Shirlee Smith | Picking Friends

With great gusto, mom told me how she’d gone to visit her kid’s elementary school teacher because something needed to be done about the miscreant in the classroom

Huh?

Mom wanted the teacher to sit the unpleasant second-grader somewhere other than next to her kid and she wanted the teacher to make sure her kid didn’t associate with the undesirable one on the playground or anywhere else.

What!

Teachers have a heavy load educating their students; what would make any parent think who their kid associates with is the responsibility of the school personnel?

“Well,” huffed the indignant mom who didn’t like my line of questions, “I don’t want my kid picking up bad habits and the ‘bad apple’ knew a lot of stuff about sex my kid shouldn’t hear.”

For Ms Huff, and anyone else who doesn’t understand, we set up some values in our households and raise our children to live by them. Thus, when they meet youngsters of a different way of seeing the world, it shouldn’t matter much because we’ve laid a firm foundation.

Kids will come across others we, as the parent, might prefer they hadn’t encountered, but what an opportunity for them to test what we’ve tried to teach.

What should happen to the classroom kid with parents who aren’t providing the right guidance when every “good” parent makes the same request as Ms Huff?

Should you pick your kid’s friends? What about the foul-mouth star of the football team – you’d rather your son not be an associate?

 

Shirlee Smith is a former Pasadena Star-News Opinion Columnist. She is a Los Angeles Press Club first place awardee and author of They’re Your Kids, Not Your Friends and the Spanish edition, “Son Tus Hijos, No Tus Amigos.” Smith can be reached by email at talkaboutparenting@gmail.com. Website Blog: http://talkaboutparenting.org/can-parents-pick-their-kids-friends/