Old Friends

Meeting up with a friend for dinner tonight. We've been friends now for 30 plus years ! Oh how that makes me feel old !

I've been trying to help my 14 year son develop his circle of friends. He's learning sometimes painfully, that not all friends have your best interest at heart. Some friends are great fun, but at the end of the day you don't really know to much about them. Others, usually very few in number are friends for a life time. These are the friends that you've kept in touch with even when they lived on the other side of the country or even the world. As they traveled Europe and you raised a family still we've always come back together to share our lives..the end of a marriage, birth of a child or changes in employment.

He's just learning his friends are sometimes cruel, sometimes helpful and often times judgmental. He's going to follow some advise I gave him ( and no I didn't faint when he agreed) that having a wider circle of friends that weren't all "interconnected" might be a good idea. So he's going to try and find some out side interests to work on that don't include this group of kids so next time there's a big "ta do about nothing" he won't worry so much what they think.

Everyone wants to belong to a group, to be liked and respected...the trick is to find the right group.