I don't think you are being unreasonable. My son does the same thing and if he does come home he is unpleasant and causes tension in the house....making me be more lenient than I should. When he is home he is mad, stomping around and miserable. Some kids like their families and some don't....mine is the later so I guess I did something wrong long ago.
Sue

I haven't run into that situation yet because my son isn't driving and he doesn't have a girlfriend yet. But I have had problems where we plans sleep overs every weekend. So I sat down with him and said I really missed our time together and know he is having fun with his friends but I would like some time with him too. So the next weekend, he didn't plan anything with his friends and spent it with me. It was very nice.

It could be that your son doesn't realize you want time with him too. Maybe sit down and explain why you want him home for dinner once in awhile. That might be the ticket.

I am experiencing the same problem. But instead of it being the girlfriend and her parents it is his new friend he met a few months ago and his mom and older sister and family. This family does not mind my son being over there everyday. My son could be at this person's home in the morning and everyday. His friend and his family did this for another boy too. I try to be brave through this and not call but I am bothered. I found out that the other boy's mom who has been dealing with this for a few years would call the other boy who goes over to this boy's house and cried that she missed her son and had to find out and talk to her son for a long time so she was feeling the same way I was feeling with this family. I thought I was the only one. This family lives in a very nice and big home, they have a nice truck and a mercedes, they buy expensive clothes for my son's friend, like 60.00 pants and 60.00 to 100.00 or more pairs of shoes. A few months ago I had bought my son a new pair of tenna shoes from Kohls, I forgot the brand but they were not Nikes but they were fine and cost 30.00. My son would not wear the tenna shoes and would only wear the 6.0 Nike tenna shoes that his friend gave to him that were one 1/2 inch smaller then what my son wears. They also have exchanged pants and this boy is heavier then my son so he is probably stretching my son's jeans and the pants he borrows are a little bigger by several inches and they sprayed frebreze on my son's clothes because he said they smelled because he was there from Friday after school on a minimum day to the latest he could be picked up on Sunday. It made me extremely sad and I don't like all of this exchange of clothes. I have tried to take his phone away because it distracts him from doing his studies and homework and my son refused to give it to us and he tells his friend how horrible I am for doing this and his friend agrees. I found out this morning that his friend's mom makes homemade burritos for his friend and my son who comes over to walk to school with his friend. This women seems to do everything and have no problem with any of it. I asked my son doesn't this mom mind, I certainly mind and my son said his friend's mom had taken his friend's other friend to Los Vegas with him on a trip, they will take the friend anywhere they are going with. My son put me down as well and tells us to leave him alone, nothing we do is good enough for him, apparently this family can do no wrong where we do nothing right. My husband is pleased with what we have to eat in our home and so am I, my 18 year old daughter has learned to appreciate what we have as a family. I try to be prudent and careful and I am health conscious. While I think this woman is very nice and can do a lot of things I could not do it and I think I do a good job. I feel my son is right in some ways like why can't I do what this woman and family can do. It is very hard and I put myself down a lot when in reality I do think I am doing a good job it is just not good enough for my son. My son managed to find a family who can do a whole lot that I can't do. This family has good family relationships with their family, I don't. On Christmas my son spent a weekend with their family and they went all over. My son had a blast. I can't do this for my son. It makes me feel bad. If you discipline your child you are bad. The permissive parents, the ones who have no problems doing anything. It is almost a battle between the permissive "nice" parents vs. the parents who care and want to do right by their child. Not that the permissive parents are wrong but we sort of look down on each other and think what we are doing is hard. It is the battle of breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding, stay at home mom vs. working mom, sleep in parents bed when they are little and be there or the scheduled mom with naps, they must be in their own bed, let them cry vs. be there for your kid the Sears method. We are still facing this when they are teens and it is even more tough. I wish you the very best.

