My Son Is Saying Mean Things to His Friends and Just Not Being Very Nice

It's one of the not so great phases they go through at this age. He's learning he can "control" things around him with certain behaviors. Keep redirecting and teaching him about being nice rather than mean. Hopefully his little "attitude" will disappear in short time.

This behavior is normal and will continue thru middle school. Kids play together and like each other one minute and hate each other the next. They are learning how to get along.

One thing that you can do is always have an even number of kids at a play date. Threesomes rarely get along. One kid is nearly always left out, especially at this young age.

No need to be mortified. This is normal everyday stuff. It's also an opportunity to talk with your child about how he feels, validate his feeling, and also talk about how the other child felt. do this after you get home and he's calmed down. It was healthy for your son to ask to leave and he was feeling like he didn't want to see this friend again. Later he felt differently. That's OK.

It will take time, months and years, to teach him how to be diplomatic when expressing his feelings. Babies come into this world unsocialized. Even at 3 your son's brain is very immature. He's may not yet be capable of showing empathy. Empathy is a more mature way of feeling.

It's important that he knows that it's OK to feel this way but not OK to purposely hurt another child's feelings. When he does, remove him from the situation and later when he's calm talk with him about what happened. You can stay with the play date but go to the two of them and say something like, "you've hurt his feelings. I want you to say sorry." If he doesn't want to say sorry, take him to another part of the area until he's once more in a good mood.

I suggest that once the two kids started to exclude the other one that if efforts to get them to play together didn't work, that it was time to stop the play date. It's a matter of the parent monitoring and managing the situation because the toddler is unable to act like an adult and be kind to everyone.

This behavior could mean that he needs more attention. I also think it could mean that his feelings need to be validated. It's OK to not want to play with someone. It's OK to not like someone. It's also OK to tell someone that you don't like them and don't want to play with them. How much better relationships would be if we learned at an early age to be honest.

Of course, we then have to deal with the other kids hurt feelings when we say those things. He likely doesn't know how to respond to the tears and is likely to become angry. This is where Mom comes in and says, he's feeling hurt because you don't want to play with him. That's OK. and then separate the two. Let him know it's OK but it's not OK to hit. If you've separated them at the beginning he won't have an opportunity to hit.

We cannot just say, that's not nice. A toddler has no concept of what nice is and their brain is not mature enough to understand how another child feels.

let him know that it's fine if he doesn't want to play with someone, and teach him how to say "no thank you" instead of being mean. honestly, it sounds like you are witnessing a lot of these nasty behaviors so i would time out for them. encourage him to politely decline, not tell people he doesn't like them. the hitting with pillows i would have told him to stop, because it's not nice, and if it kept up, i would have put him in time out. but keep in mind like the others said, this IS normal. my 4 year old has a different "best friend" every day it seems. and that's fine. but it's important to remember that even if you're not getting along with someone or they want to do something you don't want to do (usually the case when he tells me he doesn't like someone anymore - they wanted to play army and he wanted to play transformers lol) you STILL HAVE TO BE NICE. all kids have to learn this, so some kids won't be nice to him, too. good luck and hang in there!

I don't mean to be harsh here but I would not let him play with other children until he can manage this behavior. It is not fair to the other kids to be treated like this-esp at their young age. My kids have been the recipient of this kind of behavior at times and I hate to say it but to this day they are not permitted to play with the kids who have done this to them nor do I associate with their families. The hurt that these kids have caused my children has left too deep of a scar on me to ever welcome them again.
I am glad that you are seroius about correcting this behavior. I have not found this to be a normal behavior at any age and it definitely puts the child outside of the group in preschool and gives him the bully label in elementary school.

There is no need to feel bad about his behavior. He is just being himself and that is very good to develop a high self-esteem. We all feel that way sometimes but we are grown-ups and know how to express our feelings.

Simply rephrase oh, you don't feel like playing with your friend right now. It is okay. Would you like to do something else. I wonder how your friend feels about it. May be you can tell your friend that you need to go now and will play with him later or another time. That way he will automatically learn what to say in that situation. He indirectly will learn from you to empathize and assert himself postively, and respectfully. No moral lecture, punishment, or reward is necessary.

As a rule of thumb, it is always better to tell a child 'what to do' which is clear, concise, direct, and positive. Saying 'what NOT to do' is confusing as it does not teach a child what do you really want him/her to do. All a child learns that you don't like it when he/she does something you don't approve of. That way a child learns to comply simply out of fear of punishment and either pleases you or defy you, hence the start of power struggle and low self esteem. Hope I made some sense.

