Dear Coleen, I was in a pizza restaurant with my friend and our daughters recently. My daughter, who’s eight, and can be a bit boisterous, started being quite loud, so I asked her to use her indoor voice.
She was just overexcited and ended up tipping a drink over my friend’s daughter while reaching for colouring pencils.
My friend screamed at my daughter at the top of her voice and really told her off. The entire restaurant looked around to see what was going on.
My daughter burst into tears and sat in silence for the rest of the meal.
I told my friend that I don’t scream at my daughter and it was up to me to discipline her and she replied: “Well maybe you should – she might be better behaved!”
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I don’t know what’s going on with her, but I find this completely unacceptable. We’ve been friends for a really long time, but I’m not sure I can get over this.
My daughter is terrified of her now and doesn’t want to see her or her daughter.
Can you advise?
Coleen says
It sounds like a massive overreaction from your friend, which makes me wonder if she’s particularly stressed about something in her life.
Maybe she’s on a hair trigger the way she exploded at your daughter, making more fuss and noise than both of the kids put together!
She’s lucky she didn’t get chucked out herself.
If you can face it, you could always reach out, tell her you were upset by what she did and what she said to you afterwards and see what she has to say for herself.
But I kind of think it’s up to her to offer an apology and an explanation.
Tell her that it’s down to you to chastise your child and not her, and it’s not OK to speak to her like that again.
Perhaps it comes down to very different parenting styles, which might have always been an issue for her when you’ve been together and she’s just exploded over this incident.
Personally, I think it’s a no-go area, telling off someone else’s kid, unless it’s a dangerous situation and you’re shouting to get attention.
Even if you think it, saying it out loud is a quick way of finishing a friendship.
