5 year old with aggressive friend

[maisiemog]

Hi everyone,
I wonder if anyone can suggest anything I can do for my son. He is almost five and has a friend whom he adores. I have noticed that his friend has always been a bit on the wild side, he's a lovely boy, but is quite reckless and fearless in comparison with my little boy.

Recently the friend's parent's have separated and I think he is taking it very well, but have been keeping an eye on his behaviour and have noticed there is an increase in pushing, grabbing and acting out towards my little boy.

My little boy is quite vocal when he is angry and sometimes hits himself when he is very cross, but very, very seldom actually initiates any aggression towards other children. He sometimes reacts by becoming more rough but I often notice he is a bit confused by aggression from his friends. Sometimes when other children take things from him or hit him he kind of stands looking a bit dazed and confused and seems to be thinking or taking a long time to assimilate.
I notice that when he is experiencing rough play at nursery or on playdates, he becomes very rough and angry at home afterwards, this has increased since his friend's family broke up.

Basically, I wonder if there is anything I can or should do to help protect him or educate him whilst his friend is going through this very upsetting time. I just don't want to see him becoming a punch bag because of his nature.
Thank you for any input
Maisie

[One_Girl]

I think you should talk to his mom about the roughness and ask her if she has noticed it going both ways or just one. Then see if you can work out a plan together so you can both be more proactive when the violence starts.
My dd has a friend who was being very rude and he seemed bossy because he was yelling a lot for a while, but it turns out that he was being pushed over the edge by my dd who was controlling the entire play situation and not letting him have any say. He would complain all the time to his mom, when she talked to me about this I talked to my dd and helped her recognize when she needed to let her friend make choices and why she needed to do that. You should check in with the mom to make sure you aren't noticing only what her kid is doing.

[maisiemog]

Hi Onegirl thank you for your reply!

The friend of my son has three carers, his mother, his grandmother and his father, the grandmother spends the most time with him. She is aware that this boy is having trouble dealing with the parental split and they are all talking to him, but despite this he is still feeling angry and acting out at nursery school.
I do feel very sad for him and understand why he is lashing out, but I am concerned that my little boy doesn't have the skills to deal with this.

I think my main interest is in helping my son to develop skills to cope with aggression from other children when I am not around and even when I am.
I was wondering what strategies people have employed to help their children deal with other children's aggressive behaviour.
Sometimes, I can imagine my son's behaviour (not sharing, not allowing others to take turns at things) could cause other children to become angry, so I want to help him talk about that and think about how he can stop them becoming angry.

[rubidoux]

Originally Posted by maisiemog

I think my main interest is in helping my son to develop skills to cope with aggression from other children when I am not around and even when I am.
I was wondering what strategies people have employed to help their children deal with other children's aggressive behaviour.

I just asked for similar advice in the parenting forum, so I can't really address this. But I just wanted to say that we've had a similar situation, except my ds's friend was just kind of mean and passive aggressive towards him, behavior that was very obviously learned from her dad. I talked to the mom about it repeatedly for about a year, trying to convince her that it was a problem to almost no avail. So, at some point in there (and I wish I had just done this from the start) I limited my ds to seeing this friend no more than once a week (they were best friends and so were me and the mom, so we saw them quite a lot before that). If they were not so close I probably would have just stopped seeing them. But my ds really loves this little girl, so I feel that it wouldn't be right for me to cut them off entirely. It was not a perfect solution, for sure, as I have been really pretty lonely since we stopped spending time with them. But I do think she was wearing away at my son's self-image and I just did not feel comfortable allowing him to get used to being treated that way.

One thing I wish we could have done but didn't, maybe for lack of will power on my part, was to just be on top of the kids during playdates, listening and watching what was going on between them and stepping in when the dynamic was going wrong. And like the pp said, it might have been really valuable to see what my son's contributions to it were. I think that gets really hard though when the kids get to be five-ish and want to run and play and have some freedom.

[One_Girl]

I have taught my dd to say stop firmly and talked to her about standing up for herself in a respectful way. We did a lot of role playing, talking about when to get an adult, and talking about things that we can brush off and ignore. I also talk to her about the behaviors she needs to have to be a good friend. I wouldn't leave my dd alone with other children for playdates until I knew that she was able to be a good friend and was able to stand up for herself. It sounds like your son is not at this point and you need to help him get there while also making sure that he is being a good friend. I don't think you should assume that you know all of the ins and outs of his play behavior. I had no idea that my dd was so controlling and I was there supervising (not in hearing range though). If you aren't even supervising the playdates you really need more information before you can talk to him about what he needs to do to change his interactions with this friend.

I don't think four is the age to just let a kid go off and work things out on their own without any guidance. If you are tired and the playdates are a break then I think you should consider pre-school instead. You will have to pay but your child will get a lot of guidance and redirection as he learns how to be a good friend and stand up for himself. He isn't going to get this if you just talk to him and throw him to the other preschool age children.

[maisiemog]

One girl, I think I was unclear when I posted originally. The issue I have is when my son is at preschool not on playdates. I live in the UK and children routinely attend a daily preschool from three years of age.
There are 14 children and two nursery teachers and I imagine they don't have the ability to monitor the children at all times, so I was wondering about advising him on how to deal with challenging behaviour by himself and when to involve a teacher.
The teachers are aware of the problem with my son's friend and are taking steps to deal with his anger, but the children still play together at nursery by choice.
I wondered if any other parents had insights into how to advise children in dealing with difficult situations.
I like the idea of role play, do you use toys or just act the roles yourselves?
Or perhaps there are useful books for us to read together?
When we are at playdates of course the parents tend to step in to help resolve conflicts, but it's difficult to know how they behave when we aren't around.