To allow a friendship that involves DS being regularly hit in the face?

[BrightHorizons24]

My DS is 12
He has a friend, aged 12, who he really likes, who hits him in the face - a lot.
But it is never in anger. Never accompanied by swearing or shouting or arguing. No insults. No accusations. No verbals whatsoever.
DS says they are standing together, maybe chatting, maybe eating their morning snack at break, or sitting at lunch together, there's no problem, no bad atmosphere or anything, and literally, suddenly, the friend's arm suddenly hits out and he hits DS in the face with the back of his hand. He quickly and suddenly raises his arm up and out and wacks the back of his hand in to DS's face. Hard enough to hurt DS every time it happens.
Sometimes the friend apologises straight away afterwards and says "Oops sorry I didn't mean to do that" then carries on as he was beforehand. He doesn't apologise in a mortified way, he apologises in a matter of fact way. Sometimes he doesn't apologise but says nothing and carries on normally as though absolutely nothing has happened.
Mostly, he hits DS, DS gets cross and walks away, and later in the day the friend passes DS in the school corridor and smiles at him, says "Hey dude!!" with a big bright smile and holds his hand out to DS's hand and gives his hand a "Bro" shake (this is DS's vocabulary, not mine!!). This is a few hours after hitting him in the face.
This friend initiates hanging out with DS at school, seeks him out socially outside of school, greets him enthusiastically when he sees him, hugs him, is always putting his arm round DS's shoulders, and displays many actions of being a good friend to DS. DS says he's great company, fun, enjoys hanging out with him, they get on really well.....but he regularly gets hit in the face by him.
DS says he always hits in exactly the same way - it is always 1 arm held out straight without any warning and it suddenly flies upwards or outwards with force and the back of hand hits in to DS's face, hard.
When DS says "WHY DID YOU JUST HIT ME???" because it's always completely out of the blue, the friend doesn't answer, goes quiet, puts his face/head down, and doesn't respond.
DS said that he walked up to him this week, there was something he needed to tell him, and he thought to himself "I'm gonna quickly say what I've got to say and then duck down". He did exactly that. And sure enough, the friend hit out hard with his arm and hand, DS quickly ducked, and missed getting hit, whilst the friend's arm/hand hit the air. DS walked off and there was no retaliation. The friend didn't come chasing after him to hit him or anything like that.
DS said this week "I'm used to being hit by him now, he's always done it, but it didn't used to be very often, but now it's getting much much worse and more frequent since we started secondary school."
They've been friends for 2 years.
DS also reports that when they're in a calm environment together, this friend is happy, fun, relaxed, chilled out and really lovely towards DS, generously shares stuff with him, tells DS he's a really great friend, etc. But DS says if they're in an environment that's over stimulating, like the noisy school canteen or any crowded busy noisy area at school, or outside of school, the friend gets quickly and visibly irritable, snappy, agitated, starts swearing.
This friend has quite bad tics. He suddenly pushes his head down, face down, his neck goes very rigid and his right arm bends across the front of his body and kind of locks, and his expression fixes in to an intense stare. It's hard to describe. DS says when he's doing it you can't communicate with him, he can't answer anyone who is talking to him at the time. DS used to tell me about this happening a lot, and then I saw it a few times for myself. It's definitely an involuntary thing.
Is it possible to hit someone involuntarily??
It's always 1 hard arm action/hit. Always just once. Never twice. It's never a punch, his hand is never in a punch position, his hand is always flat. And he never changes the rest of his body position or movement. He sits still, or stands still, and hits 1 arm out hard and fast, whilst his other arm stays still.
The other day, DS was standing in the school canteen at break eating his toast. The friend came up to him and stood next to him eating his snack. DS said it was noisy, busy, bustling in there like always. Without warning, the friend whacked DS in the face whilst he was eating, it really hurt him and he got angry and raised his voice at friend and said "Why did you just hit me?! You're embarrassing yourself! Everyone's looking at you now! Don't hit me!" DS said lots of kids saw what happened, lots of them were indeed looking at the friend, and an older boy said "Calm down man, what are you doing? Don't hit him (about DS), he's a nice kid." Another older boy said to the friend "Chill out dude! There's no need for that! Relax!". DS said friend went bright red in his face ("scarlet red" according to DS) and went quiet.
I really do not know how to parent this.
Obviously, I don't want anyone hitting my DS. But it never seems to be in an aggressive argumentative way.
DS is feeling really confused and I can see it's now starting to upset him. He keeps bringing it up at home and is really asking me for my advice about how to handle things when the friend hits him, and he is asking me if he should carry on being friends or if he should end the friendship. He's torn because he gets a lot out of the friendship - when he's not being hit!
I need to be really careful about what I model to my DS. It is never ever ok for someone to hit you. But DS values his friendship and they have a lot of really fun happy times together.
I can't discuss with the friend's parents, I don't know them at all.
I think what I'm asking mumsnet is, do I advise DS to stop being friends with this kid because it's never ok to be hit and also its not healthy to have a friend who is completely unpredictable in their behaviour, or is there a condition I've never heard of that causes children to do 1 single involuntary hard hitting out of the arm in to the face of another child who is standing or sitting next to them at the time, that is a condition that I should be sympathetic towards??
Has anyone got any experience of this?
**Just as an extra, DS has literally just a few mins ago told me, just after I've typed all this out, that last week this friend actually attacked him - barging him, hitting him, pushing him, and DS said "his face changed, it went weird " and said the friend was making "growling noises". DS said the friend was repeatedly hitting him with both hands so DS grabbed hold of both his wrists, held his arms down and said "STOP!" The friend carried on making strange noises but didn't fight or push back against DS holding his both his wrists down, DS held his wrists until he saw that the friend started to relax and calm down, then DS let go of him and walked away. The friend didn't do anything further, just stood there silently. DS has only just told me this!! Says it has never happened before.
What is going on?!

