DSS (10) went to thump DS (4 and disabled)

[TemporaryChange1]

My DS can be incredibly challenging and you would never hear me pretend otherwise but what happened this evening has really upset me. DS is severely autistic, has LD's and suspected ADHD. His level of understanding is more comparable to a very young toddler.

DSC are round today. I left all of them with OH (father to all of them) whilst I nipped to the shop. DS began having a meltdown when I got home as he struggles with transitions and gets upset when people come in and out as he automatically wants to go outside himself.

As I come in DS begins crying and throwing himself on the floor. He threw one of his car toys which landed near DSD but not at her. It landed about a metre away from where she was sitting. DSS (10) jumped up, grabbed DS by the jumper and raised his fist ready to thump him in the face.

OH shouted for him to stop right there and don't you dare punch him, so he didn't, but he certainly intended to.

When DSS (10) went back to sit down DS (4) then threw another toy which landed near him this time. OH made DS apologise for throwing the toy. No apology forthcoming from DSS for going to thump DS.

Admittedly, DS is my weakness. I'm incredibly protective of him as he's just so vulnerable so I want to know whether you think I'm being unreasonable so be absolutely furious about this.

I got DS shoes on and took him out the house to the greenery down the road where we're now sitting.

I've got an 18 year old that's like your 4 year old and an 8 year old dd who is not disabled.
I'd be raising hell with whichever child though it acceptable to raise their fist at the other!
They need to walk away not hit and their father needs to enforce this !

So a 10 year old reacted reflexively to a sibling almost hurting another sibling? Inappropriately of course, but not an age-inappropriate response. He is 10, in a difficult situation, he got it wrong. It is not a big ongoing deal unless it is happening repeatedly or he isnt being taught that it isn't the right way to react.
Your DH dealt with it, straight away, averted the incident, and taught his 10 year old that he needs to react differently. DH is obviously upset that all his children are in a difficult position and has done exactly what he should have done as a father.
You are going on about it to him, even though it was a completely natural 10 year old sibling response AND he intervened and patented like he should. And you can't see why DH is fed up with you going on about it?

What excuses?

He was not aiming a toy at DSD.

Why do people on mumsnet do this, rewrite events as though they were there.

I was not going on about it to him whatsoever.

Let me make clear I didn't get involved in the telling off, I simply removed DS from the house and left it for OH to discuss with DSS.

OH returned home later after taking them back to their mother's and he was in a foul mood, banging about the place and making it clear he was angry. I tried to talk to him and he exploded at me. Is that acceptable?

So here on mumsnet it's acceptable for a 10 year old child with no additional needs to attack a 4 year old child with additional needs, and it's ok for a man who towers over a woman to explode at her and start shouting. Wow.

Step parent bias at its finest.

OP. I have read the whole thread. I don’t buy into people’s perception that step son was protecting his sister.

your son throw a toy that landed near step sister. I think step son was irritated by your son’s meltdown and saw the thrown toy as an excuse to (attempt) to thump him.

I agree with you your 4 year old is vulnerable. And had step son punched him, yes that would have been assault. Sibling violence is still violence.

The step children need to learn that they have a disabled brother that is part of the picture now when they see their father. They need to learn acceptance and tolerance. Not easy, my dc are 24 and 20 . The younger girl is disabled .

Even if your 4 year old was neurotypical , his 10 year old brother going to punch him is unacceptable. Your oh needs to get some help for his son , so that he can learn ways of coping.

10 year old going to thump a 4 year old regardless of disabilities is unacceptable. They could do serious damage, I would not leave them alone not even for a second.

I'm a bit alarmed at the description of a 10yr old grabbing his younger sibling's clothes and starting to aim a punch, was this aimed at the 4yr olds face/head? To me, explosive sibling reactions are usually pushing or the double handed shove that knocks a sibling over or even throwing the item back at them. But the collar grabbing and pulling back to aim a punch to the face is real adult male behaviour and I would be concerned.
Very surprised at the replies, I suspect they would be different if the child wasn't a step child.

