Why would he even THINK that this is a good idea?

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We went to the park tonight. Things started out well -- Eldest was greeted by name by one of the kids there. Turns out this boy has Eldest's teacher from last year, and she's always talking about him and how good he was. So Eldest, this boy a year younger, and a boy of about his age (9) start playing together, running around and chasing each other around the park. I'm delighted, because we've been having a rough time at the park lately, with lots of inappropriate and/or defiant behavior.

(No playing with sticks, for example -- he swings them around recklessly when there's other kids in reach, and when he throws them he has NO control over where they go. Trying to throw a stick over the fence could easily end up hitting someone behind him. This is a struggle every time we go to the park now.)

And then Eldest decides that he needs to pee, so he goes off behind a tree...in the open, in a park surrounded by homes, so he's fully visible. Thankfully, I intercept him before this happens.

He then goes back to playing with the other kids, climbing on the monkey boars. Until he and the kid that's his age come over to me, with Eldest's head hanging and the other kid looking confused.

"He spat on me," he says.

Eldest spat on his hat, to be specific, because he thought that it would be "fun". It was genuinely not malice on his part; I really think that he thought that this was an appropriate thing to do. I apologized to the other boy, as did Eldest, and we went home early. I was angry, and confused, and upset, and kept telling him that was NOT okay, that this is the kind of thing that's going to make other kids not want to play with him.

I think that he understands that he did wrong; he's upset as well at this point, and we went through a few rounds of "I HATE myself," which of one of the worst things to hear.

And I am on the verge of tears myself, because I have no damned idea of how to help with this. He can't get away with being a cute little kid any more; he's going to be nine in a month, and he looks a year older than that. I've had to stop him from following families around asking for food, from grabbing toddlers and dragging them around bodily so that he can play with them...he's going to get himself in trouble at this rate, and soon.

If he spat on someone at school, for example? That would not go well. As it is, he did this thing that the other kids in his class are doing -- list everyone's name, and assign "Love, Hate, Hug, or Kiss" to each name. But his substituted "Kill" for Hate, and that's something that could go really, really badly. Thank god his teacher intercepted it, and knows him well enough that she didn't make a big deal of it.

How the hell can I help him?

I just want to post how much I feel for you: we were in a not-dissimilar situation when DS was nine, and I did NOT handle it appropriately because we had no idea what was really going on.

The problem with social rules is there are so darn many of them, and it is so difficult to be explicit about each one. We're still navigating that. Unfortunately, DS had to learn some of this stuff the hard way, from kids not liking him and being jerks...but we did eventually come out of that OK, painful as it was (DS was suicidal over it at one point, so like I said, I'm not a source of advice.)

The only thing I can suggest is find as many appropriate models for behavior as you can - TV, books, whatever.

I would suggest you tell him spitting is not acceptable and next time he does it, the consequence will be.............. whatever hurts him most. I mean, spitting in someone's eye can give them an eye infection, specially someone that's not from his family and isn't accustomed to his germs. (btw, my daughter will sometimes do that to us if we are smothering her, hugging/kissing and my blood pressure just goes up! If I'm hugging or kissing her, I won't punish her because I know how much she hates hugs and kisses and unfortunately hubby and I are very huggy kissy, but if she ever did that to a stranger, she would be warned once, then punished the second time)

Though you are likely already aware of this, a possible reason for your son doing such "socially inappropriate" things may be due to a lack of impulse control; whereas some brains process random thoughts and urges through a series of "social" and "practicality" filters, some brains fire thoughts so rapidly that they bypass these filters, sometimes even bypassing consciousness completely, and go straight from random thought to action. I have read that meditation can help strengthen this.

It may also help him to have some of the social rules generalized: for example, no part of his body, including any physical object produced by his body, should come into direct contact with any other person unless permission has been given or unless the person is in danger and the contact can alleviate this danger.

What also helps is having a patient, caring peer that would be willing to point out and correct his social errors without judging him for them. Is it possible for you to arrange a "peer mentor" or for him to join a social skills group therapy session?

In any case, best of luck and success to both you and your children.

I feel your pain. I think one of the hardest things for an NT parent is not being able to predict which social rules our kids aren't going to get. Personally speaking, it would never occur to me that dd would think spitting on someone is okay because she's never been told it's not okay. As we've dealt with this, it's gotten somewhat easier, I've just had to get much more concrete in my thinking. If she's going into a new situation I try to anticipate issues and just tell her "you cannot do *blank*, people don't think it's polite". Lol..I put it at about 50-50%, lord knows I still miss as often as I hit, but trying to remember she's not good at inferring unspoken rules certainly helps.

Could he have been generalising incorrectly? What I mean is, a lot of kids will punch each other playfully on the arm in play. They also punch each other hostilely. Could he have concluded that spitting, as a usually hostile act, could also be done in play?

I know that I didn't handle it well -- I was angry, upset, disappointed, embarrassed, and so forth. What I said to him was one of the worst possible things to say. What I tried afterwards was to set a rule -- think about it, and if it;s something that you wouldn't want someone to do to you? DON'T DO IT TO SOMEONE ELSE.

It's the thinking part that's the problem. He is so terribly, terribly impulsive right now.

And the list thing wasn't a school assignment. It was just a thing that the kids in his class were doing, and it's fairly age appropriate behavior...if terribly obnoxious. Which is a pretty fair description of MOST age-appropriate behavior for 8 year olds, really. But it's apparently derived from an adult game, which I saw on Archer a few years back, where you go through a list of people and sort them into three categories: Marry, *Ahem*, Kill.

Who taught one of the kids this game, I cannot even begin to guess. But at least they're sticking with "Hug" and "Kiss", instead of the adult alternatives.

I'm no role model either.

My MO at that age was, "Do not participate." Whatever other kids were doing, I already knew I was going to screw it up, so I did not participate. I sat on a bench and read a book. I played alone, or with one other child that I knew well. I lived in terror of making a mistake, and I missed out on a lot of life.

OTOH, I didn't get into much trouble. There were almost no problems. I didn't do anything offensive.

I wasn't very happy, but I wasn't any trouble.