No, I don't know "this fucking kid". I do, however, have direct experience with this exact problem, as I detailed earlier in the thread and the OP's DS responded saying that's exactly what it's like.

And, despite your desire to turn this into "a virtue signalling pantomime", I actually offered ways to manage it which don't involve socially destroying a 12yr old - because there are ways to manage this so that everybody gets what they want. At no point did I say it's OK for OP's DS to get hit in the face.

You might want to read the whole thread with a view to improving your reading comprehension instead of just cherry-picking the bits that appeal to your confirmation bias.

We've been in this situation. Being understanding for our DC being hit, trying to support my DC through it.

One day it went too far. My DC was sobbing. I woke up to that I was teaching my child that being hit was ok. Which was mad!

I woke up to realising that I needed to emphasise that friends are kind to you.

I spent time to teach my child that they needed to find friends that were kind to them, and to stick with them.

This has stood them in good stead.

I know that you and your DC are kind people. But please support him to step away. It is not his job to support children that hit him.

I agree with @Mintleafcocktail.

With my questions around triggers for the boy's actions eg does he know he's doing it etc I was not implying it is your son's responsibility to deal with this. This is up to the school of course, and I agree it's important that your son is safe and knows hitting is never okay and keeps a distance until it is safe to go near the boy.

But, since your son shows interest, appears to have empathy and some understanding that this might not be intentional and is also the boy's friend, I think it is also okay for you and your son to talk about this and educate yourselves around what is going on. When speaking to the school, part of the conversation could be around whether the boy gives permission to share his diagnosis in which case you and your son could learn about it to try and understand things more. This is because your son appears to show interest anyway, and I don't think it's as black and white as to say 'stay away from this boy' and never talk about it again.

But yes - what I should have said in my earlier post and didn't - your son has to be told that safety comes first and hitting is never okay as under no circumstances, whatever the cause for the hitting, is it okay.

@Dancin But yes - what I should have said in my earlier post and didn't - your son has to be told that safety comes first and hitting is never okay as under no circumstances, whatever the cause for the hitting, is it okay.

Thank you. Yes, absolutely 100% I have told this to DS and am reinforcing it daily. He says he knows he should never be hit. There was another kid, a friend, who hit him hard and DS has never spoken to him again and never goes near him since then, says he'll never be friends with him again because he hit out in anger/rage. He says this friend is different and needs help, and that he doesn't want to abandon him.

What have school said??!!!

In fairness to the child who is doing the hitting the school do need your feedback. Whatever his problem is he needs to have some help with it before he becomes a large muscly teenager and does some real damage and finds himself in trouble. You can help this process by making sure the school know what is going on. It is not doing him a kindness to keep quiet about it - he can only be helped if people know exactly what is going on.

My ds13 has tics. Have gotten worse since secondary. Same thing, hitting out randomly. I stopped reading the first few replies because they surprised me that people could be so unkind.

