Help with DS6 - friends , rough play, minor bullying

[justwondering72]

Hello

I have a DS6 who is generally happy at school, has plenty friends and is doing just fine. The one blot on the horizon is that when we go to the park after school, he tries to join in a game of football with a few classmates and their big brothers, and one boy in particular tells him he can't, and 'makes' him be the referee. If Ds tries to join the game this boy leaps on him, wrestles etc until ds gives up. Outside the football, DS and this boy spend a lot of time running, wrestling and playing pretty rough, and they seem to get on well enough as they both love it, DS certainly gives as good as he gets.its just this football thing... I don't know why he does it.

Part of the problem is that i don't know how i should respond or intervene, if at all. Is it my place to step in and make them let DS join the game? I certainly want to try and curb some of the rough play, and football would be a great alternative.

A lot of my reaction to seeing my child being excluded from something is taking me straight back to my own childhood, feeling unpopular, not knowing 'the rules', occasionally being bullied. I find it hard to know if i am rsponding to this rather than to DSs, as DS has never asked me to intervene. He genuinely is a bit of an outsider as we live abroad and he is in the local school with local kids - they know his accent is different etc. plus i am not particularly confident in the local language, andi honestly dont know if i could intervene even if i wanted to. I know that if i was in the uk i would definitely speak to the group concerned, and likely would know their mothers enough to mention it in passing if necessary. As it is, i dont know any of the mothers beyong a polite 'hello'. So i definitely feel disempowered and a bit inadequate tbh.

Oh i dont know. Does this sound like bullying ? Any advice on what to do, if anything? and any advice on spearating my own feelings from dDS would be great too.

When you say DS6 - do you mean (as I would read it in normal MN speak) that this is your 6th DS?

Or do you mean a DS (age 6)?

Aged 6. Sorry I thought that was favoured away to do it on mn.

People do it either way, but more would use ds6 to mean 6th ds. I read it as age 6, because not many people have 6 dses.

Can you speak to his dm? Along the lines of: "I think your ds has got the idea that my ds likes to referree in football, and he's quite persistant that ds referrees. Actually he'd rather play, do you think you could have a quick word? They do get on so well other than this, it would be a pity to spoil their friendship over this."

If the dm is nice, she should be able to read between the lines and firstly have a word for your ds, and secondly, it may get her keeping an eye out for this happening, and interfering on your behalf.
If she's not going to do anything, you haven't given her anything to get nasty with you about, and then you at least know where you stand.

Tricky. He has a nanny, so I rarely see his mother. And the nanny had four of them to look after so she pays him very little attention , he is second oldest. And my spoken language is so poor I would really struggle to have that casual kind if conversion you are meaning, which I would do no problem in the UK. I actually think my angst is as much about feeling I am letting him down by not being able to interact normally with other parents, he's not actually unhappy and things of this boy as his friend.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. I know it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things!

Well if it was me I would go over to the boy and say don't be stupid, everyone plays there is no need for a referee!

If he insists then get your son to pipe up and say 'yeah that's pretty stupid, I'm off to go running, playing something else. See you next time"

I have lived abroad with my children and know exactly what you mean about the language barrier and meeting nannies rather than the Mums themselves. What I did was, got out my dictionary and phrase books and literally wrote down a few key sentences that captured what I wanted to say. This helps you to feel prepared in advance for the chat. I also figured that if I was meeting the nanny all the time, I should approach her, just as I would if I was meeting the mum herself.

My son was very confident but unsure about a playground issue. I approached the nanny, spoke my rehearsed lines and found that the nanny had problems controlling the child in question, and as a foreigner herself understood my language difficulties. She spoke to the boy and over the course of a few days, the problem was solved.

Try to think of it as a 'when in Rome' situation. There are new ways to approach problems in new places with new languages.