To be really concerned about a six year old threatening to kill other kids and their parents?

[Octonaut4Life]

I need to hear from other parents/teachers about this I think. A few weeks ago my son, who is newly turned six, seemed to be getting more resistant to going to school. Eventually it turned out that a child in his class, who he plays with a lot, had been saying things like "I'll kill you" a lot to him - for example, if my child didn't want to play a certain game etc. We reported it to the school and were told the headteacher had dealt with it. My son seemed to brighten up again after a while, and it seemed this child was being much nicer to him. However from what my son says, the child frequently behaves really poorly and has physically assaulted other children.

Today my son came home and didn't seem himself. Apparently this child today said twice that he would kill my son and his mum and dad. My son says he told a lunchtime supervisor about this at the time, but the other kid denied it and the supervisor believed him. He didn't tell his class teacher who would have known about the history, and presumably the supervisor didn't tell her either.

I don't want to overreact but to me this feels like really abnormal and shocking behaviour for a six year old? The first time, I suppose I thought well - kids repeat things they've heard and perhaps don't understand the weight of it. But for him to be saying it again so soon and escalating it to now being a threat to the whole family, plus the other behaviour, feels very worrying and my son is unsurprisingly very upset. I guess I want to check what others feel is a proportionate reaction in this instance?

We've written to the school and spoken to DS and said it's probably best if he doesn't play with this child any more if he is so unkind. The child is supposed to be going to DS's birthday party in a week - do we uninvite him? What's reasonable to expect from the school in this instance? Is this kind of behaviour more normal among kids this age than I think? I really need external opinions. Thank you.

That's horrible.

There are many, many steps between a dysregulated 6 year old and an abusive adult. Uninviting a little kid from a party is the lowest of the low - he is too young to understand.

Also the OP has no idea what's driving tis behavior. He might just be a little rat, but maybe he has a family member that's dying. Maybe he's autistic and struggling. Maybe all sorts of things. If you can't give a 6 year old baby the benefit of the doubt who can you?

Remember James Bulger?

“Oh honey he can’t kill me look at him and look at me I’m three times his size and daddy’s five times his size”

”next time he says he’ll kill you say not if I kill you first” (assuming the boy isn’t twice as big and strong as your son which does leave you in a more tricky situation if he’s violent I get it because I was the smallest kid in class)

Pandering to this nonsense? Oh be kind speech? Linking a six year old saying they’ll kill someone with police force misogyny and incompetence? Not sure what you are talking about.

A child of six has does something wrong. He needs to be told by his school. By his parents. Face appropriate consequences for his behaviour. That’s it. They are the ones to deal with it. Absolutely dont invite the kid to the house for play dates if they’re not friends or because he said this but to hand out the extra future punishment of party exclusion on top of a bollocking from school and parents? To be excluded from a party with classmates who he is in school with day in day out is something else. It’s shit for everyone involved including the OP child who will be saying “you’re not coming to my party” and will be in a class with that kid till they’re 11.

Telling six year olds they can change their mind about who’s coming based on guests behaviour between the invitation going out and the party is pathetic and writing off a child at age six for the next five years of their school life together for saying a bad thing seemingly once and being ‘boisterous’ is too. We can agree to disagree.

First off this is not ok for your son and I think you should follow up on every incident. In my experience in school I work in this will escalate without any intervention. It happened to my son and eventually he became very overwhelmed with it.
Put every incident in writing to the school, they can and will ignore conversations.
I work in an ASD classroom and this would be very common with our pupils.

Yes. SENCO here. Please let the school know so they can record it on their safeguarding site.

I am surprised the school has not noticed this dysregulation/language but I know that at unstructured times like break, lunch and the playground this is when these incidents happen.

If it is causing your son anxiety please let the class teacher know. Maybe the little boy does not present any problems in class as it tightly structured but they can then keep and eye out.

I was walking past the school (it's adjacent to a park I frequently go to) just as the police vans were arriving.

A six year old is unlikely to have the physical strength to kill anyone so I wouldn't take it seriously as a threat. It could be something they have heard from TV/computer games, maybe not age appropriate, OTOH even some children's cartoons have the use of "I'll kill you" against "bad guys", child-friendly games like Super Mario have lives and enemies who can be "killed", and it is also a really common joking threat to use colloquially - "He's borrowed my straighteners again? I'll kill him!" - this is also in children's programmes, because it's such a commonly used phrase. Perhaps less so in modern ones, but there are still older programmes from 15-20 years being replayed and nobody used to think anything of it before the Tiktok algorithm led to people using "unalive" instead. And it is used in news reports e.g. "Three people were killed today by...." so it is not necessarily such a taboo word that a 6yo should not understand how to use it. As others have said, some children with difficulties regulating their emotions/behaviour will use verbal threats as a way to express distress or try to say the most shocking thing they can think of.

Making the school aware is a good idea, as they have safeguarding training and they can use it to build a picture if it's something which needs escalating. If you are particularly concerned about a child you can ask for the info to be passed to the DSL (designated safeguarding lead).

I agree it's not a nice thing for him to say and the school should address it from a behaviour perspective, and if he has SEN then support from that angle so he's not getting into the dysregulated state where he feels he has to lash out.

I would sympathise with your son that it's not nice for someone to say those things to him and encourage him to tell a teacher if he is upset by something any child says, and to take a break from playing with somebody who is being mean to him. You could also reassure him that although this child is sometimes naughty and hurts people and he should not do that (and again, tell teacher if he sees anything like this) that whatever he says, this child would not be able to kill anybody because grown ups would stop him, and that grown ups don't kill people because they know that if they did, they would go to prison.

I wrote that earlier and failed to send it. The incident with the 13yo is very upsetting but I don't think it is especially helpful for this situation. A 6yo is not 13. Yes the school should be aware, but I don't think it's helpful for OP's son to hear about incidents like that. While they do happen, they are incredibly rare.

Thing is you have no idea what’s going on/gone on in that boys life. I work with traumatised children and they display a lot of these behaviors.

report to school and manage your sons feelings around this but don’t go out of your way to punish a 6 year old you don’t know anything about.

I would definitely uninvite - your loyalty has to be with your DS, protecing him and sending a strong message, not convention - and, as pp noted, having the boy at the party would be a very confusing message for your DS.

Als, as Gunsgunsguns suggested above, this could easily be done indirectly

It's interesting to see that making unfounded theories about the possibly causes if bullying is more important to many than stopping it. I wonder why.

It really does not matter here, OP asked how to support her own, currently bullied child.

Could you provide a link to this, please?

It's been all over TV News.

I wouldn't uninvite, I would request his parents stay though.

Why do grown adults use phrases like
" physically assaulted" to describe the behaviour of 6 year old children? And talking about " threats to kill"? He's an INFANT.

Does your son now want the boy at his party? If not then ask the parents to find somewhere else to take him that day. If your son still wants him there than you try to have an adult near him at all times and that adult corrects any bad behaviour they see, including taking him for a time out if they feel it's necessary.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cge8yxpj7e1o

A six year old is perfectly capable of causing bodily harm and death!