Please someone advise me. My ds is a small summer born child. He will be going into yr 1 soon. He has recently become best friends with the ‘difficult’ child in the class. This child is nearly a year older and twice the size of my ds. As my kids go to a small rural school my eldest in class above sees a lot of her brother at playtime. I say this as it means I’m not hearing one view point.
Anyway, ds is in awe of this boy. He is all he talks about, and always telling me he wants him to come over to play. But the boy has been in trouble a lot for fighting, hurting other children and lifting up skirts of girls. This is every day, it is talked about between mums. I try to see the best in everyone and am willing to give this kid a chance. But I need to protect my daughters, my ds can be mean to them and with a friend round he will get over excited and more than likely easily led into hurting someone. Ds has form for this as my nephew has made him do naughty things because my son is in awe of him and idolises him. This is also happening with the boy in his class, as he has been to the head with the boy for play fighting that got too rough. Ds lost out on going somewhere with his sister as a treat, because instead of improving his behaviour at school after the fight he started messing about and not doing as the teacher said. Anyway he has not been in trouble at school again, so punishment worked (so far).
I agreed to take the boy and my ds out at the weekend away from the girls. I wanted to assess their interaction and treat my ds for some recent good behaviour. The boy was very sweet about my ds, saying my ds is the only one who plays with him or talks to him. Mostly they were ok but towards the end of the activity the boy was getting bored and wanted to play fight with ds. Ds hit the silly button and joined in. I had to get quite strict and take balloons off them and tell them I’d be calling the boys dad. I wouldn’t say this lad is a demon though. The dad did come to meet us at the end and he was good with both boys, he says his son has not made friends easily and is not settling well at school. Ds is this boys only friend.
I am now taking all my kids on a play date with the boy at his mums. This is because my son is too shy and nervous to do anything without me. I wish I could just drop him off but I would be wasting everyone’s time as this will be a complete alien environment with people he doesn’t know. He would never go Otherwise. I feel sorry for ds because he sister has play dates and he hardly ever does. This is because my dd is a very well behaved and is a popular girl who is confident and sensible. My ds is very jealous of her and she has a busy social calendar this six weeks already.
After I’d agreed to this play date the mum tells me the boy has been In trouble for fighting with older boys at school, and his behaviour is driving her mad. My ds is often found on the naughty step at home but at school is normally well behaved, except for the time around the play fight.
I don’t know whether I’m doing the right thing at all. My husband doesn’t want our son and this boy to be friends, he says I’m too nice. I think the kid is only 5 and can’t be evil, he is polite to me and I do feel sorry for him, but what makes a 5 year old boy obsessed with fighting/hurting? And is he going to lead my son down a similar path? I can see how he is already influencing my son and like an idiot my ds just goes along with it because this boy is big and brave, and probably looks out for my son.
How do I go from here? I’m thinking that I still can’t trust ds to have him over with me here on my own looking after 4 small children, with the potential for 2 boys to gang up on the girls. Dh wants me to invite other boys over, which I’m doing anyway in the holidays, hoping my ds will forget about his ‘best friend’. But can you really influence friends at this age? And part of me thinks if the whole school sees this boy as ‘bad’ he will live up to the title and ostracism and bitching about him at the school gates won’t help.
Does anyone have advice?