For the last few months I have been taking the child of family friends to an after school activity with my DS. I offered to do this as the other child (we’ll call him Colin for these purposes) wanted to join the activity but his parents couldn’t take him and I am going anyway. The DCs are at the same school so it’s all very straightforward. Both Colin and my DS are six, but Colin is in the year below my son at school as my son is a summer baby.
The problem is that Colin is not very nice to my DS. He often calls him names (only silly things like poo etc.), but also teases DS (for example when we went for a meal with the other family in a restaurant, Colin was taking ages in the men’s loo so my DS went in the ladies. Colin then spent the rest of the meal chanting “[name] went to the girls toilets” which made my - admittedly tired - DS cry). On top of that, he’s quite rude to me. My DS is not entirely blameless and will sometimes react by showing off that he knows more than Colin (e.g. asking Colin maths questions he won’t know the answer to). I deal with all these things sensibly, “It’s not nice to call people names, Colin” / “DS, Colin will learn that next year when he is in Y2. What did you do in maths today Colin?” However, my DS is getting really fed up of having Colin tag along with us.
I really want to stop taking Colin after the end of this term but am not sure how to handle it when my DS will definitely be carrying on with the activity (and Colin will know that) so I can’t do the typical British thing and make an excuse! The parents and Colin’s older sister are absolutely lovely, kind people and good friends and I don’t want to upset them. What do I do?!