Violent Behaviour - How would you nip it in the Bud?

[kkgirl]

I'm cursing a friend's son who introduced my boys to the delights of WWE/WWF. Since he told them about it, they have started fighting like it. It is now banned in the house, on the computer anywhere. We had a couple of incidents where youngest son was hurt, and despite sitting them down and explaining that it is not real, that they are acting and that my two should not do it, we are still having a few problems.
Anyway to cut a long story short, they had a fall out on Friday where oldest hit youngest for messing up his room looking for Yu Gi Oh cards.
I told oldest to go upstairs and youngest to stay down as youngest lost it and was hysterical.
Youngest left the room after a while and when DH followed he had taken a serrated kitchen knife out of the drawer and was standing in the kitchen with it.
We're not sure if he would have gone upstairs if left alone, but I feel sick thinking of the consequences. We have spoken to them both again about the fighting and the knife incident, but it is quite scary.

What would you do to sort out this mess?

are they watching the wrestling on t.v or ps games? my ds went through a violent stage a few years ago when he was 10 and it was definitely copied from the ps games so i took ALL violent ones away and within a month or so he'd calmed right down.

bit different with your eldest boy because he'll really kick up about it if hes a teen but wouldnt let youngest have any access to the wwf is possible

ive really mucking up with readng threads properly tonight! aghh must be my headache!

so youve taken the games away already

hopefully then within a month or so they will calm down but it wont stop them watching/ playing
at friends houses though

Was it your youngest son that had the knife?
How old is he?

Youngest is 10 1/2

My two boys are 10 and 9, so I haven't had to deal with the teenage years yet!
We do have a zero tolerance of real agressive fighting though (although they sometimes hurt each other as they play fight quite a bit), which leads to a removal of an item or privilege.
I can understand you being really worried about your son holding a knife.
My eldest is a master at winding my youngest son up, and he gets in more trouble for doing that than for anything else.

oh the youngest i was expecting to be like 5!

think you should hide the knives to be honest. not saying hes a killer or anything, he probably wishes he was in his childlike mind

my ds had a fire fetish going on for a good few years, he was astonished by fire, i had to hide all matches and keep him out of the kitchen

i know it seems scarey, but it is quite normal iyswim, he'll grow out of it

Humphrey

What punishment or withdrawal of priv. would you think was appropriate though for this situation?

I'm a bit draconian TBH!
I also fully appreciate that it is easy to advise when you have no idea of the personalities involved.

So this is what I think I would do.
I would sit them both down and discuss how scared you were that your youngest son was so wound up that he took a knife out of the drawer. I'd ask him to explain why he did that.
I would point out that your eldest son played a part by hitting him and winding him up.
If they each have their own rooms then I would suggest neither goes into their brother's room without them being there.
Then I'd ground them both for a week - with no computer time at all.

Probably!

kkgirl
my sons have done similar - theyre 8 and 6, and they werent joking.

I would make it VERY clear to them, that violence is to be channelled, that they must never start a fight or indulge in gratuitously violent behaviour. Then sign them up in some self defence class or something like that, that teaches them how to control violence. More constructive than pretending that violence doesnt exist ime.

Thanks

We did sit them down after when they had calmed down. We explained what could have happened and how one of them could have got badly injured, but they seem a bit immune to it.

Both boys lost their pocket money for the forseeable until they can behave. Strangely the next day, DS1 was very affectionate to DS2 helping him put a plaster on his scraped knee etcetc.

I did wonder about the self defence classes.

Thanks for your ideas, I just wanted to make sure we weren't being unreasonable/too harsh/too soft. Sometimes its hard to see the wood for the trees when you are so close to the situation, you need some impatial advice.