I hope I don’t come off as being a horrible, snobby, person when you read this but I am very worried. My daughter is 10 and we have just moved to a new area. She’s made friends with a lots of the girls in her class. One girl lives just up the road and she is becoming more friendly with her. I have found out a few very nasty things about her and her family: her physical fighting and swearing (confirmed), inappropriate sexual behaviour from her 9 year old brother to an autistic boy, (unconfirmed but social workers involved). The teachers at school are scared of her mum and won’t have anything to do with the family. Basically I don’t want my precious darling to have anything to do with her – my gut reaction – but I have no idea how I can stop them being friends. This girl is allowed out to play and never has a home time – she just drifts off when the other girls head home. She comes round our house in the morning to walk to school with my daughter. She comes round after school too. I have been trying to say to my daughter that she might not be the best person to be friends with but don’t want her to rebel against what she sees as an unfair rule. I have been encouraging her to ask other friends round, esp those that live further away who have to be brought to ours and taken home again. I have been doing more activities after school like swimming (though she has been asking if we can take a friend with us for her to play with at the pool). I have told her that she has never to go into this girl’s house because they have big dogs and smoke, both of which she hates.

There’s a bit of me that feels incredibly sorry for this poor girl, having such a horrible home life and I would love it if she could see how people behave in a “normal” loving family and be influenced by this to break out of her own disfunctional family. but I don’t want to take the risk that it goes the other way and my darling girl goes bad or, too horrible to contemplate, gets abused in some way.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?