DS is nearly 3 and is having a really challenging and toxic sounding relationship with his ‘best friend’ in nursery. For nearly a year my kid has been interacting with this child, moving into the same class together from January this year. He is 6 months older than DS. The nursery were really encouraging them to be best friends and so we went along with it, then my husband had a play date with him and his dad and I did a separate one with him and his mum. Both of us came back feeling like there was something strange going on. Way too intense and touchy feely, rough and aggressive and just a general uneasy feeling. Kid isn’t very charismatic and we didn’t really get it.
Then I heard they’d pushed a girl together in the nursery and this isn’t me being incredibly biased but that is just not my son’s personality. He’s very sensitive and really quite emotionally intelligent for his age. Always trying to make others feel better by handing them toys etc and letting teachers know (nursery have told me). so this was first red flag.
then I heard that actually the kid has no other friends whereas DS has lots and will play with anyone else/alone. When someone tries to play with DS this kid falls into a tantrum and screams until DS stops and plays with him again. He tells all the other children to go away and sounds quite mean spirited. I’ve noticed my son laughing and pointing when someone falls and I ask him who does that and he says this kid. He also says this kid says kill kill kill to him and pushes his stomach. I’m doing my best to focus on other kids and encouraging him to hang out with them, also now using language like go away and more firm nos. Talking to him about how friends don’t make us feel sad.
nursery have said that they’ve mentioned how ‘obsessed’ this kid is with my son to his parents but they are still doing it with his dad making comments about how he misses DS on drop off.
bottom line, every day my kid is having one kid single him out and screams and shouts at him until he submits like he’s done something wrong. Really concerned about lasting effect. Going to push the nursery to talk to parents again but any other suggestions to help break the connection?