Chapter 1: Is it wrong to keep my friend's son away from my child?
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Chapter 2: What should I do if my boyfriend is financially supporting his parents?
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Hi, good. I'm Ella. I'm 31. And my question is, am I the asshole for telling my really close friend that I don't want her six-year-old son to be near my three-year-old son anymore?
Okay. I don't know. Let's find out. I'm fascinated by this. Let's talk about, forgetting about the friendship aside, because at the end of the day, it's all about the kids. What is your reasoning for This is a very rigid boundary, right?
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Chapter 3: How can I address my concerns about my boyfriend's family dynamics?
This is two ages where they might not know better, so to speak. But I'm excited to hear your story.
I don't want to sound like a know-it-all by any means, but I am a teacher. I do have my master's degree in early childhood education from birth to second grade. So I have a lot of background knowledge with children. And I do believe that at my friend's son's age that he should know better when he's around my three-year-old son. But I believe that he chooses to act out on purpose.
And my friend doesn't do anything to correct it.
Okay. What is he doing?
Basically, my son's always getting hurt with him always. And I've babysat her son all throughout the summer. I did it for free. I told her like, I'm off for the summer. I'll help you out. And every single time I'd babysit him, my son was always getting he was too rough, essentially just too rough. And that's fine. Boys will be boys.
Like it's like, I don't mind, you know, the rough play a little bit, but it's the fact that he seems to have no empathy, sympathy, care, like doesn't know when to stop. I'm yelling, screaming because now my son is like potentially like really, really about to be hurt. And I can't get even like, he won't say sorry.
I look at his eyes and he just doesn't look like he even cares, which is like a little scary for me.
As you know, I'm a new parent. My daughter is not even two years old. So, you know, we're learning as we go. I don't know when River's first memory is going to be. I don't remember being under two years old. Maybe there's like glimpses and moments that I don't realize how young I was or yada, yada, yada.
I think sometimes I have a foggy memory of my parents holding me the way I'm like, we'll pick up River type of thing. But I definitely remember kindergarten. I remember a lot of kindergarten.
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Chapter 4: What are the signs of emotional manipulation in family relationships?
I remember my first day of kindergarten. I remember the name of the girl that we all had a quote unquote crush on in kindergarten. I remember learning the song. So this is all to say you're right. Like when I hear six, my first thought is like, oh, they're only six. But then I think, well, yeah, when I was in kindergarten, I understood right and wrong.
You know, River, under two years old right now, she, you know, is developing and I guess in some ways testing boundaries, acting out. She will sometimes like get rough with us. Right. So she learns the word boo boo. Right. So now any boo boo on her, she wants to kiss it. Right. So.
Sometimes she has hit us, you know, in a, you know, kind of not like in a hit, but like she's slapping and then it will be like, ow, you know, like that, you know, like that hurt. And then she'll give us a hug and she'll kiss our boo boo.
And like, she is showing like this kind of empathy and awareness that like, she doesn't fully understand, you know, the cause and effect, but she, she shows empathy. Yeah. She's not even two. So I get what you're saying, where it's just like, is if this kid's really just that physical with your son. And so I'm just back to your friend.
I am curious, like, I'm assuming you've said to your friend, hey, your son's really rough with my son. And I'm just a little worried.
I felt like and she is my close friend. And I know that I can go to her for anything. But I did like I felt some type of way like I was a little nervous to tell her. So I like held off for the first couple times. And then after, you know, the fourth time of me babysitting and my son has like bruises and marks on him from hanging out from me babysitting her son, my partner, my son's dad was like,
I don't think you can babysit him anymore because if you can't control his behavior around our son, it's not safe for him. So I was like, let me just talk to her because you're right.
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Chapter 5: How do I communicate effectively with my partner about family issues?
Like maybe this has gone too far. So I talked to her about it in person and she was just kind of like dismissive. Like she was like, oh, I hear you.
But what was the but? Like, what's the but?
Oh, but like that's, you know, he's so cooked up in the house all day. We live in a small apartment. He doesn't get his energy out. He's mad at his sister, his two-year-old sister all the time.
Those are reasons. Like there are reasons why he's not like a psychopath and why he's beating the shit out of her. Out of your kid. And they're all, they may be valid reasons, but that doesn't help you. It's like, okay, well.
And then he'll, she, the next time I told her, the time after that was this, now this is the second time. She said, oh, well, I talked to him and he told me that it's because your son was annoying him. And like, he didn't know how to get him to stop. And I said.
