course, teenagers have a rich and highly developed sense of injustice (if only they felt their responsibilities so keenly), so if we tried to limit his contact with any particular kid, there would be a lot of push-back.

In our case, we plugged him into a more clean-cut high school, thus effectively stage-managing his peer group, and hoped the ne'er-do-well friends of his youth would drop away through attrition – which is more or less what happened.

Now, some may object to the notion of "stage-managing his peer group." But, in fact, I've long felt that past a certain age that's almost all you can do as a parent.

When kids are little, they say they "learn more with their eyes than their ears." Meaning they watch you more than they listen; i.e., you could deliver a long lecture with a martini in your hand, and all they hear is "blah blah blah" but they see and will remember the martini.

But after a certain age, I've found, they learn from you from neither ears or eyes – they learn from their peers. And all you can do is try to arrange who that might be.

Which is what I think you should do with your daughter – now, and for as long as you have any say in the matter.

Of course, it's not fair to discriminate against your daughter's would-be friend just because of her family background. And I'm sure there will be a lot of people who disagree with me on this, but our first responsibility is always to our kids, their well-being and prospects, and if that comes under threat, our instinct tends to be ruthless in protecting them from harm.

Which is why the scariest sight to me in the wild is a baby bear ambling toward you, because you know the mom can't be far behind and if she thinks you've got bad intentions toward her cub you're in for a major mauling.

In this case, though, you seem to be jumping the gun a bit and anticipating a problem that hasn't happened yet. You say the girl came over, was polite and well-mannered. Where's the issue?

I would say as a fellow parent you're doing the right thing by having the kid over to your house, and not sending your kid to hers.

But why not wait until she is somehow a bad influence and your kid's health or well-being or whatever else are under threat?

Then snap into mama-bear mode, and do what it takes to protect your cub. Until then, though, I'd just relax, feed the kid milk and cookies, and enjoy the company of a lovely and well-mannered kid – which is rare enough these days.