Ask DadCentric!

Today's installment presents a bit of a challenge: a reader, who'll we'll call "Reader", asked me for a bit of advice, but wanted to keep things on the down-low, as Reader wants to maintain a bit of discretion. Reader writes:

Is it possible to be friends with someone who is very different from you?

Sounds basic, I know, but once you add kids into the mix, things get complicated.

My child has a friend who is about the same age. The mother and I share some interests and have things to talk about, and she is a nice person, but we are VERY different. I am not talking I am a republican and she is a democrat different. I am not talking she goes to church and I don't different. I am talking I love my husband and put my family first and she doesn't seem to different. I am talking "I make good choices and she doesn't" different.

She then went on to give me some examples, some of which cause me to raise an eyebrow, Spock-like, and that takes some doing, as some of the choices I've made with my kid include encouraging him to belch the alphabet and teaching him to yell "Kings suck!" while watching L.A./Sacramento games.  Now, the stuff Reader told me about was a bit more profound than that; shit that might give one pause to rethink a friendship even if there weren't kids involved (we're talking "cheating-on-the-spouse" level stuff).

My take is this: at some point, people either decide that they're going to be Responsible Parents, or they don't. Now, by Responsible, I don't mean no-smoking-drinking-swearing-go-to-church-get-a-job; I mean that they recognize that everything they do can and will affect their kids, and that they need to consider the costs of their actions. If somebody's making stupid or bad choices, do you want your kid to get caught in their wake? And, really,do you want to spend your time hanging out with them? We all experience this at one time or another; remember when you got married, and all of a sudden you looked at the drama and the problems of your single friends and realized "Huh! Lame!", and when your first kid came into the picture, and your childless friends' issues ("We don't know whether to do the foyer in Santa Fe or Colonial!") became trivial? Well, I had a point, but it's 11:30 pm and after a day of staring at the computer screen my eyeballs feel like someone stuck a piece of Scotch tape on them, so my advice would be to minimize time spent with this person until they get their shit together.

As for your kid's friendship with that person's kid...that's a toughie. Any of you commentors, now would be a good time to comment.

Want some useless advice from the DadCentric gang? Read this! Oh, and when I woke this morning to check to see if this posted, it did, but the paragraphs were in reverse order. Not that it made much sense anyway. Thanks, TypePad! You suck!