How to help with DS' immaturity?

[BlurMeUp]

My 10y old DS is rather immature. Constant silliness - never serious - stupid voices - makes errors on purpose for a laugh.

He has lovely fiends but they are drifting away as they mature and he isn't / doesn't.

He's being labelled as a pest at school.

How can I help him? We are not like this at all. DH, DS(14) and I are quite bookish and quiet. Our home is quiet without distractions - we watch TV but there's no YouTube etc.

Younger DS has hobbies and a structure to his life. But nothing seems to leave a mark and help him.

He's only 10. Who is labelling him as a pest, and what exactly is he doing? Can you give some examples of his immaturity that are worrying you?

I know kids like this. I don't think you can make him be different. All you can do I think is to boost his self esteem so it's not driven by low self esteem / attention seeking. It's hard on kids labelled annoying. What do school say?

10 year olds are not meant to be serious. It sounds like your children (and you) are at extreme opposite ends of the scale and that's why it seems so 'bad' to you.

How can I help him? We are not like this at all. DH, DS(14) and I are quite bookish and quiet. Our home is quiet without distractions - we watch TV but there's no YouTube etc

Maybe he's terminally bored and making his own entertainment. How mature is a 10 year old supposed to be?

How can I help him? We are not like this at all. DH, DS(14) and I are quite bookish and quiet. Our home is quiet without distractions - we watch TV but there's no YouTube etc.

What strikes me is that you probably can't help him. You are a quiet bookish person who likes a quiet environment without distractions. For many people, probably including your son, that is not what they enjoy or want to be. So he isn't seeing the kind of social interaction he wants being modelled at home, and he is floundering a bit at present, but he will catch up gradually even if he has to learn the hard way from his friends and their families.

But it is important for you not to equate being quiet and booking with maturity. A person can mature without being either of these things.

How is your DS performing academically? Sometimes kids play the clown to cope with feeling insecure or like they're not able to keep up academically. Obvs this might not be the case for your DS at all.

This might be something that resolves when he has to move up to high school in a couple of years. In the meantime I would just be careful to make sure that he isn't lonely or being ostracised by other kids.

What does he have outside school? Is he the type that needs to be active, run ragged doing sport, pulling things apart and putting them back together again? Does he need to climb trees and dig holes? Is his intellectual curiosity being satisfied?

Maggie Dent, Celia Lashlie and Steve Biddulph are all good resources.

@sadsack78 Yes - it's the helping him not being ostracised bit I'm struggling with.

It's hard to describe, but examples would be while his friends are talking about a film, he'll talk about another film over them - he doesn't listen and join the natural conversation.

In a school session on Hadrian's wall. He interrupts with "I'd kick it down. Ha ha ha". His peers are all beyond that - he's not.

We have play dates here and I see kids getting bored by his endless chatter about rubbish. If they are building Lego, he'll build and smash it up - not just build. Or suggest they build something silly.

He does a lot of sporty things - rugby, swimming etc.

School aren't concerned as academically he's bright and more than keeps up. And he's in a class with a lot of disruptive kids and kids with difficulties at home causing behaviour issues (very large class).