Mother of Teenager Acting Like a Teen

Reader’s Question

My 13 year old daughter has a friend whose 40 year old mother seems to always be in the middle of everything. I am concerned at this point and my daughter is no longer allowed to be around this girl at her house — and preferably not at mine at this point. I have always felt that this girl’s mother was too much in their (the girls’) business — when they would get in an argument, as 13 year old girls do often, the mother would jump in and get in the middle of the fight. She would send nasty little messages to my daughter on MySpace and just generally act like a child herself. I tried to ignore this at first, but the situation seems to be accelerating. The 7th grade class went on a field trip several months ago, and 2 of the boys in the class were unable to attend due to discipline problems. This mother picked them up and spent the day with them. This seems strange to me — they were friends of the daughter, but not that close. Last night I walked into the house; we were having and electrical storm and the electricity was out so the house was very quiet. My daughter and the “new” best friend of this girl (yes, the new best friend was at my house) were on the phone with this old friend’s mother talking about boys, the internet, etc. I heard her say, “We’ve got to get together and spend the day” and on and on. She was encouraging them to find a “hot” picture of a boy on the internet and make up a MySpace for him and pretend that this make-believe person was talking to some girl whose boyfriend was talking to other girls. (????) This is crazy. I was about to walk in and ask the mother what the —- she thought she was doing, but I didn’t. I’ve told my daughter that she is to have no contact with this woman any more. Oh, by the way, this woman did not pick up the phone last night in the midst of a conversation between her daughter and mine and just get involved in the conversation — I found out later that her daughter is in Florida with her dad and so was not even in the state! Do you think that I am correct in thinking that this woman has crossed the line, or am I overreacting? We are on the East Coast in Chesapeake, VA.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

This parent hasn’t crossed the line…she doesn’t know where the line is! You are not overreacting and have reason to be concerned. As a parent, we hope all contacts our children have with other adults are appropriate and parent-to-child in terms of maturity and responsibility. If your daughter wants to get a tattoo on her forehead, you hope that if she writes me on Ask the Psychologist that I’ll provide adult-level advice and also say No. In this case, you’ve accurately identified a parent who is immature, needy, attention-seeking, and living her life through her daughter. While I don’t sense anything bizarre or criminal here, offering to take other children on trips when your child isn’t going shows very poor judgment. Clearly, she’s not operating as a “responsible adult”.

It’s very appropriate to restrict your daughter’s contact with this woman. This might be a good time to educate your daughter about boundaries and how we should be cautious and suspicious of people who behave out of bounds — adults who try to act like children, adults who show a special interest in specific children, parents who want to relate to a child when their child isn’t present, etc.

I think this is a good example of how parents must monitor their children in all areas. Due to their lack of experience, children typically have weak boundaries and often can’t identify out-of-bounds adults. The internet has made that monitoring especially important as the development of MySpace has provided an opportunity for MySpace adult predators.

Stay alert and recommend that your daughter do the same.

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