Should I report behavior concern of daughter’s friend to her parents? Am I overreacting?
my daughter is 13, she has a friend (girl , also 13) that ya I think the friend is a terrible influence but I’m concerned for my daughter’s safety because of their association, and I know it’s counterproductive for me to try to ban the friend. my partner and I took the friend somewhere and she snuck away from the group with a random boy in the dark and it looked shady, then we learned more information by monitoring our daughters text messages that they were going to meet up wth people they didn’t know who the friend met online portraying themselves as boys (different boy than the one she snuck off with). All of this also coinciding with a whole other set of behavior concerns that I have with my daughter that developed a year ago (when she started spending more time with this girl).
I need a reality check- I’m wondering (a) am I over reacting or under reacting? (going alone to a mall alone for 13 year old girls might not seem like a big deal but we live in a rural area so the context might be different, (b) should I tell my concern to the other parent. my husband doesn’t want me to contact the other parent, but I would want to know and I don’t like being concerned about somebody’s safety and not reporting it. (c) is the tone of my message ok because I don’t want to spread rumors, or undermine my relationship with my daughter, or her relationship with her friends. my daughter’s and I relationship has been severely strained in the last year. Not mentioned in this message to the other parent is that we have heard rumors that the friend is “active” and uses marijuana, but I don’t have any indication that my daughter is currently doing the same (except Her mood is off the charts so I was thinking that maybe she was doing drugs with mood swings and withdrawing from sports that she used to love but no other physical evidence). I also know that I need to keep talking to my daughter about what her responsibilities are and behavior expectations. It’s really hard because leading up to this event last month I can’t even get in the same room with her. things came to a head at the end of the school year when we were fighting about doing chores, she lost phone privileges and decided at night to go for a walk unannounced after threatening to hurt herself and run away all weekend. she was missing for like an hour (we live in an unlit rural area with few roads and no sidewalks) and we called the police, at that time she lost phone privileges and there were boundaries around where she could go and with who, and we then monitored her phone more frequently (us monitoring her phone was always a condition that she was aware of) and learned about the plan to meet out of town strangers, which she tried to conceal by deleting text messages. after that we seem to be able to function slightly better and I also think that there is some stress associated with school that she has a hard time managing.
The issue with the sneaking off and plan to meet strangers at the mall has been problematic because my daughter even this week wanted to go with her friend to (a) fireworks out of town and I told my daughter she couldn’t go because I didn’t want her to get ditched in a strange town alone in the dark if her friend snuck away again and I couldn’t take her because I was working, and (b) she wanted to go to the mall with the friend driven by the friend’s parent (another uncontrolled environment) and I couldn’t take her because I was working. I’m not banning the friend I’m just trying to have them interact under different circumstances (ie she can come to my house, they can hang out in a group).
——-message I drafted to send to the friends parent:
Hi I apologize for the long text but I feel compelled to share some of our recent observations about \[Friend’s\] behavior that I feel puts her at risk for something bad. We think she’s a great kid and I’m not sharing out of any judgement or spreading rumors, I’m concerned for her safety. When my husband and I took \[friend\] to the fair in may, we saw her come out of a dark secluded area with a boy that appeared older than her. They had their hands all over each other, they were stumbling around and the boy was adjusting his crotch area. We were concerned that \[friend\] had snuck away from the larger group alone in a dark and secluded area because this is not safe, and by all appearances to engage in some form of explicit activity. My husband and I were not happy that we were put in that position because we felt responsible for her safety as the adults who brought her and she decided to sneak away from the group of girls she was with, and now I also feel responsible to report this situation to you.
After this event, I monitored \[daughter’s\] phone and learned that \[friend\] frequently introduces \[daughter\] to boys who appear to be from out of town or state. I do not know how \[friend\] is meeting these boys but it seems based on the text messages like neither she nor \[daughter\] know them. There was a very concerning incident where \[daughter\] slept over at your house around may 30. In text messages \[friend\] told \[daughter\] that your husband was going to drop them off at \[large city\] mall, leave to run errands and the girls were going to meet up with 2 boys (who had out of state phone numbers that according to phone records, the girls were group texting and FaceTiming) that per text messages were staying at a nearby hotel. Can you please let me know if your husband ended up dropping them off alone at the mall that day? After we told \[daughter\] what we read in her messages, \[daughter\] explained her perspective to us but if you could let me know if he brought her to the mall that would be appreciated. The risk of the girls sneaking off with strangers that portray themselves online as boys is very serious. there were at least two other groups of boys that \[friend\] was introducing to \[daughter\] in group chats between may and early June, and it appeared that the girls did not know these boys. These boys are all different, and not including the boy she snuck away with, so that is more risk exposure.
I hope that me sending this doesn’t come across as judgmental, I’m just a parent that feels required to share this information and concern about her safety. All of this information I personally saw or learned by monitoring \[daughter’s\] phone through their texts. If my daughter is making unsafe decisions that put her at risk, I would want someone to tell me, so I hope my message is clear that I’m sharing this information out of kindness and concern.