Mom Bans Daughter From Seeing Best Friend After Parents Let Her Walk Home With Broken Arm

Parenting involves tough decisions, and sometimes those decisions are made out of a desire to protect our kids, even when it means upsetting them.

For one mother, the breaking point came when her daughter was injured at a friend’s house and the friend’s parents didn’t bother to call or take action.

With her daughter’s safety in mind, the mother decided to ban her from visiting her best friend’s house again, feeling that the friend’s parents were negligent in their duty.

But is she being too harsh, or is her concern for her daughter’s well-being completely justified?

The OP’s reaction is understandable. Their 13‑year‑old daughter suffered a broken arm at a friend’s house, and the friend’s parent neither informed the OP nor supervised the child being sent home injured.

The OP’s decision to forbid further visits to that house reflects a serious breach of trust. Research shows that lower levels of caregiver supervision are strongly linked to increased injury risk in children.

For example, a large cohort study found that infants whose parents left them alone or didn’t keep a consistent eye on them had significantly higher risk of fractures and other injuries.

Communication between caregivers matters too. One article found that how parents talk about safety before and after injuries plays a role in shaping future risk and trust.

In the OP’s case, the parent of the friend broke both the communication and supervision norms: not only did they fail to inform the daughter’s parent of the injury, but they also allowed the child to walk home with a broken arm.

That signals a lapse in basic caregiver responsibility. However, while the OP has every right to protect their child, experts caution about using completely exclusionary measures without explanation or dialogue.

It might be helpful to initiate an honest conversation, express that the daughter’s safety is the priority, explain exactly what went wrong (lack of reporting and supervision), and ask for assurance of better handling moving forward.

After all, your daughter’s friendship is valuable, and the friend’s parents may not fully appreciate how serious the injury and non‑communication felt to you.

The OP should calmly reach out to the friend’s parents, describe how their daughter’s injury and the lack of communication impacted the family’s trust, and ask whether they are willing to put in place explicit safety and reporting measures before allowing further sleep‑overs.

Meanwhile, the daughter can continue to spend time with her friend in more supervised or shorter contexts (like daytime visits at your house).

This approach keeps your child’s immediate safety priority while allowing the possibility of rebuilding trust rather than severing the friendship entirely.

In the daughter’s experience, she was hurt at someone else’s house, and her parent was not informed or involved in what happened.

By restricting further unsupervised overnight visits, the parent is reinforcing that trust and safety are non‑negotiable, even as they acknowledge the value of their daughter’s friendship.

Here’s the input from the Reddit crowd:

These commenters emphasize that the other mother acted irresponsibly by not contacting the OP immediately after the injury, especially given the severity of the situation.

These users acknowledge that nurses sometimes downplay injuries or shrug off symptoms, but they argue that the key issue was the lack of communication.

These users share the belief that the other mother’s decision to delay medical attention was misguided.

These commenters offer a slightly more lenient perspective, suggesting that it’s possible the other parent simply took a different approach to assessing injuries.

These commenters feel that the OP might have overreacted by banning the other child from future playdates without fully understanding the situation.

The OP’s protective instincts as a parent are completely understandable, especially after such a traumatic event involving their child. But is it fair to ban their daughter from her best friend’s house because of a situation that may have been an honest mistake?

Should the parents have acted differently, or is this an overreaction in an emotional moment? How would you handle a similar situation, would you trust the other parents, or would you take a firm stance like the OP did? Share your thoughts below!