Well, he's three.
Like, what am I supposed to do with that? He's three. He knows the difference. He, you know, like he has a two-year-old sister. So he knows what that's like. And my son does it like I'm watching them. They're in front of my face. I never leave them without supervision. Like I see my son is a little annoying sometimes. He's three. It's a tough age.
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Chapter 6: What boundaries should I set regarding my partner's family?
I get it. But I said, I was like, well, did you kind of like tell him how to handle that next time a solution? And she's like, yes. And it's not going to happen again. I said, perfect. Nothing ever got better. I just let it go. I just, you know, I have to keep my Anna all the time. I'm doing her a favor by babysitting. So I'm like, it's fine.
But the most recent situation, and this is why I feel like our friendship might really suffer and like might not ever come back from this is because We were at a birthday party, a one-year-old birthday party for a mutual friend. I walked away from where they were playing, her son and my son. And I walked away to grab a water bottle. I literally turn around and my son is coming to me crying.
And he goes, I have a boo-boo on my nose. And he was cut like right above his like nose right here, like in between his eyes. And it was like a little cut, like not a big deal. And I said, oh, what happened? And he said, he threw something at me. And I said, oh. what did he throw? And he goes, he threw a cup. I said, come show me. Cause I have no idea what you're talking about.
It was like a half crushed beer can. So my friend's son picked up a half crushed beer can that he found on the floor at a one-year-old birthday party and threw it at my son's face. Therefore giving him a cut right here in between his eyes, which I always like sounds so white trash and sounds terrible. But like, what is it?
What is a half crushed beer can?
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Chapter 7: How can I maintain my individuality while supporting my partner?
Yeah.
doing around I found out that it was her husband's beer can that he forgot to throw out which made it so much worse because I'm like first of all the beer can came from your husband and then your son threw it at my son's face which like if it was like an inch over it could have hit him in the eye I'm like panicking, screaming, crying in my head. And then I just was like, I have to go.
Like I have to go to work. I have to leave. And I left the birthday party. I waited four days. And then I sent her a text saying, I don't think that our son should be anywhere near each other anymore. I'm so sorry that I feel this way, but like, I've tried to talk to you about this. No behaviors ever corrected or better. I'm sorry. If I don't want this to seem like I'm coming at you. I don't know.
I sent a long text and then my partner was like, that was, you did too much. And I think the text that you sent was probably the damage that you created. I was like, oh, no.
At the end of the day, listen, it's all about the kids. So if you don't want, especially in this moment, if you don't think it's safe for your three-year-old to hang around anyone, you have the right to say no. Right.
If this is a conversation about like me offering subtle suggestions or notes on how you could have maybe more effectively communicated to your friend to try to preserve the friendship in the long term, because in the short term, it makes sense why your friend might get defensive and et cetera, et cetera. Right. Like there's not there might not be anything we can do about to avoid.
hurt feelings in the short run. It sounds like various kids could just, for whatever reason, just go through various stages and acting out and who knows, and maybe it's just like, who knows where it's coming from, right? So again, this is all about how can we communicate with my friend to preserve the friendship long-term? Just never send... Three paragraphs and a text, you know, period.
I don't care what it's about.
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Chapter 8: What strategies can I use to foster a supportive relationship?
I don't care what the situation is. It's not going to work, right? So if your goal is to have effective communication, no one reads. Try... Send a... Go in an email, write a small paragraph, copy and paste that and text it to yourself and see how different it feels to read that in a text versus reading that on a paragraph, right?
It's just, it's the intensity of receiving pages in a text when in reality, it's only a paragraph. It's literally triggering for most people, certainly triggering for me. And it's certainly extra triggering for someone who is expecting bad news.
Yeah, that is exactly what I needed to hear. Like I needed to hear what I did wrong, like where I could have done this better, but you're totally right. Like, and I've been drafting the message to her for so long.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what's in it, you know, because she skimmed it and she only read, I don't want your kid hanging out with my kid. That's all she read.
You're right.
She cherry picked what she read. She only read the accusations. I'm sure you try to sprinkle it with all these things. And she didn't read any of that.
Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
So, yeah, I mean, I would just avoid that in the future.
So her problem now is like I wanted her to be like receptive. Obviously, my goal was so that she realizes how serious his behavior is with other children. It's not just mine.
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