Good friend with remarkably rough child.

[OrmIrian]

Who insists of wrestling with DS~2 and grabbing him round the neck. DS#2 gets very confused by this and really doesn't know how to respond. OK. Easy. I ask him not to. But it's tricky. His mum is a very good rather fragile friend of mine. She doesn't have custody of her boy. His father is a nasty bastard who is quite happy to upset his boy to get at her so she's bent over backwards to be co-operative with him. As she was the one who split up the relationship she feels guilty I think.

I don't want to upset her. She loves DS to visit when her son is there - and DS likes to go (so do I). But she gets find it hard to discipline him.

What's the best thing to do?

Is he better on your turf? In your shoes I think I would tell the boy not to grab your ds's neck every time he does it in the hope that he'll eventually learn that he has to control his aggression when with your ds.

He has never been to our house. Her time with him is very small - dad controls everything. I think maybe I will just have to reinforce to DS that he mustn't put up with it. ATM he denies it bothers him, just looks unhappy and then cries later.

The whole situation stinks. I feel so sorry for my friend and her son.

That's so sad

I wouldn't know what to do either, it's a very difficult situation, and if you friend hardly gets to see her son, then I don't know how much influence she will have over him. How old is he?

Hi OrmIran, it's a difficult situation. We had something (very slightly) similar in that a child who came round to our house was rough/difficult/disruptive etc. We let a lot of the behaviour go because we liked his mum and she'd had a hard time and was a recent widow.

Not sure if we did anyone any favours, though, as in the end it all got too much for us and we had to exclude him from our house.

I say all this because you may be in a position to help your friend and her son by fostering a more gentle type of behaviour when he is with her. Not for a moment saying that this will be easy. At least if you bring the issue up you are not critising her parenting style, but in fact the father's, so she might be more receptive?

Thankyou all.

merle - I am fairly certain that it is his father that fosters this sort of behaviour. He definitely beleives that boys should be boys and fighting is a good way of being a boy. Boy is otherwise a nice lad - a bit selfish maybe and prone to floods of tears at odd times but considering his recent past I'm not surprised.

I wish she could keep him. Her new partner is just such a gorgeous gentle funny man. Together they'd be so good for him.

The awful thing is that this 7yr old boy is constantly guilty about his dad - he worries that dad will be sad without him and he doesn't want to sleep in his mum's house too often in case dad gets lonely. Hence the tears and tantrums. And my friend can do nothing but accept this and give in to the dad all the time. Makes me want to scream!

I think that your friend's son is going to have to be taught that he can't behave in such a rough way when he is with his mum. That's where you can help- being supportive of her attempts to teach him a different way of behaving.