Ds’s friends are aware. If he hits them they either ignore or hit him back. If he makes noises in class they’ve got his back with a supply teacher who doesn’t know about them. Makes me realise how lucky we all are that he’s got these great friends.

I wonder if the trigger is that the boy is already 99% overwhelmed but masking and then your son initiating conversation/adding a layer of speech and sound is the final straw? In that it is kind of an aggressive version of "talk to the hand" for an instant until he can realise it is him/process the speech and wrest back control?

Getting worse in secondary would be standard for quite a few ND conditions in which the school environment is a big stressor.

Sounds like a tic. My son had tics but never hit (actually he'd hit himself, not others though). I wouldn't want to be friends with someone though if he hurt me. Being hit is not OK. Even if it is a tic.

A few people do that but lots don't swear. My sons repetative word tic was a cartoon character.

@swayingpalmtree agree with this

As a grown-up you wouldn't tolerate being hit so why should your son or any child? It's simple, avoid the "friend" and move on. Hang around people that make you feel good - that's friendship.
Don't waste your time on trying to understand it - you'll exhaust yourself.
Don't over complicate this one and it's also not your job to diagnose.

But that's not how tourettes works though is it?

It's not 'deliberate' but it's not random either is it? When somebody with tourettes shouts "fuck off fatty" to an overweight person they're not doing it on purpose but it's clearly targeted in some way.

Totally NOT an expert in tourettes or anything, but I seem to remember reading an interview with a sufferer and they said that basically a thought will come into their head which is as though you asked them "What is the most inappropriate and awful thing you could say right now?" and then it bubbles up and struggles to come out. Which is why it seems "targeted" - it's not targeted as such it's just that it tailors to the situation.

We all have inappropriate thoughts. Most people can easily suppress them and not say or do them.

I meant 'targeted' as 'tailored' really. In that it targets situational aspects. It kinda sounds like intrusive thoughts but with added compulsive behaviour.

I sometimes get intrusive thoughts. I'm not sure whether it's my ADHD or the 'obsessive behaviour' (or was it 'compulsive') that was also observed when diagnosed by an educational psychologist years ago.

Sometimes I'm in say a job interview and just get an odd thought like 'what if I just punched her in the face?' That's the most common one alongside variations involving cutlery.

The worst ones give me a weird sort of cringing feeling, like a shudder of revulsion, but I know I won't do anything. Some of the thoughts are really horrible like pushing people in front of trains or throwing a baby on the floor, yet I'm an otherwise normal, successful person with plenty of mates and I actually possess an oddly exaggerated sense of empathy.

Sorry got a bit off track....

I always wondered to what extent other people have similar thoughts. I don't think weird thoughts are uncommon. It's whether they're acted upon.

You really need to tell the school. Don't put the responsibility for dealing with this on to a 12 year old. Just email/ring and tell them what you have told us. It does sound like Tourettes, and the school can get the experts involved and put measures in place to stop it happening. Your son can't stop it by himself.

I think your DS needs to have a chat with his friend away from school and say he understands that the hitting is not voluntary but... they need to come up with a plan between them so it doesn't happen.

Not standing so close to each other or within range in stressful environments for example.

If the friend is willing to give that a go and be (to a degree and where relevant) open with your DS about whats going on, I think a friendship could be possible.

If he is not yet in a place where he can mitigate his disability such that it doesn't hurt his friends... then probably not.

It does absolutely sound like a tic to me and yes, they can be triggered by environment and context... stressful environment + your DS close enough/face in range = tic. Please ignore the people so confidently stating it can't be a tic, it very much can be and everything else you've said fits!

@Sometimeswinning If it was really random it wouldn't get OP's son square in the face every time, would it?
There is plenty of OP's son to hit his shoulders, hands, neck how is it possible to get him the same spot every single time? Maybe I am clumsy. But I couldn't do that even if I tried. I'd miss sometimes!

@BrightHorizons24 well, did your son particularly like the other kid that hit him? Does he have many friends in general? He seems to like this boy, so puts up with the hitting. but that doesn't make it right.

He doesn't have to 'abandon' him but maybe, idk. don't walk next to him or something? Don't put his face in range of the hand. They can talk on the phone or whatever.

This is all very strange. And none of you are doing hitting boy any favours by not raising this. You think people will be so understanding as an adult?

All it takes is for him to hit the wrong person, involuntarily or otherwise, and get the shit beat out of him. Or worse, stabbed/hit over the head with a bottle and seriously concussed. This needs to be seen as a real problem, not something to be ignored.