My 5 year old son has a cousin (from my partners side of thefamily) who can be very mean to him. Not physical btw. What really gets to me is that there is very little intervention from his parents in those moments. From what I can fathom they tend to go with the soft approach. As I understand this is because he is adopted and has some very mild additional needs. He is however 11 years old.
My partner has arranged a meet up over the holidays and there will be other cousins visiting from America. Last time they came over cousin X spent the entire time trying to turn visiting cousins against my son. At the time DSwas 3 and cousin x was 10. I'm informed rather than discipline cousin x they took him to therapy. The therapist put his behaviour down to reaction issues stemming from his adoption at 2 years old.
I'm being very tactful in my description. But as you can imagine I'm pretty annoyed. Because whatever excuse Cousin X has this is not a great situation for my son. Im tempted to put my foot down and stay at home with DS rather than join the family gathering,
I'd love to hear people's thoughts on how they would manage the situation. Xxx