I hate to admit this, but as a parent, I’m guilty of taking things too personally when it involves our children. Though I am acutely aware of the current climate of hyper-parenting and over-involvement, I too fall prey to the desire to watch over my children and try to protect them from the world of evil out there. While I know this is not always the best thing for them, and that they are going to experience bad things wherever they go, there are times that I just can’t help it. Kids can be mean, and when they target our children, it really gets to me.

Take, for instance, a recent event that involved our daughter. Her best friend just recently decided that she (our daughter) was no longer her best friend. To add to that, this former friend (FF) took it a step further and has indicated that she wants nothing to do with our daughter, and has cut off all contact.

What makes this situation so difficult is that our daughter has no idea why this is happening, and still considers this FF to be her friend. It breaks my heart to see her so confused and disappointed all the time, and to make matters worse, when we do encounter this FF, which is all the time since we are neighbors and live in a small town, this FF stops just short of telling our daughter to go jump in a lake.

One major complication is that we are friends with FF’s parents, and used to have a moderately healthy interaction. Sure, we are not overly social people, and would prefer to spend time with just the family, but we did the occasional dinner or BBQ. Regardless of how we the parents interacted, however, we saw a lot of each other because the two girls were at one time, as I may have told you, best friends. They called each other constantly, and would have play dates almost every day, even if it were for just half an hour.

The previous summer we watched over FF for weeks at a time because her parents both worked and I am a SAHD. We asked for nothing in return, even though they offered to pay us, because as far as we were concerned, as long as our kids were together having fun, that was good enough for us.

And then, something suddenly changed. Our daughter’s phone messages were no longer returned, and when she did get through, she was told that her FF couldn’t come to the phone because she was playing with a friend. What did it all mean?

In all fairness, FF has very busy parents, and FF plays every sport on the planet. Our daughter’s interaction with FF was also a feast-or-famine situation, where they would see each other every day for a week and then another week would go by with no contact. So we just assumed they were busy, and told our daughter to be patient. She would get back to her soon enough.

But then the days turned into weeks, and weeks into a month. Something was going on, and we joined our daughter in scratching our heads as to what it was. The clincher came during one of the many summer events that go on in our community. We ran into FF and it was obvious from the get-go that her friendship with our daughter was over. Not only had FF found a new best friend, to whom FF was inseparable, but they could not have made it more clear that they wanted nothing to do with our daughter, despite her tireless efforts to hang with them.

That really hurt.

Now I’m not saying that our daughter is perfect, nor are we the parents not without our fair share of annoying idiosyncrasies, but I can honestly say that I don’t believe our daughter did anything so horrible as to warrant this sort of behavior.

After my wife and I racked our brains for an answer, we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t something that we had done since not only were FF’s parents still congenial to us (actually, more so the dad than the mom), but if we had done something horrible, they surely would have said something or we would have heard about it through the grapevine. In the end, we came to the conclusion that FF had simply grown weary or bored with our daughter, and just didn’t want to hang out with her anymore.

Fair enough, though this was not without precedent. On a number of occasions FF showed her true colors in regards to her loyalties, and blew our daughter off in favor of another without blinking an eye. But hey, that’s what kids do, right? They are free to choose their own friends, and are often too young to have the social skills to handle it properly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have malicious intent. Besides, isn’t that a part of growing up? Kids need to deal with these things, right?

Well, sort of. While I can understand all that, I still can’t come away from it all unscathed. After all, every parent loves their children and hates to see them get hurt, and there was something subtly vindictive about how it all transpired, especially in light of how close the two of them were.

In the end, my wife and I have decided that the search for nice playmates for our kids is a futile, not to mention misguided, endeavor. Kids will find and make their own friends, whether we like it (or them) or not. Our job as parents is not to try to control all that, but instead to give them a strong foundation which will help them make the best choices. Part of that is to instill them with the values, confidence and self esteem that come from a stable, loving home, and another part comes from exposing them to enough life experiences so that they can discover the things that interest them the most (i.e., who they are). Then, kids who are more closely matched will eventually gravitate to each other, thereby creating social circles of like-minded children with similar interests. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

This epiphany has lifted a huge burden off of my shoulders. Not only has it taught me to lighten up and stop trying to force the issue, but I no longer bend over backwards to break into the mom’s club, which is a prerequisite to setting up a play date. Just let kids be kids.

Even still, I find the whole sordid affair with FF leaves a bit of bitter taste in my mouth. So while I will still say hi and be civil with our neighbors when I see them, I won’t be arranging play dates anytime soon. That’s just my own personal hang-up.

I guess when it comes to our children, I’ll always take things too personally.