My best friends son beat up difficult child

tinamarie1

Member
Going from bad things to worse and worse..
Me and the kids went to florida earlier this week to see my dad who is in a nursing home there. My child hood friend lives there and she insisted that we stay with her. She has 2 boys, one is a easy child and the other is a difficult child. Strangely enough, my difficult child got along BEST with her easy child. That enraged her difficult child. He acted out the whole time we were there and would run and tell on the other 2 boys the whole time. Well, it was our second night there and the boys were sleeping in the living room. I had just layed down and closed my eyes when I heard my difficult child screammmmingg bloody murder. I went running in the living room and her difficult child ran past me and into the kitchen. The story goes:
My difficult child asked for another blanket, her difficult child gets up and gets him one, throws it at him and says "here now shut up and go to sleep". My difficult child throws it back at him and says, no I dont want it now. Then her difficult child attacked my difficult child, choking him and putting deep deep scratches all over his face. Her difficult child was not hurt at all.
It took me a good 30 min to calm down difficult child and clean him up. His clothes were ripped and bloody. He kept saying, mom I want to leave NOW I do not feel safe. Well, it was 10 pm and I said, we will wait until the morning and then see about leaving.
During this whole time, my friend never came out of her bedroom. Anyway, we went to bed, and by 10 am the next morning, she had not woken up or came out of her bedroom. So, i gathered up the kids, we went to see my dad one last time and then we just headed home. I told her son to have her call me.
When she called, it was really really bad. She cursed me up one side and down the other. She told me that I was a real shi**y friend for just leaving her. She also said, your difficult child has been in fights before, so whats the big deal?! ughhhhhhhh! then she said that her kids told her my difficult child was "threatening" her cats! Im like, ok well theres a big difference in threatening your cat and your kid beating the snot out of my kid! She would not listen and told me that I chose to do whatever my kid wanted to do over our friendship. She said that me and my kids could have gone over to her moms house and stayed a few days...Im like, umm why would I want to stay with your mom? I would rather just come home to my house. I told her that my child was standing there, hurt, bleeding, hyperventalating and I felt like the only thing I could offer him was to make him feel safe by leaving the next day. That night, I had to sleep with my arms around him to get him to sleep. I am so hurt by this, but in a way I feel like if this is really the kind of friend she is, our friendship should end.
I just had to vent and get it out.
Tina
 
This seems to be the summer of fallings out with friends.

While I don't blame you for leaving, I might have knocked on her bedroom door to let her know I was going. I do understand leaving in a haste with high emotions, but if she really did not know what went on the night before, and woke up to you being gone, I kinda can't blame her for being upset either.

I might have even woken her up the night before during the fight with the kids.

I would guess that by the time she called, she had heard HER difficult child's version of the story, and called you all defensive thinking that you were going to strictly stick to YOUR difficult child's side of the story, and she wanted to be on even ground, if that makes any sense. She did not even give you a chance to speak because she already decided that you were going to stick up for your son no matter what, does that make sense?

Hopefully, this is a friendship that can be fixed. This day and age, we need all the friends that we can get.

I am glad you got to see your dad!
 

susiestar

Roll With It
I would be furious. Why did she not come down to see what the ruckus was all about? Maybe part of her difficult child's problems lie in having a parent who would sleep through this kind of ruckus? Who knows what happened to HER difficult child while she slept in the past?

I would let it go. You don't live close by. You don't need this kind of stress.

(((hugs)))

Susie
 

Steely

Active Member
Yep, I would be mad too........so so sorry! Why was she so dead to the world for 12 hours? That is a bit weird, especially since she knows she has a difficult child, and that she left you to supervise - while she slept, or? Hmmmmmmm.

I hope you are able to work through this at some point. As BBK said, it seems to be the summer of falling out with friends, I had my own a couple of months ago. Is it is not one things it is another. Hang in there.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Wow. That's really bizarre.

I would have awakened her, too. She needed to be involved. Just imagine what her difficult child told her after you left? She only got one version of the story.

So sorry.
 

tinamarie1

Member
Maybe I didn't clarify...we had all just went to bed about 10 minutes before this happened. And her husband came in the living room, so he sort of had an idea about what was going on...but HE did not wake her either. I kinda feel like he should have been the one to tell her what was going on...I dunno.
She told me that she thought I should have woke her up so that she could send us over to stay with her mom. ummm no...that is not a solution in my mind.
 
No, you are right. Not a good solution. Even moreso I don't blame you for leaving, althougth I still may have let her know I was going, or maybe left her a note.

I still hope that you can salvage this, if it is worth salvaging.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
She must have known. You heard the noise, her husband heard the noise and saw at least some of it. She must have known. Only asleep ten minutes at most? More likely, lying awake and in dread, because her difficult child had done something AGAIN (remember what we are like, with our difficult children).

Yes, she knew. And I strongly suspect, was deeply embarrassed by what had happened. She may have been lying there waiting for the knock on the door, and a bit relived when it didn't come, as well as angry that you didn't want to involve her at that point.

None of this is necessarily reasonable, but it IS how we tend to react. And when you have a difficult child, you already know and dread the problems. Sounds like her difficult child was at cracking point and things just tipped over. Both boys have some ownership, although your difficult child did not start it. But by throwing the blanket back, it triggered friend's difficult child to react with all the frustration of the previous few days.

So sad.

And I suspect friend's reaction is mostly guilt, trying to attack to cover up how bad she feels about what happened. Some people are like that. You see it in small car accidents - the person often in the wrong is shouting at the other driver, in adrenalin shock a lot of the time, "I wouldn't have run up the back of your car if you hadn't stopped so suddenly! Why didn't you run that red light! I thought you were going to..."

In calmer times, they would be horrified at their own actions.

I think you have several choices here, and you know your friend best, so you will have to choose what you feel has the best chance.

1) Wait until things are a little calmer, a week or more perhaps. Then write her a note thanking her for her hospitality, and apologising for leaving without waking her. Thanks to her you did get to spend time with your father and you are grateful for that. Boys will be boys, but under the circumstances it was best that they be separated, to avoid any more conflict and upset. It's not good for either of the difficult children, for this sort of thing to happen. Best to keep them apart from that point. You could also add, "I hope we can continue to be good friends - I have valued your friendship in the past and would like to continue to do so in the future."
At no stage lay blame anywhere. it's just something that happened.

2) Do nothing. Hope it all blows over. Send her Christmas cards etc as usual, hope she can forget it and move on.

Further down the list are options I don't think are such good ideas - talk to her mother, feel out the lie of the land. Not a good idea, because her mother wouldn't have a clear picture either and is going to be more loyal to her daughter than to you. She will tell her daughter you rang, and this could put more bad feeling into it.
Also not good idea - telephone again, or write an angry letter explaining her son started it. NOT a good idea. A lifelong friendship should be much bigger than a childhood spat borne out of jealousy. Boys will be boys, and difficult children even more so.

I hope things aren't lost forever.

Marg
 
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