Hey dads, looking for a little advice, this is new territory for me. I've got two boys, a 5 year old who is turning 6 in a month and a 3.5 year old. One day when we were playing out front a kid comes rolling up on his bike and started playing with my boys. He's a 2nd grader, so probably 8, and my son is in Kindergarten.
This kid lives in the apartments down the road a little, and lately he has been showing up unannounced more and more to play. I'm not against this in principle, I always dreamed of being the house where kids can come and go as they please.
This kid, let's call him Bobby, has been in my house on several occasions now, and I've never met his parents. My wife and I have both asked Bobby questions about where he lives, about his family, just anything so we could know more about him, but he's really cagey with his answers. I originally asked Bobby questions just to be engaging and not come across as standoffish or hostile in any way, but his answers were really generic and avoidant, so much so that my wife independently mentioned it when she was around one of the times he came over and I wasn't.
Now I'm wondering what the protocol here should be. A part of me feels like I should be able to get a hold of Bobby's parents if I needed to in case he gets hurt here in an accident or something, but even more generally I know I would want to know where my kids were and whose house they were in.
Should I be trying to get Bobby to have his parents come meet me? Should I be more forceful and require this before he's allowed inside my house again? He has a cell phone, or so he's told me. Maybe I could have him call his parents so I could talk to them?
I feel like he's a latch key kid, and I have no reason to think he's having any issues at home, it just kinda feels like his parents don't care that much... or maybe they have to let him loose because they're both working all the time? I dunno, it's just kinda weird. Every other kid that we've ever had over without their parents have also been here many, many, times with their parents, or we were friends with parents before anyone had kids, so this is a new one for me, especially with my boys being this young.
Thanks in advance Daddit, and stay awesome out there.
EDIT
Just wanted to make it clear that Bobby has been over a couple times now, but we were all out front and often there were a bunch of other neighborhoods and several adults milling around. He went inside once or twice with my son to grab a popsicle, but wasn't inside for a log time, and the one time he was inside for a while we had like 5 adults and 5 kids over for a big playdate and he had just gravitated over to all the noise I assume as a big portion was them riding scooters out front.
The reason for the post was that he showed up at my door to play about 20 minutes before I posted, which was immediately after a snow storm (making playing out front not really feasible) and my son opened the door and let him before I could really register that he was there, and felt weird about it but couldn't quite place a finger on it because he had been over before, but this time was just different.