[JamesMama]

This was already posted, but it was more about non-ap mom's...I disagree with 99% of the stuff my friend does with her baby!

1) My friend NEVER has her DD, her mom has her most of the time
2) She switched her carseat to foward facing at 9.5 months because she was "Almost 20#)
3) Started her on baby food at 2 months
4) Is potty training her at less than a year old

I love my friend dealy, she's one of the only Mommy friends I have, but I just don't know how long we can stay friends when we disagree on so much! She thinks I'm nuts since we CD and don't vax anymore *sigh*

Is anyone here able to remiain friends with someone they totally disagree with everything on?

 

[maria423]

Quote:

Is anyone here able to remiain friends with someone they totally disagree with everything on?

I think only you can answer that. It depends on your particular friendship and so many other factors that are unique to your specific relationship.

I guess for me, there are some deal-breakers. For example, if a friend of mine spanked or hit her child, I would not be able to be friends with her anymore. But I have many friends who aren't AP at all, some who never breastfed, many who don't CD, many who are very mainstream, and I'm able to be friends with them despite our parenting differences. I don't expect my friends to do everything exactly the way that I do, and I'm generally able to accept many differences.

Of course, I find that the people whose parenting is more similar to mine are the people with whom I spend more time. We just sort of gravitate towards each other more than I do with the less-similar mommies.

So again, I think it's only something you can answer.

 

[mamawanabe]

One of my best friends wasn't/isn't a good mom - very impatient and reactive. No limits. She loves her child, but she never wanted to be a mother, and it isn't in her to be motherly. She's not terrible or particularly abusive (though she does yell, and I saw her smack her dd's leg - not too hard - as a reflex with the todler wouldn't hold still to put socks on)

Her girl is 10 now and just decided she wanted to live with her Dad for a while. My friend let her go. I can't fathom that.

I've been freinds with her for years (liek two decades) and her not being a great mother was sort of like her drinking too much - a facet of her person that I wasn't crazy about. But I still love her. I'm still be friends with her. I still think she is funny and smart, and I know her so well that there is a comfort level that is difficult/impossible to replace.

We have drifted apart, but that wasn't because of my opinion of her mothering but because we just don't share much in common anymore. I miss her though.

 

[anhaga]

Depends on the issues and how it affects my children when we're all together. My SIL is a bad mom, but I really like her as a friend adult-to-adult. But I don't like my kids around her so much and I don't like her as a mom.

I'd probably just try to have an adult-only lunch w/ a friend if I didn't like her parenting. But w/ 4 children of my own, thats a rare luxury.

 

[Willowrose]

I choose my friends wisely, so I doubt I would befriend anyone whose parenting skills(or lack thereof)actually impacted my life. For me, differences in parenting styles does not affect my life or how I raise my children. Therefore, I have no problems remaining friends with moms who do things differently. I am proud and confident in the way I parent. I think it works both ways. Some poeple might look at me as an AP'ng mom and think I'm crazy for being around my kids 24/7, not vaxing, co-sleeping, etc....and although that is a huge part of my life, it doesn't totally define who I am. For me, I choose to look beyond the differences and remember the similarities....my friends are all moms, just like me, struggling to make the best choices for their family and loving their children unconditionally.

 

[quidditchmom]

There's a big difference between having a friend who's parenting style is different than yours and having a friend whose children you're actually worried about because of the way they're being dealt with. I would have no problem with having friends who parent differently. However, almost everyone I know - definately all of my friends from my pre mommy days - are neglectful and/or abusive of their children. This is something that I probably wouldn't say IRL because I really don't like making these kinds of accusations. Some of the things I've seen or heard about the children of these people going through include :
- being potty trained for over a year because they weren't ready when it started. Potty training included screaming at the child, spanking and forcing them to sit on the toilet for up to 2 hours for an accident.
- having to spend over 100 hours a week away from home - at daycare, preschool, with reletives or babysitters, sometimes in cases where the mom doees not work.
- being 'sleep trained' at 2 days old using the cry it out method
- being started on solids within the first few weeks
- being thrown in the shower, fully clothed, and having the water turned on very cold to stop a tantrum when they were less than 2yo
- being yelled at daily
- being verbally abused - called names like baby, girl, and f****** brat to name a few of the not too bad ones
- being spanked, and not just with hands
- being taken out of a carsead when they were 2yo and riding in the front seat

I could go on and on. And this isn't limited to just one or two families that we know. I know that someone is probably wondering why I haven't called CPS on anyone yet. CPS here is awful. They take kids from good parents and leave them with bad ones from my expirience. And I'm always so worried that I'm over reacting. One time though one of my 'friends' was telling me about how her son did something and she spanked him so hard it left bruises on him. He was four. He has been being spanked since he was about 6 months. Apparently he'd built up a resistance to the pain and she'd have to increase the intensity of the spanking. Around here it's the fad, I guess you could say, to call CPS on someone when you get mad at them, just because dealing with them is awful. Right after she told me this she got a visit from CPS, courtesy of her neighbor who was mad because her horses kept escaping into her yard, and they said that she was a fine parent. In fact many of these parents have been 'cleared' by CPS.

