Parenting dilemma

A couple of your son’s friends have been caught flinching CDs and DVDs from his collection. You go and have a talk with the parents of the offending children and things are sorted out.

BUT what do you tell your own son who has never faced such distrust and betrayal in friendship?

What do you answer to his anguish “but they were my friends”?

Saying “no they were not” seems so inadequate, saying “you can’t trust people” seems so negative, saying “you did not care for your things” is outright insensitive….

Anyone?

  • But it is true that you can’t trust everyone, and it’s better to be cautious than paranoid. The sooner he learns it the better.
    (After all we know “friends” who’d publicly lie and call someone a “liar” and mislabel the truth and lies!)

    “You should be more careful with things you care about.” is probably a more positive spin on “You did not care enough for your things”.

    I had a fairly large collection of foreign coins when I was in school, and a neighbour/schoolmate(who didn’t collect) stole some and tried to trade them for cash in school. Another classmate figured something was fishy and informed me, since I was the only one known to have a fair amount of south american ones and this guy was offering simliar coins.

    We had a talk, he returned a bunch of coins and claimed that was all he took. We weren’t really close friends and continued to remain the same. I don’t recollect any lasting negative feelings and neither were any adults involved in the whole issue.

    I had no way of verifying his story since before that incident my collection was just split in two uniques and doubles.

    But after that I got around to cataloging it and bought albums etc. I’d probably never have done it if it hadn’t been for that incident.

    • If he has a lot of friends coming over… you could probably tell him what happened without mentioning any names.. and let him be more alert/cautious for the future.(If he does figure out who did it without you telling him .. he’s gained a really valuable skill)

      • Unfortunately the two in question were the only two “friends” he had in this new locality and he was very happy that they were getting along so fabulously. But thanks for your insight… lets see how it goes.

  • OUCH
    I’m going to have to think about that.

  • As much as we wish they were, not everyone is honest, sometimes friends do stupid things and don’t value our friendship like they should.
    With hope they will understand it was wrong to take things that don’t belong to them.

    • Thanks – something straight forward like this is what I think will work the best with a 10 year old.

  • As a parent, I would be to teach him how to look out for signs of something not being right, recognizing the signs early, so that he doesn’t get hurt by such “friends”. It is no good telling him “this person is bad”, because he may not understand that, and will just get confused (as in “but they are my friends”). Children cannot handle absolutes like that.

    You have to tell him what to look for in the future (such as someone taking off with something and not giving it back). That way, you are teaching him to be careful and aware of his surroundings, without necessarily getting him all paranoid about everyone around him.

    • I guess we can only perhaps try teaching that to our children. We have yet not perfected the technique…..

  • Trying to correct my spellings is, I feel, one of the most thoughtless and insensitive things given the nature of my post :-/

    Thanks for your previous comment but I could have very well done without it if that would have avoided the rider which came with it.

    • I really don’t see what is thoughtless or insensitive about that…it was not really a spelling mistake, but a word-substitution, and it was interesting to me because obviously, “flinching” was somewhere on your mind; perhaps Aasim flinching from the unpleasant truth that he had to face, or you flinching from having to explain some of the harsh realities of life to a young child; and it just happened to come out in the post. I actually did a lot of thinking after reading your post, and a long time ago, my child (and I) also faced a similar situation, of loss of trust in one of her friends….so I plead not guilty to both the charges that you have levelled.

      • Your justification does not really change anything for me and I would like to end this thread here.

  • Not sure if this is any use, but how about: “Some times people make mistakes. They do the wrong thing. It’s up to you to decide if you can still be friends knowing what they did – but if they now understand what they did was wrong and are sorry, perhaps you can give them another chance.”

    • Thanks – over the weekend some more torrid things were discovered (by the parents of the two in question).

      Since this went much beyond giving in to temptation in the spur of moment – we feel it is best that Aasim stays away from them at least for now…. and we didn’t have to tell Aasim that, he is coping pretty well