I feel awful even asking this, but I feel so stressed every weekend it's making me miserable. I'm a student and live with other student families in university accommodation. It's really nice because we live close to the school, and some of my son's friends from school live in the same building, so he's always got people to play with outside, etc.The problem is, the kids don't always play outside. They often come here, partly because we have an old Playstation that I sometimes let them play on, and sometimes it's raining or whatever so they can't play outside. I've implemented a "no friends over on school-nights" rule, which limits them coming over to the weekend, but this week is half-term, so I've had this literally every day of the week. Every morning, without fail, at 10 o'clock at least one other child will appear. Sometimes they knock until someone lets them in, or if the door isn't closed properly they just walk right in like they own the place! If I say "no" to them coming in to play, often they'll either try to come in anyway or say they'll wait outside the door until my son can play. So it feels like these kids have no boundaries, but I don't want to be rude to them.Then, when they're actually here, they're so loud it literally hurts my ears. They'll be sitting right next to each other and properly yelling at each other. My son isn't too bad for yelling when he's playing by himself (I mean, he makes explosion noises just like any other kid, but I don't feel like I have to cover my ears or leave the room). One of his friends talks so ridiculously loudly all the time I wonder if he's slightly deaf. It feels like his voice is damaging my hearing. I tell them to remember they're inside/use inside voices/you're right next to each other so you don't need to shout, but it doesn't help the situation at all. I banned them from playing on the PS2 earlier because I couldn't deal with the noise.Then there's another friend who I feel can be quite mean-spirited. He lies a lot about all kinds of random stuff and tries to make out he knows everything. Which is fine, I guess. Kids tell each other tall tales all the time, but then there was an incident a while back where he claimed to know kung fu and "taught" my son and some other boys how to fight, and I caught him making the other kids fight each other. He also lies and tries to get my son in trouble over small stuff. For example, if they've all had a snack and I've seen him toss his wrapper on the floor, I tend to remind all the boys to put their stuff in the bin instead of singling him out - but then he lies and says my son did it! He's also forever trying to eat all my son's sweets without asking and just generally is really rude (see: comes into our house without knocking). I've really come to dislike this kid, but he's my son's friend so fine, I'll put up with him.I think maybe the issue is just that they're coming round to visit all the time. I never seem to get a damn break. I'm glad that my son has friends that he likes spending time with, and it's great that he can hang out with them pretty much whenever, but it's driving me utterly bonkers having to deal with the noise, the mess, sometimes having to feed extra mouths when I'm actually quite poor, the constant harassment because they can't agree on whose go it is or someone isn't sharing.So, I just wondered how other people cope with their kids' social lives? Do your child's friends drive you up the wall too, or do you have some method of coping with things? Should I set up some more boundaries (e.g. no friends round at x time on weekends) or am I being unfair? Should I just invest in earplugs and put up with it?tl:dr my son's friends are driving me mad, please help via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2kMj0VP
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