inappropriate friends?

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I would like some feedback on my current friend situation. First of all, I don’t mean I am making friends with children - although some of the people I am making friends with are barely minors at the beginning of the friendship, but I work really hard to keep a professional distance and relationship until they are no longer my students. I am 54.

So, I am a teacher, and my students range in age from 5 to 18. I really like kids in general and I enjoy teaching. as the kids get older and develop more mature personalities, I like some of them better than others, and as they approach adulthood, there are a few of them who I begin to see as just really cool people.

I have given several of these people my personal contact information “if they want to stay in touch” at graduation and two of them have stayed in contact and I now consider friends (they are 19 and 20 now) another drops me a line now and then. Two have drifted away and I did not pursue them. I have also become friends with my youngest daughter’s 26 y.o. BFF who started dropping by after youngest daughter moved out of state.

I basically don’t have any friends my age (Dh and I have one set of couple friends because he works to maintain the relationship) part of this is that I have always gotten along better with males and people seem to think it is weird for you to be friends with their husband. Even if you have your own perfectly good husband. I just don’t know many women who I have anything in common with. And I don’t know how to meet them.

And part of it is that i still have the interests and sense of humor of a 17 y.o. My 20ish friends will probably outgrow me.

I’m having a particularly difficult time this year because I have a group of three great kids (two are legally men already, the other turns 18 a few weeks after graduation) in my senior class whom I really enjoy. They drop by my room a lot outside of class and one of them has started emailing me (to my teacher email) really funny things, but a lot of them are inappropriate (not sexual, just curse words or drinking jokes) I don’t reply to the emails and I have told him repeatedly that he can’t do that because it is inappropriate and I am his teacher. On one occasion recently he literally said “nah, you’re our friend.” I have no poker face, so I’m sure he knows how I feel about the whole situation.

I’ve got several things going on - I am trying to hold the whole teacher-student relationship together for the next 8 weeks until graduation (I may have to ban them from coming by outside of class, which makes me sad. My little kids also come by outside of class, I have an open door.), my family thinks it’s weird for me to be friends with people a third of my age at all, and i get the impression that these (post graduation) friendships are considered socially inappropriate, but I don’t really see why.

Honestly, the only downside is that one of them doesn’t think he really has to work in my class anymore and is just cruising. But I have seniors who cruise through the spring semester every year wether I like them or not. They just usually pretend they are trying and to care what I think and take me seriously. This kid knows that I wish he would work harder but also am happy just to have him around. he knows I will flunk him if I have to and I know he intends to do just enough to spare me the need, so let’s talk about something else…

Two of the three have asked me if I will come to their graduation parties. I’d love to. I said “I don’t generally do that. Those are really for your family and friends.”

Thoughts?

When I was 21 I was best friends with a 60-year-old woman. We're still good friends now.
Then when I was 24 I got friendly with a 15-year-old girl I'd met at my volunteer job. I think she's on the spectrum as well. But her parents liked her hanging out with me because they saw me as a mature role model for her, probably because I didn't/don't smoke, drink or take drugs.

Are you quite lonely? If you are, sometimes it does one good to form relationships with your students if you work in that type of profession. My elderly grandmother volunteers at a local preschool, as since her husband died she's been feeling quite lonely, and she said the children "keep her going" and are her only friends. She gets a lot of joy working with them.

Also my brother sometimes takes his best friend's teenage son out during the school holidays, and the boy looks up to him.

If you're a good person (which I don't doubt you are) you're probably a good influence on these children you're friends with. I don't think it's weird at all.

Really tricky.

I can relate, because I have a really hard time identifying anyone's age and I've always felt younger (emotionally) than my true age. So I see 20 year olds and think 'peers' where they look at me and see 'old man'. A while back I did a few years in tech support which had a high turnover of college leavers and apprentices and I really enjoyed being around those younger people but I was aware I was not in the potential 'friend' category for them.

Honestly, I don't know the rules of the situation you're describing. It's different isn't it, because as a teacher you have a pre-defined role set out for you and it seems like if you step outside those boundaries there's going to be at least confusion, at worst danger. But then again, if everyone involved is an adult then where's the harm? Why wouldn't teachers grow to like the kids they teach and want to spend time with them?

It must be very difficult to invest so much of your energy in these kids, and see them develop over time and then have them just disappear out of your life.

I can also relate to the sex issue because I have always gotten along better with women than men and yes, people get suspicious when you're friends with someone of the opposite sex and you're meeting with them alone. Sad, but understandable. My partner always gets on better with men than women too, and I admit to having jealousies and insecurities about it, though I've never attempted to stop her socialising with them.

Sorry, I have no answers. But I think I know what you're talking about.

It would be in your own best interests not to text or e-mail any of your students before they graduate other than regarding straightforward schoolwork matters, from a work email or otherwise.

But I suspect you know that already.

Frankly you should report any inappropriate e-mails you receive from a student, or at most warn the student personally (not over a text or email) that it is inappropriate to send such e-mails to you as his teacher and you would report him for the next one AND immediately thereafter make a note to files with the email attached saying on such and such date and at such and such time and such and such place you told the student that the email was inappropriate and to stop.

This approach would also have the benefit of drawing the line and establishing or re-establishing boundaries with the student, who is too immature to recognize he is out of line.

If he is sending you inappropriate emails of a familiar nature (sexual or otherwise), he is imperiling YOUR job and is no one to be friendly with.

The student in question seems to have gotten the message (for now?) there are six weeks left in the term.

Yes, I am lonely.

I am getting invitations to graduation parties. I am telling them “I appreciate the invitation, but I don’t know what the end of May looks like for me right now.”

