AIBU to think 'hit them back' is inappropriate to tell a 5 year old?

[TRecks]

DS5 is autistic; dragonised young by NHS. Some v clear social and communication challenges. Struggled in nursery hugely.

Primary school has been far better. But he is always been on the outside & struggled. He is far happier in the company of girls but he (and all the other boys) refuse to play with girls. He actually like some of the girls and they like him but he refuses to play with them if the boys are near.

To cut a long story short, in the last month - the group of confident, loud boys have started running away from him whenever he goes near them. They take things from him. But mostly they just run away and pretend they can't see him. They have never been violent as far as I know.

Just been at kids party and DS spent most of it in tears. He often pretends everything is fine but this time he just cried and cried that the boys laugh at him, run away from him and spent it in my lap buried into my jumper.

I then persuaded him to go and play again, and saw with my own eyes all the boys run away as soon as he approached. He cried again and we went home

DH is now saying to DS 'you hit them back kid'. He is saying 'the other dads will tell their sons the same' . Nobody is hitting anyone at the moment and now of course DS is saying to me 'do I hit boys?' and DH is saying 'no, only if they hit you' but he's 5 and autistic and is now v confused as he is saying 'i thought hitting was bad'. DH just lecturing me that I don't understand boy dynamics and he needs to 'not be a victim' and he needs to show them he is not 'the weakest link'

What are people's views? It seems totally inappropriate and unhelpful to me. But I get that my current advice of 'be kind', tell the teacher etc isn't working and the boys are being cruel and DS is becoming increasingly upset at goiing to school.

I don't think it's ever appropriate to tell a child to do this (unless they were older and mugged or something)

I see this on here a lot, but I have never seen it in real life , actually working with kids.

What I have seen is proper , constant fights that keep going on and on.

Fights starting over a comment , or a look , or an accidental touch.

Kids crying for being in trouble because they escalated a situation.

Kids crying because they actually hurt someone over something stupid.

Boys, mainly, struggling with being a pretty decent kid and the "advice" from home to stand up for themselves, be a man , hit them back.

I've never , ever seen in 10 years, at various schools, an incident of punched once and nothing ever happened again.

Nobody should ever tell a child to hit. Honestly what is wrong with people. They look and complain about the increase of violence and ironically can't see the correlation.

Self defense isn't able hitting back. The first step is get away get help. The second stage of defence is about blocking, get away get help. Finally if trapped then and only then you use defence movements.

Telling a child who has communication challenges and expectation of insight beyond their age is very unfair.

Well thankfully my son has not had hands laid on him again (incident happened over a year ago) and I put this down to standing up for himself so whilst what you’ve mentioned is your experience I’m grateful it’s not been mine! When i say he put him on his backside I mean it. I was quite shocked that he had it in him as he is mild mannered and had never been involved in any sort of fight (other than being hit by this child on previous occasions) but I guess people snap.

i will say that the school was not impressed that DS had flattened the kid but my DH and I backed our son to the hilt and we made it clear he’d do it again if the child assaulted him again and we wouldn’t be reprimanding him as there were numerous witnesses including playground staff who saw the whole incident.

@forgotmypassagain so you can't see that your child has now assaulted another child?
Exactly how, now he has parental approval are you expecting him to differentiate the next time he has a run in. What if it is a younger child with Sen? with a peer name calling?

Because this is the problem you have created a child who now equates violence with problem solving. Congratulations

My child defended himself against another child assaulting him. HTH.

As a former autistic child and now autistic adult, I wish adults hadn’t told me ‘you must never hit back’ because that’s what my literal brain told me as the punches rained down on me on many occasions. Who benefited out of that?

I remember my now husband pummelling a guy in a pub who tried to glass him completely unprovoked when we were students and I just remember thinking ‘I would have died in that situation because I didn’t stick up for myself’. I was amazed he had time confidence to actually put this other guy in his place, because I wouldn’t have been able to do that.

I logged back into my MN account to write this because even as a 34 year old it sticks with me. Give your children permission to stick up for themselves. Some kids need a good slap back and they won’t try it again, and it’s easier to practice on a fellow gobby 8 year old shite than to have to do it the first time on a grown man.

Some people don’t understand that some people will push and push at boundaries until they feel the consequences. That’s a useful lesson for any kid to learn.

I think a lot of the ‘never hit back’ crowd have never been properly beaten up in their lives tbh.

No you gave your child a pass for violence. HTH.

We see it very differently then.

why should a child be repeatedly/ frequently assaulted by anyone and not defend themselves? Are you saying you’d allow yourself to be hit and not defend yourself? Would you tell others to accept it?

I doubt it.

You teach what I set out in my first post. You do teach a child to hit. Comparing an adult to a child tells me loads.

What happens when the bully comes back with his big brother?

We've told DD1 (5) that if someone is about to hit or hurt her, that she can push them away from her if she needs to. So not hitting back as that feels more like tit for tat, but I do think it's important that children feel they can defend themselves physically from being hurt/struck in the first place rather than just letting it happen and then going to find a teacher. Obviously she knows all the other stuff too: communication, telling a teacher.

But in your situation, with no one being hit in the first place, it seems pointless to even be discussing it. If he was being hit then you might have a discussion about how to physically protect himself as well as the importance of reporting it to teachers, playground assistants. But introducing the idea of hitting as a response to non-physical bullying isn't very smart of your DH and is just confusing, for a NT child too.