Q: My husband and I are the parents of a wonderful 8-year-old girl. She's bright, athletic and fun to be around. The problem is her "best friends" for the last two years at school have come from dysfunctional families. I'm not saying our family is perfect, but we're a traditional four-person family (we have a younger daughter also), have rules the girls must follow and try to instill good values. Her current "best friend" comes from an abusive home. One of the parents is charged with a felony, and she doesn't always live with both parents. The girls just see each other at school, and there haven't been play dates yet, but I see them coming. We feel bad for the little girl and don't want to hurt her feelings. She must need a friend, and my daughter loves to be around her. Last school year's "best friend" came from a broken home, had very young parents and different values than ours. I don't want to get into having the girls at our house all of the time mainly because I don't want to deal with the parents. How do we handle relationships with friends whose families are out of sync with ours, without hurting the feelings of the girls?

A: While I do believe parents should guide their children in making appropriate friendship choices, I recommend that guidance be about the child herself. So for example, if either of these girls was disrespectful or had behavior problems, it would be perfectly appropriate for you to tell your 8-year-old to choose other friends. While I can understand you might prefer children whose home lives were more like yours, it seems unfair to make a child suffer for the parents' problems. You can head off later problems by suggesting a play date at your home now, before the friendship gets too close. You can observe the girls and notice whether the friend's basic behavior is appropriate. If it isn't, you could follow your good instincts and recommend your daughter choose other friends in the future. If the child is a nice kid, you may feel more comfortable about the friendship despite the parents. You don't have to become best friends with the parents, only communicate enough for transportation and pleasantries.

There's another alternative that may be effective. You might prefer that your daughter choose friends from children of your friends. It's possible to encourage that by inviting adult friends to visit and bring their children. That often works to cultivate very close friendships for parents and children. Obviously, that doesn't always work out well. Sometimes very nice parents have difficult children that your children may not care for at all, but at least it's worth a try. Keeping your daughter busy with friends that you think are suitable will make other friends less attractive by comparison.

A third way to get your daughter involved with appropriate friends is to have her join Girl Scouts, a religious group or a sports team where she meets a variety of other girls. While you can't be sure she'll find all good friends in these groups, at least those activities and friendship groups can distract her from the friends whose families you don't care for.

Peer groups do matter more and more as your daughter matures, so teaching your daughter to select friends wisely is part of teaching her important social skills. A discussion on what makes for good friends helps children sort out how to be friends and not be taken in by bullies or kids with inappropriate values.

For a free newsletter about developing social skills, or one on "See Jane Win for Girls" (Free Spirit Publishing, 2003), send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address below. Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or [email protected]. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.