I did not explain that the boy's mom makes burritos from scratch for breakfast for my son and his friend. I don't know how this woman does it. I could not do it and that makes me feel bad. She also makes orange chicken and mexican dishes with guacomoli by scratch for dinner . I really do not know how she does this. She does not mind if friends are over at all times, I know a lot of parents can be lenient in this area. My son went to a birthday party this past weekend at a girl's home my son said there were lots and lots of people. I don't know how this family did it either. My son said the parents and friends and family were there. I could never do this. I am not sure how parents can do this. My son's friend did not do well in school, he got straight F's and has gotten detentions. My son didn't do well last semester, he got mostly D's with one C minus he never made up the missing assignments that we kept telling him to do and never did the spanish project for his spanish class and got an F in that class so he switched out of Spanish and is now taking Wood instead. Hopefully he will do well this year. I just want to say you are not alone. I am not sure if some of the stuff I am saying on your post pertains to what you are saying. I am sorry about this but what I want to say is I understand how you feel, that other parents can look down on you when you are doing the best that you can do, and when this happens we challenge ourselves and think are we not good parents, what is wrong with us, why can't we do this, and we question ourselves when people do this and I probably do this more to myself then my son or his friend or anyone and I find it hard to not get down on myself when I see others being able to do things I can't do and did not think was needed like buying expensive clothes when you can buy nice things at Kohls or some other place. I have seen teeenagers with their mom's at Kohls who appreciate buying clothes there and they work well with their mom's and it warms my heart when I see this appreciation and kindness and getting along. I wish I could my son could appreciate what I do for him and like what I can do for him but he does not at this time and it is extremely hard. I do believe in disciplining like you are doing, I think it is good for your child to learn and I really don't get why some parents don't do that, that it is ok with them for their child to get straight F's and suffer no consequences, they seem to have no privileges taken from them and their parent goes to the school begrudgingly because they are told by the school to go. We are going to the school because of our son's performance today after school because we want too, we care and want to get to the bottom of this problem if we can. We find our son's performance to be a very big problem, we are very concerned and it is taking a toll on our whole family. My son will call my daughter names and put her down, he does this with me and my husband too. He treats us as if we were dirt, like he does not know us and we care so much. There is nothing wrong with caring and disciplining but unfortunately there are a whole lot of people and parents of teens who really don't care and don't do this. It really is extremely surprising to me but there are parents who do care like the few mom's of teens I have seen at Kohls and their appreciative kids. It warms my heart when I see this and I wonder why can't my son appreciate. He used to but does not anymore because he is around these nimwits that think it is ok to pay 60.00 for pants and shirts, and caps, and shoes. I think we are different, need to accept our differences.

Sunshine, I totally feel your pain. Although our situations are a bit different they are kind of the same. My son's girlfriend's parents have a cabin in the mountains with all these 4 wheelers and took my son up there with them for a weekend, and while I am glad he got to go 4 wheeling, I was paranoid the whole time because I didn't believe this mother was going to enforce that they sleep separately, you know? But I wanted to "trust" my son so I let him go. She has told me that she has made a rule for her daughter that she is to have no boys in her room, but her room is downstairs in the basement and that is where my son and her hang out the whole time with little to no adult supervision, ugh! Is she really that stupid???
Then this last week my son was over there 3 times in a week, all day long, we do live 30 minutes away from them, but when I suggested that she come over here this weekend and we would take them somewhere to eat or something, he made an excuse of why he has to go to her house. Hmmm....
I admit when I get angry I don't always compose myself in the best manner, I sometimes yell and get irrational, but hey... I am human and I am tired of the BS. My son complains about me to his gf, she complains to her mother, and instead of being an adult and thinking, well he probably deserved it, she takes his side and wont speak to me or if she speaks to me you can tell she is being cold and snippy. They have been dating for over a year and I am afraid it isn't going to end any time soon. They have more money then us, a nicer house, nicer cars, go on more vacations, shop almost all the time, bought their daughter a car a year before she even gets her license, I mean how the Hell can I compete with that? And believe me, I have tried to have civilized conversations with my son about my feelings, but he just acts like I am just jealous. Ok, maybe it would be nice to have some of what they have, but what I would love to have is peace of mind that this mother is not talking crap about me and letting my son and her daughter get away with stuff I would never let them get away with, I mean when they started out all the parents seemed to be on the same page, but as time goes on and I can tell she doesnt like me and I think she does things in spite of me. I have told my son this too and he laughs at me and says "Not everybody is out to get you mom!" Even when the mother texted me one day and told me she thought I was mean to my son, and that I didnt love him, etc, and I did nothing to deserve this, I was very upset and instead of my son getting upset with his gf or her mom, he got mad at me and said I must have done something to deserve it, ha ha, funny coincidence, huh?

Hi Isnider, Thank you for explaining this to me. I can understand how you could feel frustrated with all of this. It does not seem fair at all. The girlfriend and her mom are not nice and to have your son side with them and be mean and rude to you is very upsetting. I am not sure what you can do with this but I do believe you will find your answer because you seem very smart but you have my full support and understanding of what you are going through and I am really sorry you are going through this and I hope this situation will straighten out and all of these people most especially your son will be nicer. Sometimes people can be rude and I am not sure why and how they cannot understand how this can hurt a mom.

I forgot to mention in my comment that what they are doing is disrespectful and not nice with the way the sleeping arrangements are being handled and your not knowing. I know that can be very upsetting. It seems like you are making every effort to talk to your son about this. I can understand how this would be upsetting. Perhaps you could talk to a counselor to see what kinds of things you can do to help this if you feel that you need this. I know that this kind of stuff can be very upsetting and I would feel this way too.

