What do YOU do?

Alisonlg

New Member
What do you do in this situation?

Your difficult child wants to go to their friends house up the road for the 4th or 5th time in the past 5 hours to see if they can play. The past 3 or 4 attempts he was met with them being unable to play because they had another friend over.

Do you:

A) Let him go and bother the family AGAIN, knowing full well that they still can not come over. I know that *I* as the parent would be frustrated with this child continually coming over and wondering what was wrong with these parents letting this child come over...over and over and over again.

Also realize that he will probably meltdown when he comes home without his friends yet again...both out of disappointment and boredom.

or

B) Not let him go and deal with the meltdown that ensues?

:confused:
 

smallworld

Moderator
I'd try to:

a) locate another friend for him to invite over and play with

OR

b) come up with a fun family or one-on-one activity he will like (bike ride, go for ice cream cones, swimming, etc)

Hugs. I know these situations are not easy to deal with.
 

Alisonlg

New Member
Thanks for the suggestions. He was "stuck." NOTHING was a go except going to his friends house. I must have suggested and tried about 20 different things.

Eventually, a decent amount of time passed since his last trip down there so I let him go one more time. 15 minutes later, his friend finally came over. I HATE his dependence on his friends company.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
We spent a long time with a set number of times one of the kids could go to a specific person's house to see if they could/would play. I used a day when Wizard was really annoyed with one of Jessie's friends coming over every 30 minutes for several hours. Then I asked how HIS friends and their families felt when HE did this.

Using that as the "springboard" we came up with a certain number of times per day and number of minutes between attempts to go to that friends. Also a consequence for going to that specific house if he was out of hte yard on another excuse/reason/whatever.

I typed it up and posted it in several places. It was "the rule", along with the earliest and latest times for first and last attempts (because HE was ready at 5am, but I can guarantee none of the neighbors were, LOL!!!).

For me it seemed overly structured, but it did seem to help. I could just point to "the visiting rule" and not engage.
 

Andy

Active Member
I would call the mom to see how long the other friend would be there and if difficult child would be able to come over later.
 

jannie

trying to survive....
I have the exact same problem with my difficult child. He knocks on everybody's doors asking to play. It's so frustrating. I usually allow difficult child to knock a few times per day....two or three times...but I also really try to distact and come up with an activity. My difficult child wants someone all day everyday !! On Sunday's he plays on a flag football team...practice is from 12:30-130 or so and then they hang out and have a game from 2:00-3:15...and the second he comes home he is ringing people's bells ~!!! He just had three straight hours of socializing...It is frustrating...difficult child has gotten better at accepting no and I can't play now from neightbors....but if I tell him not to ring the bell...problems start
 

Christy

New Member
I would say no. Since he will most likely have a meltdown when the friend is still busy. And I would not want my difficult child to pester the neighbor. It's sad to feel left out but something everyone feels from time to time. I like the ice cream idea. Of course, I'll use any excuse to eat ice cream-LOL!
 

amazeofgrace

A maze of Grace - that about sums it up
at least he asks if he can go, LOL, I am like wow, my difficult child II goes off and there's no stopping him, and he talks other kids into going off too, I had one distraught Mother who was panicing because her son went missing, she showed up on my doorstep and says "I suspect he is with your son" and he was.

I would say ditto on the distract him. I also would say make sure parents have your # and tell them it's ok to call, my one good friend is afraid to tell difficult child II "no" or that her son has another friend over. But she calls me and I normally go pick him up, when this happens, which is very often.
 
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