Between parent and child by late psychologist Haim Ginot is an excellent book on how our children learn. This book became the basis of several positive discipline books such as how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. This is an easy read book with dialogues and cartoons with right and wrong examples of talking to our kids. Perhaps you can read with your child at night story time. My son enjoyed reading it with me and actually likes me to read parenting books to him.

Best,
-Rachna

Oh, it's so hard when our kids don't act the way we want them to! But he's only 3. My daughter is the same age (born Sept. 2007). Who knows why he doesn't want to play with that other little boy anymore? But it's his decision. You can remind him, sweetly, that he needs to express himself in a kinder way, but you have to trust his choice. You can tell him exactly the way it would be nicer for him to express his feelings so he understands what you mean.

I completely disagree with Mallory P, and mommies who said he needs punishing. At this age they are just figuring out how to interact socially. He sounds like he needs some guidance, but punishment will probably only make things worse. And you don't know what the other child did to make your son not want to play with him. You have to be on your son's side.

Those are my two cents. Good luck!

It might have something to do with sibling rivalry, as you say.

But he can't be mean, so I suggest natural consequences. If he suddenly decides he doesn't "like" someone, he should be immediately taken home and he can play alone in his room for a while.

But meanwhile, he is only 3, and their brains still aren't formed yet, so don't take it too seriously.

Sounds like your son is actually a bit sensitive and his senses just get over-whelmed after about 15 mins. of playtime. (Over-stim). After about 15 mins. of playtime in an area w/ lots of stimulation, even just a very sunny day, or a day at a playground w/ a lot of different structures (swings, slides, etc) it may be time to snuggle him close in a shady area for a few mins. or just sit him down for a snack.
Hunger can change personality as can too much sugar, and with kids, a smidgeon is really too much, because the earlier they start w/ the sugar, the more the sugar feeds into the sugar habit and makes them crave more and it begins to ruin their sense of how real food tastes, and they end up prefering sweet and very processed foods to healthful foods.
Just say NO.
In the end, just about every unpleasant issue in life can be traced back to diet, because everyone's dietary needs are different. Allergies can be alleviaed greatly w/ a change of diet, as can personality issues. ADD/HD w(which your child probably doesn't have) can be alleviated to a great extent w/ a wheat free diet.
So my point was that if your child is easily over-stimulated, then he's doing things sub-consciously to solve his own problem by alienating his friends to get a break from them. Time to train him to get his break another way.
He can say: I'll be back in a few mins. Or: I need a potty break.
And he needs to learn how to self soothe during those breaks.
I know that it's stressful and embarassing for you to see him being what we would call "rude" to his friends. All you can do is explain to him that you're trying to help him learn how to handle his feelings of over-stim so that his friends will go on being his friends and not start excluding him from their play because he's been a bit rude.
It's important to not verbalize any disbelief in what he may be feeling. There's something very real going on in his psyche, and there's no real way of knowing what it is. (At least not w/out professional help which you may or may not need) All you can do right now is try some behavior modification, and hope that it works, so that you don't have to go to a professional who will spend an inorinant amt. of your time and money testing and assessing your child in order to stick a label on him that will never go away. They do this so that schools can pigeon hole your kid, and to cover their own tails so that other docs can follow up on their work later by looking at their notes in order to recommend/perscribe $$$ perscriptions or refer you to still more doctors who will charge an arm and a leg to do more testing or perscribe more stuff for him to do/swallow and all these special classes and pills will have their own stigma and side effects and will end up being worse than the original issue which you and your family are perfectly well able to handle on your own because a parent always knows their child best and must trust him/herself implicitly to be their childs most knowledgable advocate in all things.
Without that last (trusting in yourself that you are the best expert on your child) then much time and money will be wasted, and you will go thru a lot of hell for which you will only kick yourself later.
Been there- Done that.
Best of luck. Trust yourself.

My son went through a similar phase- and thank God that it was just a phase. I guess it is totally normal develpomentally- that is what his preschool teacher said- but I was kinda embarrassed by it. It seemed that his friends did a lot of the same behavior and it is just kids sizing each other up, getting responses and learning social pecking orders. Did you read "Nuture Shock" by Po Bronson? He has a whole chapter about agressive preschool behavior- I felt so much better after I read it, as it actually says that these kids who are a bit "mean/socially agressive" are the ones who turn out to be super smart and successful:)
Good luck, don't sweat it too much- it will pass...