Ds is nearly 4. He can be a challenging child in that he is clingy and demands constant attention. He is prone to huge crying fits and can be very whinny which is a severe strain on my patience. He is quite intelligent and very verbal (he is bi-lingual). We have our issues. His aggression, however is not really an issue. He never went through the biting, kicking, hitting stage of toddlerhood. He has a 16 month old sister who he has very rarely intentionally hurt and only hurt when she has ruined his game or taken his toy. He does take things from her and make her cry. IMO he dispalys a normal amount of aggressive behaviour for his age.
We sometimes have playdates with another family whose mother is a good friend of mine. As we don't have a lot of things in our lives for ourselves this is a good chance to have a chat and the kids are often left to their own devices. Naturally incidents of hitting, crying and fighting occur. For sometime now, I've been feeling that my friend feels that my child is somehow to blame for the incidents. When we talk about things, she says things like 'Well, it's interesting that X would never say that, he only does that when your son is around'. Most recently, an incident happened that I just can't stop thinking about.
The boys were playing and we were having coffee, not knowing what the kids were doing. Turns out they were playing with bricks! We found out because her son ran over in tears because a brick had apparently fallen on his finger. I guess he was in a lot of pain and cried a lot. After some time, he said to my son, 'I don't want to play with you anymore'. My son being the needy soul that he is started crying. I assumed that the brick had been in my son's hands and had fallen onto the other boy's hand so in his mind my son was to blame. Anyway eventually they calmed down and went onto play together happily again.
I didn't give it a second thought until the next time I saw my friend which was 2 weeks later and so difficult to discuss with my ds as it happened too long ago in his memory. We were discussing the challenges I'm facing with ds at the moment when she said 'you know that brick incident was really serious'. She said that her son had continued to complain about his finger so she'd referred to the doctor who'd said it was some kind or fracture. Basically she was saying that my son had caused this to happen to her son and then cried to save himself from admonision when her son had said he wouldn't play with ds. I also felt that she was somehow annoyed with me for not admonishing my child, even though we hadn't seen what had happened.
Even if we admit the worse case scenario, my son deliberately hit another child with an object (which I find hard to believe, I mean how could he lift the brick and aim the throw accurately enough!?), the seriousness of the incident hinges on the gravity of the injury which was as a result of the weight of the object. The kids shouldn't have been playing with bricks so we as mothers have to take responsibilty for that.
I admit my son is no angel and I cannot guarantee that he will never hit the other child again. I think that's part and parcel of kids growing up and learning how to interact.
Now part of me doesn't want to have anymore playdates with them. On the other hand we are good friends and the boys are good friends too. We live overseas and it's difficult to meet like-minded people whose company you enjoy. So I don't really want to foresake these relationships but likewise I don't want to be made to feel that my son has behavioural problems and that my parenting style is inadequate.
Any thougts on the incident, how it was handled and where to go from here?
We sometimes have playdates with another family whose mother is a good friend of mine. As we don't have a lot of things in our lives for ourselves this is a good chance to have a chat and the kids are often left to their own devices. Naturally incidents of hitting, crying and fighting occur. For sometime now, I've been feeling that my friend feels that my child is somehow to blame for the incidents. When we talk about things, she says things like 'Well, it's interesting that X would never say that, he only does that when your son is around'. Most recently, an incident happened that I just can't stop thinking about.
The boys were playing and we were having coffee, not knowing what the kids were doing. Turns out they were playing with bricks! We found out because her son ran over in tears because a brick had apparently fallen on his finger. I guess he was in a lot of pain and cried a lot. After some time, he said to my son, 'I don't want to play with you anymore'. My son being the needy soul that he is started crying. I assumed that the brick had been in my son's hands and had fallen onto the other boy's hand so in his mind my son was to blame. Anyway eventually they calmed down and went onto play together happily again.
I didn't give it a second thought until the next time I saw my friend which was 2 weeks later and so difficult to discuss with my ds as it happened too long ago in his memory. We were discussing the challenges I'm facing with ds at the moment when she said 'you know that brick incident was really serious'. She said that her son had continued to complain about his finger so she'd referred to the doctor who'd said it was some kind or fracture. Basically she was saying that my son had caused this to happen to her son and then cried to save himself from admonision when her son had said he wouldn't play with ds. I also felt that she was somehow annoyed with me for not admonishing my child, even though we hadn't seen what had happened.
Even if we admit the worse case scenario, my son deliberately hit another child with an object (which I find hard to believe, I mean how could he lift the brick and aim the throw accurately enough!?), the seriousness of the incident hinges on the gravity of the injury which was as a result of the weight of the object. The kids shouldn't have been playing with bricks so we as mothers have to take responsibilty for that.
I admit my son is no angel and I cannot guarantee that he will never hit the other child again. I think that's part and parcel of kids growing up and learning how to interact.
Now part of me doesn't want to have anymore playdates with them. On the other hand we are good friends and the boys are good friends too. We live overseas and it's difficult to meet like-minded people whose company you enjoy. So I don't really want to foresake these relationships but likewise I don't want to be made to feel that my son has behavioural problems and that my parenting style is inadequate.
Any thougts on the incident, how it was handled and where to go from here?