Because of all of this, I don't have any real friends. I feel so awful for the kids, I somehow feel like I'm taking part in the abuse just being there. So anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that you have to decide at what point you feel so uncomfortable with the situation that it's not worth it to you to keep the friendship. If it's causing you more stress and grief than good things, that's probably a pretty good indication things won't last.

I could go on for ages about this because the area I'm in doesn't seem to be too child friendly

Good luck

Diana

 

[NB Mom]

I agree with erveyone here. I have a good friend that has a very different parenting style than I do... but we are still friends. I just don't take any of her advise (Like locking my 3 yo in his room to get him to start sleeping through the night, like she does with her 2 yo). I don't like her as a parent so much, but I do like her as a person. And, I guess the real reason that we can remain firends is the fact that we do not put each other down as mothers just because we do things differently. We respect that we are in different situations, so we handle things differently.

 

[stafl]

If I really thought someone was a "bad mommy" no way I could be friends with them. I'm perfectly able to disagree with someone's parenting choices, without judging them and thinking they are "bad" (though sometimes it's hard for others to realize that it is possible to disagree without insulting, especially when it comes to parenting).
If someone were doing something I find to be abusive or harmful to their children in any way, I'd have a real hard time accepting that or them, and the friendship would soon be over. So for me, spanking is the deal breaker. I know one mommy who has never hit her children in front of me, but I'm starting to suspect that she does, and am finding it very hard to stay friends with her because of that.

 

[mamawanabe]

I can be/am freinds with people who I think are bad wives, bad daughters, bad customers. And yes, bad mothers.

This badness cannot rise to the level of abuse however. I would not be friends with someone who verbally/mentally/physically abused waitresses or their boss or their mother/husband/child.

But perhaps I think they aren't patient enough with their children. Perhas I think that they don't spend enough time with their child. Perhaps I think they perpetuate a bad/unhealthy dynamic with their mother/boss/child.

I will still be friends with them if I like them enough. Mothering (like being a wife or daughter or customer) is one role, one facet of their being. It is not the entirity of who they are. I won't base my decision on knowing them based solely on how that stack up in that one role.

This has nothing to do with parenting practices btw. I know lots of good mothers who don't share (many) of my parenting philosophies. I am talking about bad but not neglectful/abusive mothers.

 

[Benji'sMom]

ALL the mommies I know IRL have different parenting styles than me. If it affected me to the point of making me depressed or sick-feeling to be around them, then I guess we couldn't be friends. But it's not to that point (yet).

 

[JamesMama]

I guess the big one for me is not spending time with her DD and the carseat thing, that scares me. I tried telling her that it was 20# AND one year, not 20# OR one year but she said 'her carseat said 20# OR one year' even though we have the same dang carseat when I said MINE (the exact same model and brand) said AND she said it's because mine is a newer version since she bought hers 5 months ago...duh

 

[Charles Baudelaire]

I dunno -- I broke it off with a friend of over twenty years because I got sick of his irresponsible and selfish behavior toward his daughter.

His wife left him with their dd when their dd was three -- she did a Demi Moore thing and immediately hooked up with a young boy toy, and he really rose to the challenge of being a suddenly single dad: took a pay cut to take more time with his kid, gave up his life for two years, and so on.

Flash forward to now. He meets a woman whom I found to be enormously pretentious, insulting (she said, "At least I don't have a fat ass," in a context implying that my husband did -- this was the first time we met her) and she literally got pregnant the first or second week my friend and she had known each other. Before they found that out, he was crawling over her like her ya-ya was made of solid gold and completely ignoring his child. The girlfriend ignored her too, BTW: that kid must've watched more videos in the nine months of their relationship than she ever had in her whole life, all so that Dada and Girlfriend could canoodle on the couch (or, on one occasion, do some tonsil pool with the flesh stick DURING a party he was hosting at his house with his kid in the next room).

During their wedding -- and I'm sorry, but when you marry someone with a kid, you marry the kid too -- the daughter was entirely ignored by both of them.

I could not -- and cannot -- believe his supreme irresponsibility. He's now married this woman he's known nine months and they now have a new baby they obviously didn't expect and probably didn't want...and meanwhile, his dd, who is now five and terribly needy of her dad, has even less time with him than she did before, because now he's occupied with New Wife and newborn.