As far as the sleeping arrangements go, I dont know that they didnt sleep separately, BUT I wouldn't put it past the mother to do something like that out of spite.
I am just at my wit's end. I would never try and turn someone's kids against them. My worst crimes are that I enforce the rules and I don't spoil my kid to death like she does hers. I know this might sound stupid but on her facebook page today she wrote "Treat others as you want to be treated, karma is only a bitch if you are." and her daughter commented on it with a laugh. Coincidence? Maybe. But how childish if it was aimed at me. I deactiviated my facebook because i just dont need it.
I don't know what to do at this point, do I just forget it and let it run its course, and hopefully soon everyone will just chill out and quit acting all high and mighty or do I confront the mom and tell her if she cannot say anything nice about me to my son then my son will no longer be coming to their house to see her daughter?

@ Sue, I don't think you did anything wrong, and I don't think that your son hates his family. Teenagers are mean, self-centered people that think they know it all, older people are "stupid" and "lame" and they think they can make it out in that world alone. Well, I say good luck with that! I understand the whole tension thing and you just tell your kid to do what they want so they will get out of your face and quit moping around the house. I sometimes do the same thing, but see most kids think if they do act like asses they will get what they want, but usually the opposite happens for my son. I will ground him to the house and turn off his cell phone by calling our cell provider and having his phone suspended. :-)

One thing I forgot to mention in my post is that I just had a miscarriage a month ago at 13 weeks, after trying for a very long time to get pregnant. Why would anyone with a heart try to turn your only child against you especially when we are still mourning the loss of our baby???? My husband has this "I don't give a shit attitude" and he doesn't care what anyone says or thinks, sometimes I wish I was more like him :-)

Believe me you have my full support and understanding of this situation and I think you are right and I think it was rude of the mother to write that on facebook and then the daughter to comment like that. I have had this happen many times by my own mom and other people as well. This is the way some people are and when you get involved with it it is very hard that is why I try to stay away from that as much as possible but when you have kids and your kids get involved with people like this it makes it very hard. I have no answers because I struggle with the same kind of thing and I know how hard it is. Truthfully I would think you would be able to figure this out more because you express what is going out really well and I never can express this very thing but sometimes there are no answers or I am not sure if there is an answer. There are a lot of smart people out there unfortunately I have not figured the answer to this kind of thing out but I really do understand what is going on and I get very upset over this kind of stuff too. We have no control of what others do but we do have control over how we want to respond to things or how we feel and then there is the serenity prayer. I just don't get why people act this way and why they want to cause problems, probably because have problems and our kids just don't get it which is even more frustrating. Our kids are thinking of themselves not us or the consequences to what they do and then we have to worry. It is extremely unfortunate. So basically what I think you should do if you can't figure out what to do, and you do not receive any answers from anyone here, hopefully you will find a very good answer to help you, all I can offer is understanding and say that I am in the same boat and this frustrates me a whole lot and I wish I knew the answer but if you can't find an answer and you can't figure out what to do I would seek a therapist's help in how to deal with this. I am sure they deal with this kind of problem all of the time and they might have the answer. Sometimes therapists don't have the answer and it is very frustrating. You pay them all of this money and they will feel bad for you and understand but they don't give you an answer. Sometimes we just have to wait and see if things will get better and try to calm ourselves down with good foods as Dr. Oz talked about last night in helping and treating the anxiety we can feel about things. Sometimes we can take a nature walk to feel better. Talking about it helps, receiving understanding but the best thing is an answer to this kind of problem. Hopefully someone here will have the answer because it is not fair when people act the way this mom and daughter are acting. Heck I had to deal with this kind of crap from my own mom and that is why I am so screwed up and have the problems that I have unfortunately your son brougth someone like this into your life and this happens. Some of us do not get bothered by it, they are lucky. My husband is the same way as yours he does not care as much and it is frustsrating because yo want your husband to understand and they just don't get it. Maybe because they are a male and we are female and we see things differently. Sometimes males care more and females don't. I can see that you are a very caring person, you want what is best and when others like the daughter, even your son and he daughter's mom act this way it is frustrating.

One of the really tough things to do as a parent is to not compare ourselves and our parenting style to someone else. We all notice what others are doing but I really try to stop there. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. It is easy to see the positive sides of these "faux" families but there is surely bad too that no one talks about.

I am a single Mom. My Ex has lots of money, a big house, and buys my son lots of stuff. I can't possibly compete. Plus they always say they are "family" because they have other kids where I just have my son. I was quick to remind my son that "families" come in many sizes and forms and we are a family even if it is just us two. I have looked for ways I can shine with my son such as helping him stay organized with school or going out to dinner once a month. Those things mean the world to him and we are much closer than he is to his Dad emotionally.

So try to focus on what you bring to the table instead of what they are getting from others. I am a firm believer that anyone that "buys" their friendships is short lived. People can't possibly keep that up over a long period of time. Either they will run out of money or they will get tired of people coming along just to get free stuff.

You are the parent of the child, not the other mother. You are the one to set the rules when it comes to raising your child according to your standards and expectations. You are correct in holding to this.