There is some good advice here. Although your DS didn’t mean to throw the toy to the 10 year old boy it appeared an aggressive act to which he retaliated to. It seems as you are saying it’s okay to do this and there are no consequences for him when he behaves badly. Your child is going to be going to school etc, he needs supervision and support but also taught that throwing things can mean people get hurt. Otherwise you will have a 6ft young person that ends up in trouble all the time.

I think you’re putting an awful lot of emotion into this, and maybe need to step away and calm down and let it rest for a few days. In your last post you are now painting your dh as an aggressor also, when in reality, unless there’s a back story, everyone get stressed and shouty at some point. I also think you might see this differently if you had another child and it was your biological child lashing out. I have a similar age ds and he is mostly lovely with his younger ASD sibling but occasionally he lashes out and obviously we tell him off and chat about it, but he’s still a young developing human and it’s up to us to guide him to make better choices. Try not to turn it into an us and them situation, when in reality, as he gets older, and you get older, ds will benefit from some caring siblings. What you do now will decide whether they have any relationship as adults.

The incident looking like adult male behaviour is what frightened and upset me yes. A push or a shove whilst not okay isn't a huge deal but this was really upsetting to see, its what you might see on a Friday night among drunk blokes at a pub. Not what you expect to see from a 10 year old DSS to a 4 year old sibling.

To answer PP yes his fist was aimed at DS head.

Me and OH were both in the room, thank god, but if we weren't and OH hadn't jumped on it straight away DS would have been punched in the head.

It's absolutely not OK and it's not something I condone. Never have.

It's totally unacceptable for a 10yo to punch (or be about to punch if he hadn't been prevented) a disabled 4yo.

I think some posters are trying to point out that, while the above is true, it's also very hard to be the sibling / step sibling of a disabled child, and the 10yo needs some compassion here as well as blame. And your OH is in a difficult position too - it's normal for him to feel defensive about his son while also angry with him.

None if that means that the 10yo wasn't completely in the wrong. It just means that, as adults, you and your OH need to work together to protect all your children and think of ways to avoid these situations arising, rather than simply laying all the blame on the 10yo.

I think some replies are deliberately goady. Or some people have a dodgy moral compass.

It is not ok (no matter what the imagined provocation) for. 10 year old to thump anyone. Let alone his disabled little brother.

Those of you who think it's ok should have a long hard look in the mirror. What you will see is ugly.

I've read the whole thread and tbh it sounds like a dynamic of 'them vs us' has been created in your household where it's you and DS vs the other DCs and your DH in the middle.

I wonder if it might be worth you trying to foster a better relationship in general with your DSCs so they see the family set up in a more positive way. They could maybe do with spending a bit more time with you without DS being there to dominate (I know it's not his fault but this is the reality for them).

Leaving aside the specific situation you posted about, it sounds like a fairly stressful set up at present for all concerned and I can't see how you'll greatly improve that without making significant effort to improve the entire dynamic.

I have a 10 yr old dgs and he wouldn't ever aim a punch at anyone let alone a small dc.
I can't believe the pp's excusing this behaviour.
Your dss obviously doesn't see his younger sibling as equal to his older dsis.
Also it's not normal for 10 year old to aim a punch and a shove would be more usual although still wrong.
Your dh needs to find out where his ds has learned this sort of behaviour, it's shocking and one day he'll get punched back even harder.

They are both children. At 10, when calm, of course he knows that your ds has sen but we can all react in the heat of the moment. Have the dsc had any help from outside to help them adjust to having a disabled sibling? It is very hard for kids when it seems everything needs to revolve around the disabled child, that they get away with behaving badly etc. (even if none of that is actually the case they can perceive it that way). My girls came to blows many times despite my younger dd knowing her sister couldn't help it, younger dd also started defending me protectively once her dsis was older. It's hard!

Don't blow things out of proportion, calm discussions about the nature of disabilities but not letting that be an excuse for bad/violent behaviour was my method

This. I can't believe the number of posts saying that this is normal 10 year old behaviour. It absolutely isn't.

OH returned home later after taking them back to their mother's and he was in a foul mood, banging about the place and making it clear he was angry. I tried to talk to him and he exploded at me. Is that acceptable?

