Advice on what to say to 5yo

[knicksfan]

Ds has just turned 5. We were at a birthday party today and a child kept following him around slapping him. My son was upset and I couldn't see the child's parents anywhere but he looked like he had additional needs and didn't really have awareness of what he was doing.
I tried to handle this sensitively with ds and explain but it's difficult to know exactly what to say right there in the moment.
All I could come up with was "I don't think he understands" and " he might not understand he is hurting you like you would".

I felt like I was crap in the moment. How do you explain to a 5 year old?

Did you speak to the child during the party?

Honestly unless your dc brings it up or seems to still be bothered by it i would leave it

I often say "he's still learning how to do the right thing, or how to be a good friend". Depends on the situation and who else is around etc.

Are you more worried that you didn't reassure your DS enough or that you didn't handle the special needs aspect sensitively?

I didn't speak to the child during the party as he was hitting and then running off and I couldn't work out who he was with. My son was quite upset on more than one occasion and saying things like "he's hitting me on purpose" so I was trying to explain but yes worried I may not have done this sensitively enough or just that the right words didn't come out there and then. I just felt like I didn't say the right thing.

I think you did pretty well already. Making a huge deal of the special needs would probably have been unnecessary. You can just remind him that kids are all at different stages of understanding how to behave. If he keeps pushing the point with questions you can explain the specifics of a kid's condition and why certain things might be hard for them but in this case you don't know the specifics.

I think you'd only be wrong if you started saying things like what a bad boy, he's got very bad behaviour, etc. Or getting angry and upset yourself. Your response seemed fine to me, under the circumstances.