Other kids' parents

So we just moved into our new house this past weekend and our 6-year-old hit it off real well with the other 6-year-old next door. My wife reports that they've been playing every day and it's real cute. However, a little less cute has been the 10-year-old across the street who wants to come over and play too. My wife and I agree that it's a more than a little weird for a 10-year-old in fifth grade to want to hang out with a couple of kindergarteners. I told her that I'd go over and have a word with the boy's parents this weekend, but at the moment I don't have a clue what I'm going to say. Any input?

bump

are the six year old and the ten year old siblings?

No. That would be a slightly different situation.

well... did the six year old and the ten year old have a friendship before you moved into the neighborhood?

I've got to figure that out. And yeah, that's a very important consideration.

are there a lot of kids in the neighborhood? the older kid might just be looking for any kids to hang out with.

I can see how this is weirdish but it doesn't seem like a huge problem. Maybe try and have them hang out around your house so you can get a better idea what this kid is like?

i'd be inclined to say that things aren't necessarily that weird... i mean, if the ten year old is [lonely, excited about new neighbors, insecure about missing out on fun times, curious, a little slow, unhappy at home, stimulated by new social options] he may just need encouragement about what the right times to come visit are. as long as the six year old buddies are getting their times together, and there's nothing untoward or troubling about the older boy's conduct with the smaller kids, why not just assume that all the children can benefit from a mentor/mentee relationship?

Well, the point being that we don't feel comfortable having him in our house at all. That was the age when I started getting into petty crime and hitting puberty and all sorts of major life changes. Plus, here's no way I would have wanted to hang out with anybody who was more than a year away on either side of me when I was 10. It's actually very, very weird.

But I guess the principal point of inquiry has to be with the other 6-year-old's father, which hadn't even occurred to me before.

That was the age when I started getting into petty crime and hitting puberty and all sorts of major life changes.

Not that I'd want you to put yr family in danger in any way, but it's not okay to judge others by your own tendencies. If you truly feel there are warning signs from the older kid, fair enough, but if you exclude him or show distaste or etc without discussing it with him (or his family), it could be something that hurts him all the more because he'll have no idea where it came from.

by your own tendencies.

Morelike by broad life experience?

But yeah, I totally don't want to hurt the kid either. I mean, regardless of whether he's weird, he's still just a kid and probably entirely innocent in my eyes.

I could tell when adults (teachers) didn't like me, or preferred my friends/other kids to me and showed it. And of course you don't know WHY, and you can't do anything about it anyway because you're just yourself at that age, and you don't know WHY you do anything. Extra hurtful.

Right. Like I said. Just a kid. A dumb little moppet.

Borne about on the winds of chance.

I dunno, when I was 10 I hung out with my 7 year old cousin and his neighborhood friends all the time. His best friend who lived down the street was 11. We all grew up together and are still friends. It didn't seem that weird.

As noted before, relatives are a different situation.

i remember being in 1st grade and my next door neighbor was a good 5 years older than i was, he mostly hung out with a kid down the road a couple years younger than he, but occasionally would slum it with me and kids my age. iirc i went to his house with his sidekick and he beat the shit out of me on mortal kombat with scorpion with the blood mode cheat on and i was like whoa that's cool but he could never do the fatality right.

sabes que, i just read in the wiki entry abt mortal kombat that the snes port did not have a blood mode cheat so my recollection is not reliable.

^^ paralleled my experience except he would beat levels in super mario world and mock me mercilessly for not being able to

wait didn't you have a thread about how all your neighbors are stupid rednecks?

is this 10-year-old ... a hick?

does he urinate on your chevy pickup while looking back mischievously over his shoulder?

i saw that same little fucker pissing on my ford pickup!!!

yeah but the 11 year old kid and my 7 year old cousin weren't related and, like m bison's experience, most of their interaction was based in mutual love of mortal kombat.

n/a, eat a bag of dicks.
m bison, I complemented yr display name on 77 and this is how you repay me? damn, dude.

wasn't trying to harsh u at all, just in my experience it's (probably) innocent if he wants to hang out every now and again esp if there aren't a whole lot of kids his own age to hang with. are other weird details other than age disparity?

and thx 4 the display name appresh.

Yeah, I'm in total agreement that it's probably entirely innocent! Remy's idea - that he was probably [lonely, excited about new neighbors, insecure about missing out on fun times, curious, a little slow, unhappy at home, stimulated by new social options] - seems on the money. But it seems like it's odd enough that it's worth having a conversation with his parents.

i think it is also perfectly valid to feel uncomfortable w/ somebody else's child in your house. that said, the challenge is how to set the best limits for yourself, your children, and the neighbors' children without making anybody feel crummy –- which is exactly what you will be doing, from the sounds of it.

Okay, so a big part of this story that's missing is that I haven't been around at all this week. I've been running carloads of stuff back from our old place, and as such have been M.I.A. for dinner and other "family time" activities.

Anyway, last night, Mrs. Kkvgz told the boy that he had to leave, because it was time for our son's dinner. So the boy apparently went and stood on our front step and stayed there the whole time my wife and son were eating, our dog barking out the door at him all the while. When my wife discovered him there after dinner, he asked to come back in. So it seems increasingly likely that something is seriously amiss with this kid.

So I'm going to just stay at the new place the next few days in hopes of seeing what exactly is up with this kid and setting any limits that need to be set.

For what it's worth, my sister always had younger friends when she was a kid. We'd go on holiday to campsites and I'd play with kids my own age, and she'd have a gaggle of youngsters following around after her like she was the Pied Piper. She just seemed to get on better with them and felt more comfortable in their company. Maybe she lacked the confidence to be amongst her peers, I don't know. But it was fine and everyone had fun.