ds1 is 5.8 and is sometimes too rough with his school friends younger siblings. He doesn't seem to intentionally hurt them, and is always apologetic and tells me he will try harder not to hurt them, but it seems that he finds it hard to differentiate between his friends and the younger kids.
We often hang around in the school playground after school, and 90% of the time it's fine, it's just the other 10% that's a problem. For example, today his friends younger brother, who can be pretty boisterous himself, ran up to ds1 to "hug" him, so ds1 pushed him off, knocking him to the ground. His mum had a bit of a go at ds1 and told him to apologise and that he was just trying to hug him. On the walk home, I told him he needs to be more gentle but his side of the story was that he hugged him too roughly and he didn't mean to knock him over, just get him off. I explained to him that he should have just asked him to get off, not hit out.This is just one example of the kind of thing that happen too often for my liking. I don't know how else to deal with it other than telling him off, reminding him to be gentle/more careful etc, but i'm sick of having to remind him of something I feel he should know by now. His school friends just seem to "get" that you are more gentle with younger children than ones your own age. Maybe he's actually being spiteful and pretending they are accidents?
By the way, he is pretty gentle with ds2, sometimes gets too rough etc but nothing to worry about.
Advice much appreciated!