4yo bullying or normal bickering?

[Littlemisstall]

Hi, I need advice on a situation. Both my friend and I have 4yo DS. Both are articulate and have similar interests. My DS (Tom) is quieter and prefers small groups or 1:1 but is confident in those situations. Her DS (Owen) is more confident overall and not phased by bigger groups.

Recently I’ve noticed some worrying behaviour from her DS. They were playing in the park and her DS saw another child he knew. He was saying ‘Don’t talk to Tom. You don’t know him. Just ignore him’ and other things like ‘don’t pass the ball to Tom’. My DS was watching this conversation go on but didn’t say anything. Another time they were at a swimming class and Owen was telling the other children ‘Tom can’t swim on his own yet. I can. I saw Tom try and swim on his own but he needed the teacher to help’. My DS just quietly watches and listens. Frequently they’ll be playing and Owen will suddenly decide he doesn’t want to play the game anymore or be friends with Tom anymore, and leave abruptly and say ‘you’re not my friend’ over and over. This does eventually upset my DS. And anything that my DS is happily playing with, he’ll suddenly want and snatch off him. Or he’ll play the ‘you’re not my friend’ card until my DS is upset enough to pass the toy over in an attempt to make friends again.

The issue I have is that I really like Owen’s mum. We see a lot of each other and it’s quite unavoidable. The other issue is that my DS absolutely loves Owen. Even with all the mean behaviour he still wants to play with him and says they’re best friends. Every time I see the bad behaviour I tell DS it’s not nice and he doesn’t have to play with people who aren’t kind to him. But he’s desperate to play with him so it seems he’ll put up with it. It’s breaking my heart and surely it can be damaging? My DS plays with other children very happily with none of this unpleasantness but if you ask him who he wants to play with he’ll mostly say Owen.

I think I need to create some distance but I’m not sure if I’m overreacting to normal playground behaviour?

I would probably create distance and expose him to lots of new children to build good bonds. I'd also have a chat with his mum or nip those comments it in the bud publicly next time you hear anything and follow up with his mum. But ultimately this kid isn't a good influence for your child as it'll hurt his confidence long term

Thanks. I’m going to try and get him into some different classes but it will be hard to get any proper distance in place. I worry damage might have already been done to his confidence and now beating myself up that I haven’t intervened sooner.

I'm assuming that if you're hearing all the comments Owen's making towards your DS, that Owen's mum is also hearing them? How does she respond? Does she speak with her son? Say anything to you?

How does his mum deal with it?

How do you deal with it?

It needs to be challenged and corrected every time for both boys' sakes.

If she hears it she does pull him up on it but only in a ‘Tom can swim well. That’s not kind’ or ‘is everyone playing nicely?’ Kind of way. There’s never any real repercussions like removing Owen from play or recognition that it’s clearly become one-sided. She also isn’t monitoring their interactions to the same degree I am since I’ve wised up to what’s happening.

I deal with it by telling Owen that he’s not being kind and telling Tom he can stop playing with people who aren’t being kind and trying to remove him from the situation. I know I probably need to speak to Owen’s mum about it but not sure how to do it in a way that seems petty.

Agree you need to create distance and introduce other friendships. I would imagine it will affect your DS’ confidence and it’s nasty behaviour coming from a place of insecurity I would think. I would do what you’ve done but get increasingly harsh and say he does it at your house I would ring his mum to come and collect him and ask him to explain. You could try and speak to her but I expect she will be soft on it so I’d just reduce contact and when they do play I’d make it very clear that’s unacceptable behaviour. Does your son really like this boy or is he just hoping he will be ‘accepted’ by him and so keeps trying? Make it clear to your son he doesn’t have to see him if he doesn’t want etc. X