Rule 84. Your Kids Will Have Friends You Don’t Like

“Oh no, not Mickey Brown—again!” This was my mother’s cry every Saturday morning. She hated Mickey Brown. Loathed and detested him with a vengeance. Why? I have no idea. She disliked most of my friends, but she saved up all the venom for poor Mickey Brown, whom she took against before she ever met him.

Look, your children will sometimes have friends you don’t approve of. It’s natural. Live with it. As kids, we are attracted to other kids who are different from us. It’s our way of finding out. We go for the very poor kid or the very rich kid because we have no experience of it and want to know what it is like. We go for the ruffian or the spoiled princess or the kid from a different ethnic background to ours or the ragged urchin who smells or the autistic kid or the one from the gypsy encampment or the smug middle-class one whose parents are accountants.