What was he angry about? Did he explain?

@Idyllicidealist

You have never seen siblings then? I know plenty of squabbling siblings doing inappropriate things like fighting with the much younger one, it happens. Kids are still kids, and sometimes an incident is the last straw so blown out of proportion. It's how things are dealt with that matters, calm discussion about frustrations is my advice. It's hard to deal with as an adult! I admit to shouting at my autistic dd from time to time, you can just have had enough so your rational brain isn't in charge

Of course it's not nice for them to see the way DS behaves but he's 4 and significantly disabled. He can't help how he is. He didn't ask to be born. It isn't his fault if jealousy Is a factor as PP suggested.

I don't think the ins and outs of this specific incident are material really. I think it's probably more to do with how he views his half brother and the dynamics he creates in the family. He's only 10. He can understand that it's not your son's fault and yet still be frustrated and fed up with how life is. He'll view him as his brother, after all, not as a beloved child. It can be hard enough for a 10 yo to tolerate a 4yo with no LDs, so to have to put up with a sibling whose behaviour is constantly challenging must be hard for him.
Obviously he can't go round hitting someone so much smaller but cut him a bit of slack. Family situations are hard, siblings do get in physical fights so it's not unheard of behaviour.

I don't think it's remotely appropriate for a child of 10 to go to punch a 4 year old, no, and I'm surprised how many do. This should not be an instinct, he is not an equal to him.

Your DH's defensive response is a big red flag too.

Apologies OP, I understood you saying that you had tried to talk to him about it as dragging it back up later that evening after the children had gone home, alongside you saying that you felt he didn't want you to be upset about it which suggests again that you brought it up with him again. Sorry if that was my misreading.

However, you are clearly (naturally) seeing this from one side and this really isn't an age-inappropriate reaction from your DSS (I have worked with children this age for years), and your DH has done exactly what he should have in this situation by intervening straight away, stopping him firmly and teaching his son it wasn't acceptable. I haven't seen a single post saying the DSS's action was acceptable, just that it is understandable that he reacted wrongly given his age and situation, dealt with and most likely it is a one off overreaction from him rather than the start of ongoing violence.

He said he knew I would be upset about what happened and his anger and being defensive was because he didn't want to have to discuss it as he knows DSS was in the wrong.

I wasn't going to talk to him about it last night as I felt it best to sleep on it and have a chat today about what we can do to ensure it doesn't happen again, but he came home making such a spectacle of the fact he was in a bad mood it put me on edge and I wanted to know what was going on. I thought perhaps he'd gotten into an argument with his ex partner about it when he took them home.

I asked him what all that was about (the stomping around the house banging) and he exploded at me saying he just wouldn't bring them here anymore. I told him he was being ridiculous to come out with things like that and said we just need to make sure nothing like that happens again in the future. I reiterated what I said here about the fact I know DS can be very challenging but it doesn't excuse DSS being aggressive like that.

OH then latched onto the word aggressive and started shouting louder about how his son isn't an aggressive child and how i'm out of line for saying that because its not as though he "goes around beating people up"

I acknowledged that he isn't a violent child in general but what he did was aggressive.

More shouting from him.

I kept repeating that I wasn't accusing DSS of being aggressive in general but was referring to this particular incident. It was like talking to a brick wall.

He then started going threw the draw where he keeps his random odds and ends, think spare chargers paperwork and the like. He was throwing half of his stuff in the bin. No idea what that was about but he has done it in the past after an argument so not completely unprecedented.

I got tearful he wasn't listening to me and was intent on going off on one so I just gave up and went to sit in the bedroom. As I was walking off he was making comments about me not giving him sex and therefore we're not a 'proper' couple anyway, how he's so alone in the world etc.

Not that I need to elaborate but we haven't been having sex much over the past few months, combination of reasons really like me feeling touched out plus my health problems.

Just a really horrible argument all in all that consisted of him shouting at me and me trying to get him to see that I wasn't saying what he was accusing me of, that he was twisting my words.

dss should never have gone to punch a 4 year old.

I do think, reading between the lines that your dss is fed up of your 4 year old and has very limited patience with him