DS1 plays with a kid down the street almost daily. Usually when they are here at my house they play pretty well with DS2, but lately they have been ganging up on him, teasing him, etc. and I am tired of it.

I like this kid okay, his parents are a little more lenient with his attitude than I care for, but he is by far the best choice in the neighborhood, LOL. I count him mom as one of my friends, but she is a pushover when it comes to her only son, lol.

Today for example, they started teasing him outside and Z. threw a pine cone and it hit DS2's hand. I made them come inside and within ten minutes DS2 was crying again. When I went in the room to ask what happened, DS1 and Z. couldn't blame each other fast enough. "He did ..." "But he did ...." "But he was the one who ..." etc. etc. I told Z it was time for him to go home and sat down and talked to DS1 about how we respect our family members and we expect our guests to do the same or they can't come over.

Any advice?

at our house, that kind of behavior would end the playdate immediately.. and if it happenned again, there'd be a day they'd not be allowed to play with him, etc. You either treat eachother nicely, or you don't play together.. of course, that's past the toddler stage.. my DD is 3 and that's pretty much what I do with her.:heart:

My rule is no hurting, no put downs, otherwise everyone has to go home and try again tomorrow. I'm don;t put the kids down, I just say, "This isn't kind. Time to go home. We'll try again tomorrow. We need to be kind to each other. No putdowns is our family rule".

That said, i also often keep the youngest out of the way of the older kids, as the youngest is not always fair in the way they need her to be. Her understanding of rules is not the same as theirs. She's too young to play by certain guidelines put forth by the older ones. While I like it when the older children play gently with the younger children, it's not fair to assume the older kids don't need their own space. Toddlers can really mess up a game as they just do not get it. They also knock stuff down which is not fair to the older ones. It's also not fair to try and force a tiny toddler to 'get' what the older ones are doing. Just because a toddler wants to play with the older kids does not mean it's fair to the older kids. The play needs are not the same.

As long as you're fair about all that, it's totally appropriate to send kids home when the play is not kind.

that I have a ZERO tolerance policy on. My dds are 4.5 years apart and once when the oldest was about 9 and the younger only 4.5, oldest dd allowed a cousin to convince her to run away from her younger sister and they left her in the bushes by my SIL's house which is right by a canal. I hear her crying and stumbling through the bushes. She easily could have fallen into the canal and drowned. My oldest dd was specifically told to watch, tend and INCLUDE her in whatever they were doing and instead they ditched her intentionally. This one cousin is particularly devious and I know it was not my oldest's idea but because she went along with it and abandoned her sister so readily she was grounded from friends and cousins for a MONTH! May sound harsh but my youngest dd was in some danger and the lack of loyalty to her sis I needed to show her was absolutely unacceptable. She has had other friends who were rude to dd and I tell them flat out if you all cant get along, I will take you home (if they pick on dd). Sometimes she can be annoying to them but I let them have alone time in dd's room etc and most of the incidents are simply the older girls making a sport of excluding her which I simply will not tolerate.

The rule at our house is that we're friends with our brothers and sisters before we're friends with anyone else.

When stuff like that happens - the other kid(s) go home, and my kids don't get to play with anyone else except family for a couple days. Because I try to be really strict with it (I'm sure there are times it's not caught though :( ) I've noticed if a friend starts picking on one of my other kids, someone will be quick to let them know that's not allowed here. My kids LIKE the variety of playing with other kids - but they know that it's not something that they're automatically entitled to - and it can be taken away!