Is this normal and how do I handle it?

[StealthPolarBear]

Ds has just said when he was playing out earlier that a neighbours child threatened to punch him. Dd heard it as well.
Ds is 9, other child is ten.

I would be very wary of saying anything to the child or parents unless you know them. I confronted a child who had bullied my son. Just basically told him he was a little shit (he was about 14) and had previously beena friend of sons. It ended up with his father threatening my husband with an axe and the police being involved. The other father was fined £80.00, but he then followed by husband partway to work every morning for months, but the police couldn't do anything as there was no proof of any intent. The father has left our area but my husband is still wary of being out on his own and this happened 10 years ago. I know this was an extreme situation (the man was a complete loon). But i would just keep an eye on the situation.

lazyarse telling the child he is a little shit is never going to work out well is it? regardless of whether the child is or isn't (and he may well have been) your are going to piss off even a reasonable parent who might have been open to hearing your side and working constructively with you if your approach is just to tell their kid he or she is a little shit!

If you are going to talk to the parents you have to be opening a dialogue in which even if you are 99.9% sure your child is the wholly innocent victim you are open to hearing two sides and also working on the assumption the parents will be reasonable and want to work with you to sort out the situation, not just flinging personal insults! Clearly if for various reasons opening a dialogue in which you begin by assuming / hoping the parents will be reasonable and communicative and open minded is inappropriate or just something you don't want to do, you don't talk to the child or parents at all!

Schwab yes i admit i was out of order talking to him like that, but my son had just come home with a black eye and torn clothes and i just lost it. In hindsight i should have phoned the police and let them deal with it. But even an unreasonable parent wouldn't threaten someone with an axe.

Your daughter has told you that your son was annoying the other child.
The other child told him to go away. When he didn't and continued to annoy them he was threatened with being punched (nothing physical happened).

Think the other child needs to be told never to be physical or threaten it and you need to explain to your child how to be less irritating and if another child asks to be left alone then he should do so.

At the end of the day she is 10 and may be needs teaching how to deal with annoying kids that won't leave them alone.

Some kids don't know how to handle someone annoying them and not leaving them alone.

But your child needs to taught how to respect others. He may not have meant to be annoying but your dd said he was and so were they.

Threatening violence is never good, but not all kids can handle this type of situation well.

How would you feel if the parents come round and say your ds was bullying their dd by upsetting her and refusing to leave her alone?

When did dd say he'd been annoying them? And it was another child who told him to go away?
You don't think there's any chance they ganged up on him?

No I said he may have been irritating them. I have no reason to think he was in particular other than the fact they told him to go away and threatened to punch him.
They were all playing toget her in a group.

I am not saying what happened was ok or that they didn't hang up on him, I apologise if it came across that way.

You said he was irritating. My point is that if they were playing and he was annoying them and one of them told him to go away and he didn't, then it's not unheard of for a 10 year old to lose their temper and say something they shouldn't. And that girl may feel he was trying to upset them on purpose too.

Ah just re read. When I said he may have been irritating them I meant - I genuinely don't know what prompted mini rocky to make the comment she did. I accept I cannot rule out that he may have been irritating them. But I have no reason to believe that.

Anyway ds is going on holiday over easter with his family (inc cousins) who think he's marvellous. I hope the mean girls have so much homework to do they're stuck in their rooms all easter.

lazyarse I think probably police is the way to go with 14 year olds and actual violence (rather than just "he said this and I said that" reported stuff which between kids will would probably a waste of police time unless it was inciting others to violence or racism etc.)

Assault is assault and a 14 year old assaulting another 14 year old is the same as a 24 year old assaulting another 14 year old.

I agree the axe thing is nowhere in the realms of normal, just that really just intervening by telling a child or teen they are a little shit is only ever going to make things worse (or at absolute best achieve absolutely nothing at all).

I have twice talked to parents when I thought my kids were being picked on (DD was called a "Bloody Foreigner" and DS1 pushed and threatened)) and it has both times turned out to be not quite the situation I thought it was, so I am very glad I approached it diplomatically, or we'd have fallen out with the parents when my kids were not blameless either

DD had called the boy a "Stupid Farmer" and he retaliated with "Bloody Foreigner" - he is a farmer (well a farmer's son) though definitely not stupid and who knows how that came to be an insult, but it is clear it was meant as one in the moment, and she is a foreigner (well, a foreigner's daughter)and he apologised but said he couldn't think of anything else nasty to say back as he couldn't think of anything bad about DD! His mum and grandma actually cried when I told them what he had said to her as they had faced prejudice when they moved here from East Germany 25 years ago!

In DS's case it was as above and the boy was retaliating physically after weeks of verbal teasing and one of DS's friends damaging his school bag. Physical retaliation is never OK (he did knock the boy who was the main protagonist actually doing the teasing flying and he ended up being taken to A & E after hitting his head on the floor, but he was OK), but it meant that actually IMO the other 3 boys (including my DS who stood by and sometimes laughed and did not set himself apart from the others) were more in the wrong. We also found out that the poor older boy was losing his hearing (nobody other than his family and teacher knew at that point and he didn't have hearing aids, but the boy knew himself) and his younger brother, who he is usually inseparable from around the village - was due to go into hospital for a series of operations - again none of the teasing boys knew, but it made the lashing out so very easy to understand and be sympathetic to.

Have a good holiday Stealth

God this is very very normal in our street. They're just left to sort it out amongst themselves tbh. They're told to be nice and kind to each other and they don't actually hurt each other but if I, or the other parents, got involved at every bit of nastiness we'd be there all day. The kids in our street are 5-9 if that's relevant and all boys except Dd who is also the youngest. (I am out with her fwiw in case I'm accused of neglect)