Hello! Wondering if anyone can offer advice please. My 5 year old DS has a ‘best friend’ who he has know since being a bump. They’re two weeks apart in age and have always had lots of play dates together from being babies to now. They went to the same nursery and are now in the same class at school. The issue is, my DS is quite sensitive, quite loud but not dominant, cries easily in situations which don’t go his way. His friend is the extreme opposite - bossy, dominant, angry in situations which don’t go his way. As they’re growing older, the dynamic is really changing and DS’s friend does things I’d almost class as bullying (pinches his things, tells him he must always walk behind him, never in front, lots of ‘I’m faster/older/better at ‘x’ than you). It’s fired up when their other friend, who has also been friends with them since nursery (they’re now a 3-way friendship of sorts) is there. Friend 1 will encourage friend 2 to ‘gang up’ on DS.
How do I deal with this? Generally, when play dates are just DS and friend 1 or friend 2, there are few arguments, or situations are easily diffused and they play really nicely together. But I can see when they’re all together that DS looks so hurt and gets annoyed (the upset) by it. It’s making me not want to put him in the situation when it’s just the 3 of them. It’s such a difficult one because we’re a close friendship group, we all help each other out with childcare around school hols etc so we can’t just never have them together. DS loves the idea of playing with his friends but always ends up feeling rejected or sad afterwards. It’s making me really sad 