There's a boy in the neighbourhood who often calls to ask if my boys want to come out to play. He is 4 years older than my oldest and from a family where there seem to be a lot less boundaries and rules. In general, I am not that keen for my guys to play with him. Because they are so much younger, they are led by him and will behave in ways I am not happy with, without really knowing any better. This is, so far, nothing serious, I hasten to add. Once I caught them hiding in someone's front garden, which I have told them not to. And I know they become a bit more careless about running across the road. Previously, I have caught him out in lies, he eats all ind of junk food at random times it seems and I know that his language is not what I am ready to hear from my two yet.
So, it seems like a no brainer to say 'stay away from this boy' to Matthew and Adam.
But then it occurred to me that there is another side to this. This boy is often wandering around on his own, clearly not very supervised and rarely taken anywhere. Admittedly I don't know that as a concrete fact, but I have never seen him in the local playground or really anywhere except hanging around. Would he benefit from time spent in our house? So far I have resisted inviting him in...
My responsibility is to my boys of course, but I am also going to be living in the same road as this boy when he is a teenager and a young adult. It strikes me as prudent to remain on good terms with him, even if I don't really have much of an influence at all on him. But is this being kind of irresponsible towards my boys?
What's the best thing to do? What's the right thing to do?
That's a very good question, and very thoughtful of you. What have you decided? You seem to be thinking about it in a very fair way. I am interested to hear your conclusions! x
ReplyDeleteTypically, after painting hi black, he randomly came and swept my drive today and helped the boys pick weeds along the side...
ReplyDeleteWhat would you do?
Not sure. Maybe let him play a bit when you are around to supervise (then maybe you could say "we don't use that word in this house" kindly if he said something off colour) but find you are busy a bit too so he doesn't expect to come around all the time and see how it goes? Sounds like he wants attention. It's a poser!
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