Sharing friends with your children

Although my parents didn't conciously think that their adult friends would have any significant influences in my upbringing, thinking back on my childhood I distinctively remember a friend of my parents who enjoyed playing card games through the night--his reasoning: life is too short, if I spend time in sleeping, I will shorten my life, I'd better play as hard as possible to extend my life. I was quite young and thought the idea was very revolutionary. It made me think about life and death. I am sure that my parents had no idea their friend had influenced me in any way. This brings me to the topic I want to talk about. How many parents really realize the impact their friends have on their children? We have always tried to introduce our friends to our children as equals. Our friends, in turn, talk to them as they would talk with us. They don't patronize them just because they are smaller in physical stature. Both my husband and I are both homebound, we don't know many people and the few friends we have are all pretty unique and special in their own way. One of our friends is very active in participating in protecting the environment movement and he uses vegi oil to run his used bus, my kids were fascinated by his endeaver and learned a great environmental lesson from him. We also know a fair number of people who are from other countries, introducing them to our children opened up their eyes to diffirent culture. Letting your children know your friends is a great way to help your children to know about you. You may be surprised how much your children actually want to know about you-- we often neglect the task of helping our children to know about us.