Help me out please, I need your advice. As a parent of a seven year old whom, in my opinion, is growing into a very nice young lady, I'm having issues with one of the friends from the neighborhood that my daughter plays with on a fairly regular basis. I won't go into all of the details, nor all of the examples of poor friendship this girl has portrayed, but yesterday, around 4:30 p.m., I believe this friend crossed the line.
Here's what happened. My daughter was practicing her violin, I was in the kitchen, and my husband was in the family room reading a book. The chair where he was sitting is right in the middle of our front window, where he has the vantage point of seeing the driveway and the front door. The neighbor friend, and another girl, walked up to the front door, rang the doorbell, then turned and ran! He shot up from the chair, ran outside, and the girls were already a yard away standing on the corner.
He yelled to them, "What did you want?"
The neighbor friend replied, "To see if Zoe could play."
However, my husband is no dummy, and retorted, "Why did you ring the doorbell and then run? It's not polite."
I don't know what her response was, but she didn't come back, and my husband did not invite her back either.
This girl is pushing my buttons, and more than that, she's reaching the limits of what I'm willing to put up with in a playmate for my daughter. Now, I'm no goody two shoes, however, I have learned from my mistakes. I realize exactly where the route I was going down in my school years took a drastic turn in a different direction. I know which girl pulled me away from my friends and before you know it, DIFFERENT PATH. I don't want this for my kid, specifically today, I don't want her to think that it's ever okay to ring someone's doorbell and then run off. Where does it go from there? Egging homes? Toilet paper in the trees? Grafitti on the driveway?
What do you think? Harmless fun, or not very good behavior for a "friend"? What would you do if your child's usual playmate rang your doorbell and then ran?