I could not believe his enormous selfishness and irresponsibility when his daughter had been so damaged by her mother's abrupt departure with another man. I think New Wife got preggo on purpose (she is the type, I think, who spells "I love you" B-M-W, and my friend is well-off...she had nothing and was working a temp job with no prospects), but it takes two to get pregnant, last I heard.

That pretty much ended the friendship. It took down another one with it -- a friend of mine who was friends with New Wife and introduced him, but that's another story altogether.

In short, my level of disgust just got too high. I'm not sitting here claiming to be a perfect mom, but man...I honestly think it's a case of very, very different values. I value my kid more than anything. More than me, more than my happiness. If it were a choice between her happiness and mine, I would choose hers every time unless my unhappiness were so vast and damaging that it would hurt her. Obviously, he didn't feel the same. I feel so sorry for this little girl who has now found herself to be an irrelevant relic of a dead marriage -- none of which is her fault.

 

[DaisyRose]

I think it totally depends on what the options for making other friends are in your area. If these are the only mommy friends you're likely to have, then it's best to just grin and bear it and be the best example you can.

On the other hand, you could try starting an AP group yourself to cultivate a new group of friends. Putting up a notice at the library or the swimming pool or even in your church or school can help you meet people who have interests much more similar to yours.

One thing I've noticed is that AP'd kids tend, on the whole, to be nicer than kids who have been hit or CIO'd or otherwise neglected. And behavior between children can be really contagious. Sometimes kids pick up bad behavior from being around unfriendly children. In my experience it's been better for our whole family to limit our contact with mainstream parents.

 

[Parker'smommy]

I think many of us find us in this situation with people who we met BEFORE we had kids. My friends that I have made after having kids are pretty much similar to me. I knew it would be easier this way, so have made an effort to make friends with like minded friends, cuz honestly, why would I want to make friends with someone who is such polar opposites than me?

I have one sweet dear friend that became my closest friend when we were colleagues and I was childless. SHe had a ds from a highschool relationship, so he was about 8 when we met. And if I had been more savy, I would have seen what kind of mom she would be to a young child from knowing some info about her when her ds was younger. But, raising kids, not even being on my radar, didn't think anything of it. She did things like go off to Europe for Christmas with some college friends when her ds was 2 years old and left him with her parents. Her mom raised her son pratically while she had a "college life", basically acting like a person without a child. I remember her saying, " I don't remember when he did , a, b, or c" because, well, she wasnt around. Now, she has an almost 4 year old and a babe on the way with her dh of 6 years and she just isn't the kind of parent I am. I had to pratically bribe her to breastfeed ( I was just pregnant at the time), and they don't parent their kids at all. They also are spankers. I've never seen it happen, but she has told me that she has done it. Also, I don't like the way her older ds, who is now a teen, has been pushed aside for his younger sister. The little girl is the princess of the house, and he is second best, always. He gets in trouble all of the time, obvious attempts for attention, and it goes pratically unnoticed- an example - he stole food at school and got caught, and they had to pick him up at school because he was suspended, and they didn't even address the situation until 3 days later because they were busy attending to his sister because she had a cold......

I am slowly phasing them out of our life, because, well, its just too hard to remain friends without biting my tongue all of the time. I really am sad when I think about it, because, I love her, and we were so close before I had kids. But I don't see how I can really be friends with someone who I have no respect for. We'll continue to do stuff like exchange emails and Christmas cards, but I am slowly trying to be less social with her and her family. I always walk away from get togethers with her shaking my head and that's not the kind of friend I want.

 

[chasmyn]

I agree with Parker's mommy, it tends to be people we've known for years and years rather than new friends. People we knew in high school or grade school or years before we had kids, and they turn out to be such different kinds of parents. I can be with most of the differences until they involve neglect or hitting and then I just cannot tolerate it anymore. DFS in the city most of my friends in - the system is HORRIBLE and it hs to be seriously weighed in the interest of the child to warrant a call, IMO. It is so sad but so true.

There have only been a couple of people that I just could not be around anymore due to their parenting.

All of the new friends I am making, they aren't necessarily going to parent like me, but I do know that they aren't SUCH different kinds of parents that I would later end our friendship over it.

 

[arimama]

I have a fried who's parenting is similar to mine as far as out of hospital birthing, breast feeding, co-sleeping, non vax, yada yada. But she doesnt really seem to enjoy her kids. She has absolutly no patience, has said things to her two year old dd that make me cringe. Her husband is even worse.

I enjoy them as people if their kids are not around. So I limit our time together and have stopped inviting them over to our house.

I have been friends with the husband for 10 years so its hard to completly ditch them.
Like the others said, if these were people I just met i would run the ther way, fast. But since we were friends before kids, its harder.