We’re often faced with parenting challenges when our kids start spending time with other families. Different families mean different rules and different parenting styles. So what do you do when parenting styles collide?

One mum is grappling with this exact situation. She has a good friend who has a much more relaxed parenting style than her own, and it’s impacting on her child.

“She’s very relaxed and blasé about things,” she explained. “Some may say she’s a lazy mother (my husband does). She is 10 years older than me with two children. One, 12, the same age as my son and the other is 18. My son and her son are very good friends, often spending days at each of our houses or having sleepovers.

“But I don’t agree with her parenting choices and I feel the effects they have on her children are also wearing on mine.”

The mum-of-two goes into some detail about the difference in their parenting styles, from supervision to screen time and bedtimes.

Here’s what she says:

Example 1: She often leaves her son home alone for hours (for the past several years, not just since he’s been 12). Sometimes her eldest is home upstairs on the third floor, but never makes an appearance or spends time with the youngest to make sure he’s ok. There have been numerous times when we have allowed our son to go to their house to play and the children were left home alone and we only found out about it after the fact.

Example 2: There is no regulation / monitoring of screens, iPads, phones, etc. The child has free reign to play whatever video games he wants for pretty much however long he wants. My son goes over to play and they spend the entire time on screens. My son knows he shouldn’t be watching certain movies / tv programmes (he has quite bad anxiety) but often reports back to us saying how his friend has watched the whole series of Squid Games when it first came out and most recently watched the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killer mini-series on Netflix. Both very gruesome and graphic. It makes me wonder what else he’s watching!

Example 3: There’s no enforcement of bedtimes. My son is in bed usually about 8:30, but sometimes at 9-10pm or later. My son’s phone, which stays downstairs, starts ringing with his friend calling or buzzing with late night messages. He’s clearly not sleeping and is allowed to have the phone in the bedroom with him. In the summer our boys had a sleepover at her house and my son came home exhausted. It turns out that she tucked them in at 11:30 and went off to bed and slept solid the whole night while they stayed up on their phones and iPads until 3:30am!!! She got up and went to work the next morning and left cereal out for them when they woke up.

Example 4: She lets him come and go from the house when he likes. I was surprised to learn that at 8-9pm he was leaving the house to ride / walk down a busy road about 10 mins away from home to go to the corner shop to get things.

Example 5: She always wants to do activities that require as little involvement from her as possible. Things like indoor / outdoor climbing which I view as a treat for my boy because it’s often upwards of $40 per session. And that allows her to just sit there and have a coffee.

The mum says that her friend is far more relaxed about everything, even when she’s gently raised the subject with her.

“When she told me about the sleepover I was quite shocked because she was just so la dee da about the whole thing. When I said something along the lines of, ‘Oh gosh that’s so late to be up gaming’, she kind of laughed and said that maybe she should have checked to see if they had screens with them. Then she brushed it off by saying oh but that’s what being a kid and having sleepovers is all about.

“I love her as a friend, our boys are great friends, but I don’t agree with the way she just leaves her children to basically parent themselves. How do I approach this without offending her or ruining our friendship?”

Let us know how you would approach this situation in the comments below.