friends daughter,14 hanging out with a 18yr old???

[kdhawks]

Prom was a huge deal where I grew up, as it was the only formal event during the entire school year -- and even though it was technically a junior and senior event, freshmen and sophomores could go as the junior or senior's date/guest. I went as a sophomore, and knew plenty of others who went as freshmen and sophomores -- no one really thought of it as a big deal for an upperclassman to take an underclassman. I don't see the age difference as a huge gap since they are at the same school, involved in the same activities...

[jmdt]

Our prom here is strictly a senior event. Unless you are dating a junior then they can go. You just can't bring a friend as a "date"
I mean our graduating class is about 700 kids, just seniors. My daughter and her friends are going on a cruise around Manhattan Island after the prom. It is really a big deal to these kids.

My daughter told her that this girl is a bad kid and someone she should not be hanging out with.

Whatever it's not up to me as to what she allows her kid to do.

[Ellie May]

Thankfully you don't have to do anything about it. It doesn't sound right letting a teen hang out with somebody like that.

That said, the age difference is nothing to me. My bff is three years older than me. My closest friends...most of them are at least 15 years older than me. I see age categorization as unfortunate. And that three year difference...in college she will be in the same classes as seniors when she is a freshman. I don't see any problem with that.

[courtney1121]

I think as you get older though, you are able to have that more mature relationship with an older person. Most of my friends are older but that's cause I matured throughout college and find myself relating more to some older people. Especially considering I'm 24, in a long-term serious relationship, work full time, and pretty much over the whole party scene. Trying to find a good number of friends with similar interests to that at my age can be tough. I even find a hard time now trying to connect with my close friends from college because I changed a lot after school. We were pretty hardcore party girls in college so not wanting to be that girl anymore is hard considering most of my friends still live that lifestyle.

As for being in high school, of course I wanted to hang out with the older kids, doing older kid stuff, but not many of them would bother with a young 15 yr old girl. I never really did team sports and the sports I did, track & cheerleading, did not force us to really have a strong bond with the older crowd. Of course we all knew each other and would say hi in passing and discuss random things but that was about it. I even went to a small catholic school where everyone knew everyone but I did not see too many older kids hanging out with the younger ones and when we got to be seniors, we knew some of the sophomores, maybe a little bit of the freshman, but the ones we really liked that were younger, we just kind of thought that they were cute little "sophy's" or "freshy's". Just someone we would treat as more of a younger sister type of deal. Not only that but a few of my friends had younger sisters in those grades and usually hungout with the other girls in their grade. We never had any one of us specifically hangout one on one with a younger girl. To be honest though, my friends were normally a good group of teenagers. I was usually the bad seed of the group at least when senior year came around haha but I never really cared much to bother with the younger girls other than maybe a few junior girls. My best friend had a sister that was 2 years younger that would hang around us and I never minded but these sisters were pretty close and good kids anyways.

I definitely can see your concern and I do not doubt my mom would think the same thing as you. At the same time though, you obviously have to let it play its course. You let the mother know that kid is bad news and what her mother plans to do with that information is on her now. Not only do kids have to make mistakes to learn from it but sometimes parents have to learn to make parenting mistakes to learn from them as well. Who knows, maybe this kid will someway end up being a good influence on her.