Reputations and Influences

Ugh.

Here I go again with worries about friends.

At least I think it's a repeat worry - although I'm blanking on specific examples of bad friends in the past.

The street has a relatively new family. The little girl may be closer to Julia's age, but is closer to Holly's size. The girls both played with her a lot outside in the fall when she first moved in or was around. Then it seemed - maybe because of the weather - they didn't play with her too much anymore. And now Holly's been playing with her more again.

That seemed nice.

Julia has her couple of neighborhood really good friends, and they often to always leave Holly out. Holly even got to spend the night at this friend's house on Saturday night - which may have been Holly's first sleepover.

That's all good. Except -
when I went to the house to get Holly and thank the parents for letting her sleep over, I learned a few things about the friend. Another neighbor girl also spent the night. Or part of it. She left in the middle of the night, scared. And the hostess friend told me that she didn't like to be awakened in the night, she lied to the girl that the phone didn't work and finally told her to go to another room because she didn't want to listen to the girl cry. She told me that the girl must have woken the dad of the house to call her mom and that the girl wouldn't be spending the night again because the dad told the girl not to wake him in the night and that if she did she wouldn't be spending the night again.

On the one hand, I'm thankful that Holly hadn't needed me in the night if that was the reaction of both her friend and the parent to a scared child. On the other hand, I'm not sure Holly offered much compassion to the other girl either - or that she was awake for it.

I didn't like the way the hostess friend was so nonchalant telling me about how callous she was or that she'd lied because she was lazy.

I've heard of other times that this "friend" will exclude the friend who was scared from play for one reason or another. And today Holly told Alan that he couldn't play outside with them later because "So-and-So doesn't like you."

I told Holly that that was mean. I probably repeated that it was mean 20 times. I told her that was just wrong to say. I told her that while she might want to have a good friend on the street, she should be careful of this newfound "friend". If she's as mean as she is to the other girl, she could turn on Holly, too. I told her that I want her to have a friend, but I want it to be a good friend. And a Good friend.

The afternoon passed. Tonight Holly lied to me about something. She put on a display for me to make me think she had done something I wanted her to do when she hadn't.

I can't help thinking that my fears are being realized. If it's okay for her friend to tell lies...

I want to trust my kids. I don't want her to have a reputation of lying and I don't want to wonder if or only hope that she's being honest.

Ugh.