What to do if you don’t like your kid’s pal

You don’t like your tween’s new friend. Should you step in?

“You can’t control your kid’s choice of friends,” said Betsy Brown Braun, parent educator and author of “You’re Not the Boss of Me,” coming out soon.

“The more you forbid, the more appealing the friend becomes — kind of like television and sugar.”

Which doesn’t mean you should remove yourself from the equation. Just enter it wisely.

“The first thing to remember is, friendships fluctuate. This is not forever,” Braun said. “Second is to ask yourself, ‘What’s going on with this friendship? What is this about?’ Maybe your child is saying, ‘I want more freedom. I need a little more independence.’

“It could be that friend has personality traits that are appealing because your child wishes he could be more that way. Or, sometimes you want to be friends with the thing you most fear — better it should hug you than bite you.”

Ask yourself what being friends with this person means to your child,

Next, give your child some time to see how the friendship affects his life.

“Experiencing a range of friendships is the way kids figure out who they like and what they like, what’s a good idea and what’s not such a good idea, what happens to me when I’m friends with this type of guy,” Braun said.

“A lot of growth happens as kids go in and out of friendships. They learn all kinds of stuff about their own behavior, about other people’s points of view, about guilt by association. As a parent, you don’t want to take away from your child’s ability to make those observations.”

But what if you still need to step in?

“Express your concerns respectfully,” Braun said. “’I’ve seen that Seymour takes a lot of risks’ or ‘Seymour speaks to people disrespectfully. In our family that’s not OK.’”