To the majority of posters - He's 12, not 5. He's over the age of criminal responsibility and should be able to control his violent responses and if not, negative consequences should result.
At what point are we saying physical assault is unacceptable and should have serious consequences that actually mean something negative to the young person?
Regardless of provocation, until we as a society all agree physical assault is unacceptable and should be dealt with by negative consequences, what are we doing?
Until we all say nope, never acceptable, there'll always be violence.
And at what age? If we say secondary school as the OPs boy is, at what age should we expect people to not physically assault others? If it's not 12 then when? 13? Because with every arbitrary age there will always be people that say well yes 12/13/14 but we need to take into consideration if it's 12 and 2 days or 12 and 350 days. And take into account ND and MH and trauma and this and that.
And in the meantime, I live in a city where three 15/16 year old boys were murdered by other teenagers in a month and another 16 year old stabbed so severely he is fighting for his life in intensive care. In the span of a month.
Because all of those teenagers all think they were justified in their perpetrating violence or murder on other kids. Because those other kids did or said x, y or z.
And it's not just my city. Teen violence and murder has exploded across the UK and it's not all poor kids, gang kids, criminal kids or whatever else people say to reassure themselves it won't happen to their kids, it's happening all the time and something we all should be worried about.
It might seem dramatic of me or thread drift but it isn't. As long as we say "kids fight" "they're provoked" "it's 50/50" "bullying results in the victim retaliating physically and that's understandable" "bullied kids will carry knives for protection" then we're all screwed quite honestly.
We have to say violence is never, ever acceptable and if you act violently, there should be immediate negative consequences that have a real effect.
We're dealing with an epidemic of youth violence and murder.
And overall increae in aggression and violence from young people and adults to peers, partners, family, teachers, Police, healthcare staff, transport staff, shop staff and on and on.
Until we say "never acceptable" to violence and there is a negative consequence, there's no incentive to not repeat the behaviour.