What should I do about my daughter being friends with a girl who is (potentially) trouble?

You are very wise not to ban your daughter from playing with the girl outright. it would focus a spotlight on her and your daughter’s attention with it.

Keep up the after school activities. let her bring a friend to the pool, but not this one.

I would invite the girl to your home for supervised play periods. Then when it is time for her to go home, I would announce that “your daughter’s name” has to do X now.

As for the walking to school, can you drive her?

Be confident in your parenting and trust your daughter. Allow your daughter to be friends, and be aware of opportunities to talk to your daughter about being strong and healthy, and that the girl needs a strong friend because her home is not happy.

In addition to driving your daughter to school, I would try to drive her to other friends’ houses who live far away, to play, to get her away from this girl.

It sounds like the other girl is reaching out, trying to find a normal life (your house).
Maybe you should be nice, and privately encourage your daughter to be a good influence, and not stray from the path you put her on.

Protect your daughter first and foremost. Go with your gut and pay attention to all signs. Unless there is some completely inappropriate behavior that occurs, your daughter will be the one to determine where the relationship goes. Otherwise resentment can set in. But again, your family values are the ones that will drive much of this.
Use this time to go over and communicate those family values and where the lines are. This is really important for many reasons, but I am sure you are already doing this.

Certainly embracing this girl and letting her see a functional family may be very beneficial to her, but try to not take it on as an act of “saving her”. There are too many things that are out of your control and it has to simply come from within this girl.

Hang in there. Follow-up on how it goes. Prayers your way for this…

I totally agree with @filmfann! I was that little girl and I sought refuge at the house of my friends. Make sure she knows your house rules (no swearing, inappropriate behavior, expectations). I longed for someone to give me safe, loving rules that I could meet and the praise that came from following the rules.

She is not your project, but you have an opportunity to make a HUGE difference in a child’s erratic home life. You may find that she comes to trust you and may confide in you the reality of her own home life. You may be in a position to make a difference!.

In my opinion, rather than trying to prevent their being friends, maybe you should just disallow her from going to the girl’s house. I can certainly understand your not wanting to allow her to be around the family unattended. But I’d be willing to bet that the girl herself isn’t bad.

Encourage communication with you. When I was a kid I had a close friend who lived down the street. When I would go to her house, oftentimes I’d overhear her parents screaming at each other. One day it was really bad and when I came home I wanted to express some of what I had witnessed so I said to my parents, “Jane thinks her parents will get divorced.” My parents immediately admonished me for talking about personal things about another family. This, I think, was a mistake: try and encourage any talking to you that your daughter wants to do regarding this girl. I should add too that Jane herself was a very sweet, good girl: being friends with her wasn’t a problem even though her family was rocky.

I also had a childhood friend who would often call and ask if she could come over to play. We thought this was very odd until one time I went over to her house and the air was thick with smoke and her brother and dad were beating each other up. Sudden I understood why she wanted to escape to my house all the time. Again, the girl herself was very sweet and kind and not a bad influence at all.

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is I think it would be counterproductive to try and deny your daughter contact with this girl. She will probably rebel against your rule and may visit her in secret, which is the opposite of what you want.

Sounds like an opportunity for your daughter to be a positive influence on somebody who has been dealt an otherwise difficult hand in life.

I had a friend that my mother dissapproved of. She, too, came from a rough household who were loud, swore a lot, drank and smoked very heavily and were, simply put, a bunch of gob-shites! My mum didn’t want me to be friends with this girl but I really enjoyed her company and so, from the age of 8 years old (when I first became friends with her) until the present day I have remained her friend. I didn’t turn out badly because of it. My friend is still a bit rough but I have found that I have a calming effect on her. My mum actually likes her now. She is a mother herself and my mum said she never thought this girl would make a good mum but she has proven her wrong. She now thinks my friend has charactor rather than bad manners!!!

You’re already a good mother, and you should be confident of your ability as a parent, and confident in your own attitude toward your daughter, and in her recognizing your strong intent and desire to protect her.

But unless the girl herself is truly out of control or overtly damaging to your daughter, I wouldn’t worry about the bad influence rubbing off on her. It’s just not as common as you might think, unless you take extra-strong steps to ‘prevent’ that, in which case it becomes the forbidden fruit.

You have house rules; you have rules for safety and appropriate behavior, etc. Your daughter’s friend should be required to conform to those rules, obviously. She desperately craves those rules, whether you understand that yet or not.

Just because the family is bad news does not mean that this girl will be. You could save a life. Literally.

I also expect that your daughter, if allowed to be friends with this girl, is going to be a lot safer with her around. Little girls like this often grow up to be fiercely protective of their friends. Your daughter could be lucky to have her as a friend.

This is a difficult situation with which to deal effectively. You might try including this girl in things that you do with your family, try to get a feel of where she is actually coming from, try to get some idea of what this girl is really like. She may be hungry for a normal family that does normal things & exposure to your family may give her a view that she does not now have. She might respond to these overtures, but she also may not because she does not feel that she is worthy of associating with families with values. You need to reinforce your relationship with your daughter, to let her know that you trust her to do the responsible things. And yes, I would limit the contact that she might have with the family of this other girl. Try to make sure that the contact that your daughter has with this girl takes place at your house where you have some control over the situation.

