how young can a bully be?

[OTTMummA]

Sorry this is very long,

Me, DH, and DS (2.3) were at a playcenter this morning, one we regularly take him to and he is very confident and apt at using all the equipment, so we let him run off and play with other children or himself etc until he asks us to play,,,
The place is usually very good, not a lot of horrible behaviour at all, ive caught a few boys pushing DS around before when he was about 22 months, but it didn't bother him to much and laughed mostly.

but today he was playing and for no good reason another boy aged between 4-6 started kicking and punching DS around.
the place is quite big and because it wasn't that busy we weren't watching the whole time, it just caught my eye,

so i got up to get DS as he was crying, this other child pushed him to the floor and started scratching his neck, almost strangling him, so i ran and shouted NO! and the boy walked off to another part of the play center, and it took me a whole 20 mins to stop my DS from crying, he wouldn't let go of me and was hysterical like ive never seen.

I wouldn't of shouted at the boy but he just wouldn't stop!

eventually DS calmed down dispite having scratch marks and blood blister type marks on his neck, and we took him to play, but he got hysterical when we walked past the area he got attacked.

so we had to calm him again and take him to play in another bit.

he was ok after that, I feel bad like i should of left, but i didn't want DS to feel punished because of someone elses behaviour IYKWIM.

we spotted the boy being told of by his mum TWICE! for hitting other children but she never came to make him say sorry for what he did to my son, i don't think she saw, but still.

anyway, we were getting ready to leave and DS was just running around a playmat being a car and the same boy with his mother behind him just grabbed his shirt and yanked him hard,
DS just stopped and backed off, and then his mum made him say sorry, but before she could DS had realised who the boy was and was again hysterical, so i went to get him, and said to his mother calmly ( which took all my bloody strength ) that this was the second time he had attacked my son, and had scratched his neck up and he was now afraid of his favourite play area and walked off, she didn't seem bothered tbh.

ive been around a lot of children in my time, some with disablities and behavioural problems and im aware that aggression is normal in childhood, but what this boy was doing was purely viscious and quite disturbing, especially when he was kicking DS and strangling him whilst he was down and crying.

can such a young child be a bully?
I was shocked that his mother wasn't paying close attention to him because clearly he must have a problem, it wasn't just my son he did this to today, i honestly felt like she thought it was normal and it was ok so long as she made him apologise after!

Im still pretty mad as DS didn't eat lunch because he was so upset, and still has marks and bruising around his neck.

can anyone tell me if this is normal, and how should i handle this in the future.

thanks

young children can be bullies. it's obvious to me dd knows DS is smaller than her and she can push him around (if no-one intervenes) ...

basically, once they're old enough to physically over power other children, they cna be pbullies.

Your poor wee boy.

If he is prone to that kind of behavior, his mum shouldn't take her eyes off him for a second!

Of course all kids get carried away and some are more prone to be aggressive than others, but that is completely OTT behavior to go unchecked and unmonitored.

I think you handled it well - I can imagine myself in that situation being like a mother tiger!

I can't think of anything else you could have done really, except maybe pointing them out to the staff?

he = the other wee boy, obviously

I don't know if it is normal (not IME it's not, but that's pretty limited) but I would say you handled it as well as you could. The fault here lies with the other mother, not you.

I think all you can do is reassure your son and explain that sometimes other people aren't nice, and that he must always tell you if someone hurts him.

I really feel for you, my DS is quite passive and a lot of his peers have older siblings so are comparatively rough, and I always feel bad seeing him getting pushed around. Not a lot to be done for it except talk it over afterwards I think.

No, that child is not normal. The mum is more at fault, why did she go somewhere for him to attack other kids?
Maybe she has to tell him off so much that she can't be bothered anymore?
And YES little kids can be bullies. I've helped out in pre-schools and by the age of 3yrs you can tell who is going to be a bully, not always but 80% of the time.
Bullies are not happy children and they just don't like seing other people being happy.
That's my own personal theory.

Thankyou, i wasn't sure if my anger was clouding my judgement about the boys behaviour, but i can see i was right.

DS is so passive, although he has his tantrums, but has never hit or pushed another child to this day, and didn't even reatilate against this one either.

After we left i did feel sorry for the other boy, because surely it must be learnt behaviour? and tbh who would want to be friends with him?

We treated DS to fish and chips and feeding the ducks after, i just wanted him to forget, ive never seen him like that before.

You can't label the boy in this scenario imo. two boys - yours and the other boy - in their early years left to play completely unsupervised, will have the potential to get into this kind of trouble.

I think the only people at fault here are both sets of parents because you need to be watching. Just because the stuff is seen as 'soft' and not dangerous doesn't mean you don't need to supervise your child's play

I know you will say you were watching some of the time; well clearly it's not enough. Ditto the other parent.

Sorry that your ds was so upset.

I think you have to be careful of how you describe a bully. To me a bully is someone who deliberately sets out to make someone's life a misery persistently day in and day out. A one off incident is not bullying. Calling someone a name one time does not make you a bully. Doing it everyday with the intention of making a child be excluded from a group is bullying. Lots of children do unpleasant things to each other. Its part of learning the boundaries. This boy clearly has a problem with violence. It could be due to a disability or it could be due to poor parenting, or due to watching violent videos, or even witnessing violence in the home. So yes it was unacceptable behaviour and its worrying but I don't think you could call it bullying. If your son had hit back that wouldn't make him a bully. You don't know why he did it but I think its unfair to label the child who clearly has problems not of his own making. I don't believe children are born violent, I think it happens to them if they do not get the right start in life or have underlying disabilities. You don't know what kind of home he is going back to.

Your right, he may not be a bully, but that was the kindest description of his behaviour that i witnessed tbh.

I did mention that i later thought it may of been learnt behaviour, but i don't think im at fault, if my son had a problem with aggression i either wouldn't take him somewhere he could easily attack another child, or i would supervise the whole time.

I was actually told not to constantly supervise my sons play at playcentre because we had attachement/anxiety issues, he was in a safe open environment and i looked away for a min to get my DS drink out, whilst DH looked on and it caught my eye as i turned back again.
i had to stop DH getting up, because god knows what he would of said ( he isn't violent, just over protective ) and he was also bullied at school.

This boy has some problem, albeit not his fault, he did the same thing to 2 other children after our DS, so it wasn't a one off, not liking another boy etc and then to target him again later on was even worse.

I might add here that he was a lot bigger than all the children he attacked and my son is a tall lad for his age.

the sorry thing is, is that his mother seemed so nonchalante about it all,

and please don't dismiss what happend to my son as unpleasant, it was utterly vile and disturbing, and trust me ive known the extremes violence.

It's a balance, isn't it - as a parent you weigh up each situation; is your child likely to have a problem with rough play in an unsupervised play environment, or is he going to suffer ill effects from one of his parents having a constant eye on him? It seems clear which is better in this scenario, to me at least.

Because the thing is, that some other parents DO let their kids run wild in these places. I think the attentive parents have to end up supervising more than they might personally like, because some parents will never cast a glance in their kid's direction.

I do still think that it's unfair to label this child as anything and I know you've graciously been able to acknowledge that he may not be a 'bully' - we need to look to the parent here, not the child, imho, and see it as a parenting problem not the child having the problem

b