One student responded “it’s ok, there will be a lot of adults there. Most of my friends are adults.”

To be on the safe side, maybe even wait a little longer than graduation. If school policies allow a teacher to change a student's grade after the semester ends, any friendships with former students should probably wait until after the teacher's authority to change their grades expires.


Why do you think the warning to the student should not be via email? Having it in an email might constitute necessary evidence, it seems to me.

To Quantum Duck: I think you need to consult with a teacher's union official. None of us here are experts on the ethical policies of your local school system.

What kinds of things would you like to have in common with women friends? What are your interests/hobbies? What are some of your most important values?

To increase the likelihood of finding some possible friends here on WP, I would suggest that you edit your profile to add a signature line that mentions some of your interests and/or values.

I am less concerned about the legal/professional ramifications (I do not have a union) than the fact that all my friends are under 30 and my family thinks it’s weird. I realize it’s weird, but I’m weird. Can I just be friends with people I like?

once their evaluation goes in, it doesn’t change. I usually give them MY personal email the last day of school and let it ride until the former student reaches out.

I don’t need more online friends. I need some real friends. Who want to eat some donuts and talk about stuff that interests us.

Things I do with my “kid” (legal adult not at my school anymore) friends:
Eat donuts
Play dungeons and dragons
Make stuff out of clay
Make fires and put the clay stuff in them and then make them too big because we just like fire.
Have conversations about dreams and goals and values
Share funny online videos relating to common opinions or experiences
Play with farm animals and do chores (both mine)
Laugh

One of them is trying to teach me how to clean up and stay organized.
They don’t judge my life choices. They figure - I’m 54, I should get to do whatever I want.
They don’t try to get me to join their church, charity project, multi-level marketing business or exercise class.
They don’t have kids, so they don’t need to play ”my kid turned out better than yours” they also don’t feel a need to compete with my kids.
They don’t have any money, so they like to do free stuff, don’t judge my stuff, and don’t try to show off their material goods.
They still know that shoes are optional and find it perfectly normal to sit on the floor.

The line seems to be pretty blurry tbh. I have seen some try to take a hard-line stance that outside of professional or familial relationships no adult should be casually talking to minors.... that strikes me as, idk. A bit too restrictive?

I have a childhood friend with whom I was friends despite a fair amount of age gap. I'm seven years older than her. We first met when I was 10 and she was 3, and then became friends when she was 5 and I was 12. (I had a strong tendency to hang around younger children rather than peers my age, which apparently is considered evidence of ASD.)

So when I became 18 and older and was still going over to her house to hang out and play (until she outgrew the "play" aspect), it was definitely something some might raise an eyebrow at. But her parents had no issue with it and have told me I'm practically family. (We are both adults now, old enough to have a beer together at the bar.)

When you have a professional relationship with children, such as a teacher, you get legalities involved, and are in a more vulnerable position. I have a friend who teaches as a para-professional, and she never lets children have contact with her in any way outside of school. If they ask for her discord, tiktok, email.... nope, not happening.
It's a "cover your ass" type of thing. Can't be accused of being a groomer if you don't give any space for that sort of accusation to even appear.

Upon researching ASD for my own self, I have come across "tends to have friends outside of age group" to be an autistic trait. So there's that.

Right - until they have officially left my school, I only talk with them at school in appropriate settings about appropriate topics (but there is nothing inappropriate about arguing wether 4e is good or bad in a cafeteria full of students and other adults….) or through my teacher email which can be read at any time by my admin - which I remind them of verbally if they do something stupid like send me a joke that starts with a bar. Most of my teacher emails are about assignments/school activities or “sorry you are out sick, thanks for letting me know.”

A few are information on where I bought a particular supply we used in class (by request) or details about a class related event, or (usually with the really little kids) things like “wow, your new puppy is cute! Thanks for sharing the picture.”

The only time I made friends with an actual high school student was when I worked a summer camp. She was a coworker. We ate lunch together a lot and talked mostly about the kids and the projects. We may have complained about my husband and her boyfriend. Fall came, and I asked somebody at the facility why she was never around anymore, and they said “she has band practice” and I said “she’s in a band?” And they said “she’s in high school.” Oh.

As long as your friends are at least over 18 and there are not any professional ethical issues, I see nothing wrong with having friends outside of one's age group.

When I was in my early-to-mid twenties, I made a bunch of close friends who were all in their thirties and forties.

As far as I can tell, it's common among autistic people to find friends outside one's age group.


Online friends can become real-life friends if they happen to live near you and also have enough common interests and values.

Nobody lives near me.

Well, actually, people live near me, but I avoid them. Every time I get to know them, I become sorry - like the nice old man who I worked at the food bank with, who decided to explain to me that Americans need military grade weapons “because you never know when you’re going to have to shoot the cops.” and then when I looked around - people were nodding.

I got an “official” graduation party invitation (pdf of card) sent to my teacher email by the mom of one of my adult student future friends with a note that they really hope I will come. The party is the weekend before school gets out.

It is good you have them as friends. Younger people need older mentors to befriend. It is normal and good for them too! Modern society seems to look down on things like that but I am sure glad of the older ones I befriended when I was young! I had hardly any friends my own age, and those pensioners really made a difference!

I too had adult mentor friends as a child

I did not go to any graduation parties.

In four days my friends will no longer be my students.

One of them is going to help me spray paint my classroom tables. He bought the spray paint, I got us permission. We already tested a spot. It’s good stuff. I kind of want to let him do my car, but Dh would kill me. Also, there is probably a good reason not to spray paint your car? (Not resale value - all of my cars get driven until they are scrap)