I have been trying to keep a very close eye on my daughter when she is with her and having her in the house does seem like the best option for supervising her. I am setting the rules in the house – for example there was an instance where several of them were trying on clothes, and they were saying ‘try it on, try it on’ and I reminded them to respect each others privacy. I also spoke afterwards to my daughter about the two others teasing the third about her speech defect, saying that I thought that was wrong and that they were being mean, just so that she knew I’d noticed and would not accept that behaviour from her. So my daughter’s ground rules are always being brought up and talked about.

I have clearly said to my daughter that she is not allowed in the girl’s house because of the dogs and smoke

We live two minutes walk from the school so driving isnt an option, I have been trying to walk to school with my younger daughter at the same time as the girls so that I can listen in

I get bad vibes about the girl’s family and I would be very wary. If the mother is causing problems at school to the extent that teachers fear her, then I would fear her too. I feel sorry for the girl and for your daughter and I would let them be friends but from what you have said I don’t think it is a good idea to invite the girl into your home. Having said that, I am assuming that what has been said about the girl’s family is true. Perhaps it is mostly gossip.

My eleven year-old son has tended to befriend kids such as the one you describe since he started school. At first it made me nervous but over the years I have learned that the boy has a pretty good head on his shoulders and rather than their being a bad influence on him, he was a good influence on them.

I think the situation requires very careful monitoring and open communication with your daughter. There is a way to explain to her that everyone is different and that the choices this girl and her family make are not necessarily the same choices your family would make. I am totally with you on not letting your daughter visit her house and calling the girls out on bad behavior. I would also never hesitate to talk to this girl if she is breaking your house rules during a visit.

Well, I suppose in the end of the day you will care to do what your gut tells you but remember you’re projecting your biases in many ways. I’d rather teach my kid to have a good head on their shoulders and remove themselves from people when there is trouble in their direction or discomfort rather than predict to them that this or that kid is trouble because ‘moms in the neighborhood’ are incapable of dealing with anything deviant.

It sounds like you are on the right path so far. Have there been any instances where this girl has gotten your daughter in trouble or where she has been mean to your daughter or other children? If so, maybe you could use those experiences to talk to your daughter about friendship and ask her if she thinks good friends would do those things to each other. If nothing like that has happened, I’d continue with what you are already doing. Maybe your daughter will end up being a good influence on this girl instead of this girl being a bad influence on her.

Thanks for all the supportive answers. I think by keeping a close eye on them and talking to my daughter I will be able to help her see the best way to behave. We do also sometime practice little scenarios to help her feel more confident. I hope that you are right, that my sensible girl will help her friend and that this girl does enjoy her contact with our family.

I’ve been in a position very similar to your daughter. I had a friend when I was a little kid (we’d known each other since I was about 3, actually, but the situation you’ve described applies more to our friendship when we were about the same age as your daughter is currently) whose home life was very unstable. Her mother was somewhat neglectful, and the only other people home to raise her were occasionally her mother’s boyfriend, and her teenage brother. She was rarely supervised, and pretty much had to look out for herself from a very young age. My mom was wary of her mother, and I imagine of my friend as well, considering her upbringing and whatever potential influence it would have had on me. She’d always been independent for her age, and actually a bit reckless as well.

However my mom let her come over all the time, let her stay for dinner, let us play outside, let us have sleepovers, etc. She allowed me to go over to her house once (for a birthday party, where she knew there would be extra supervision), but that was about it. She didn’t keep it a secret if she didn’t approve of my friend’s behavior, either. When we were in my mom’s house, the rules of the house applied to both of us. And if she heard my friend saying something she didn’t approve of, she would talk to me afterward and make sure I knew that she didn’t think it was acceptable. Over time, my friend started to see us as pretty much her second family. Don’t get me wrong – her family wasn’t abusive, just not very watchful and at times neglectful – so it’s not as if she started to completely depend on us. But she’s grown up well, and I do think that having friends in a more stable home – and my mother being warm toward her – has had a positive impact on her.

So I personally think you should be open to it. I’m not saying you should allow anything you’re uncomfortable with, of course (like letting your daughter go to her house, etc), but give the friendship a fair chance and see how it works out. Invite her over, make her feel welcome. Talk to your daughter if you feel that this friend has some habits you’re not fond of. Tell her that you don’t want her doing any of that, and that you’re not comfortable with the fact that her friend does it either. Be firm but accepting. If my mom hadn’t encouraged my friendship, I would have missed out on one of the best (and definitely the longest) friendships of my life so far. We were actually best friends until the age of about 16. (We’re still friends now, just not as close (really just due to different high schools, different colleges…the usual.)) You never know what good can come out of the situation.

Apologies for the novel I’ve written here, I just thought the situation sounded very familiar and thought I’d share.

reminds me of Ella. Keep an eye on her, and your daughter, most importantly. Tell your daughter that you do not approve of her being friends with a certain person if the girl is going over your ‘limits’. Remember to be kind and careful about your words, add reasons. Hope I helped:)