Ok so I haven't actually done this! and I feel really guilty about the thought of doing it, but it's the only solution I see working for us.
My just turned five-year-old has been in a judo club since September, he really enjoys it and it's really good exercise. The instructor is generally very nice but there's one little boy in the class who constantly targets my son aggressively. He's two years older than mine, but the same size so they're often paired together.
He really inappropriately hits and stamps on him (usually in the neck and groin) but only when he thinks no one is looking.
My son doesn't cry about it, he either ignores it or tells him not to do it but in a kind of high pitched anxious way, that to someone who hadn't seen what had happened leading up to it, would make my son look like he was winding this boy up.
He's never been bruised or anything like that. We didn't mention anything when it first happened because we thought it would pan out and my Father was was coming with me and didn't want me to make a fuss (I don't think he believed me and thought I was being over protective) even though my Mother's Instinct told me I should, and I now regret not saying.
2 weeks ago it happened again and the other boy threw my son on the floor (which is natural for judo) but then proceeded to stand on his groin and his neck. The instructor never sees, so I had to actually go out on the mat and intervene (after he ignored me telling over to him and making eye contact with him telling him to stop).
The instructor then told me that he's had to talk to the boy's father before because he has had issues with other children, where he tries to hurt them constantly. For the rest of the class he then tried to target my son and make sure he couldn't take part in any of the tag games and would just hover by him so no one could release him from tag and was just generally not very nice to the point where some of the the older children again started to push him about, because all they could see that he was not being very nice. It's such a strange thing though, because he will sit there and smile and shimmy next to my son with a big smile on his face as if they're friends, and when my son puts his arm around him or goes to give a high five or something in return, he punches him in the neck. My son has only just turned five so he's been four through all this and has no idea that it's not appropriate because he does it with a smile on his face and my son genuinely thinks that they are friends.
After the last session I explained he wasn't his friend because friends don't do that, and that actually upset my son more than the violent behaviour itself. I just don't want him to think that it's appropriate and I also worry that he is actually going to get hurt in one of the sessions by this boy, so it's been building gradually for a while (some sessions have been OK hence it hasn't been addressed sooner).
It's got the point now where I'm not comfortable with him being in a class with the other little boy anymore, because my son genuinely doesn't understand that he's not his friend and this little boy will just target him every single class, so we can't keep them separate.
The instructor has had to speak to the father about it before, for another child so this obviously isn't an isolated incident I feel like the only way we can keep going to the class is if he was removed, but I feel absolutely terrible suggesting that. We do like the class and the location is great, and I feel like if we were to find another club it's only a matter of time until he gets banned anyway and then moves on to the next place.
The father never sits and watches the lessons, he will go to the coffee shop that's joined on to the never sees anything happening although he has spoken to my father on the sideline before and apparently he split up from his partner and just takes him on the days that he has him. So I'm also a little bit concerned about why he's behaving that way and why is he targeting the groin and neck... is that happening to him at home? So ultimately I feel really sorry for this little boy, but I can't have him doing that to my son all the time.
We haven't been for 2 weeks now, and they posted a picture on Facebook this week without the little boy in it, saying 'classes open as usual' so I don't know whether he was just off that session or has left. And whether it's coincidence that they've posted a pic leaving him out (I said we'd be back after the last incident but then decided against it).
I know I should have mentioned it sooner, and for now we've just pulled him out of the class. But I was debating suggesting that if this boy carries on the way he is and ends up being removed from the class, then we would probably go back?