Telling the kid what’s what is fine, in my opinion: “Hey, you need to keep your hands to yourself!” said with giant wide serious eyes in a martial voice. As for the mom, I think I’d commiserate to an extent: “Yeah, it can be rough. With my kid, the only thing I’ve found that works is to get them out of the situation right away, so they learn that there’s no wiggle room at all for being aggressive.”
Long time lurker, but first time poster. I work in a prek. Why isn’t he in prek? Most states have free prek and/or headstart.
I have to say, I can’t stand parents like this. This child problem has some issue, but the mother isn’t helping at all. She doesn’t seem all that concerned. Reminds me of a mother who student I had my first year teaching. Long story short, he would assualt the aide on the daily basis. She was a sweet woman and about 62 years old. I told the mother and she didn’t believe me. She went on a field trip with us. Watched her son beat the woman on the bus and laughed.
Well, I agree with you; however, my default tends to be ‘Raging Bitch’ which doesn’t go over that well with other mom’s so I was hoping if I ignored this little turd he would go away.
Shockingly, it worked about as well as when I tried to ignore my brother when he would tease me as a kid, as per my mother’s instructions. Which is to say, not at all.
Anyway, I would rather have my child wait his turn for toys and things, than be a little bastard like the other kid was. Like I said, after a few times of moving to a different play area, I decided to see what the other kid would do if I didn’t let him cut in front of Junior. Be a little rat bastard, as it turns out.
I think you handled the rat bastard well, BTW.
Still, while learning to wait his turn, it’s easy for a kid to learn that his turn never comes. At least that’s how it was for me.
I’m hoping that Junior learned that he needs to take turns, and play nicely with the other kids, but if someone picks on him, or isn’t playing nicely, it’s right for him to stand up for himself. Or me to stand up for him at the moment, because he’s 2. 
Not necessarily. He may be looking for attention. Not that she should allow it. If she’s going to have him in a “target-rich environment”, though, she needs to be within arm’s reach at all times.
One time my son, age two at the time, was in a library’s little kid’s section. A bigger kid kept coming up to him and taking his toys. I would have intervened, except that the bigger kid’s mother intervened every time before I could. “Now you give that back. You need to share,” she’d say, and returned the item to my son.
Eventually, my son picked up a book. Bigger kid tried to take it away from him, but my son (who was very fast on his feet, even then) sprinted away from him with a big grin on his face. The older kid ran after him shouting, “Share! Share!” It was hilarious, because he couldn’t catch him. The other mother finally took him away.
Yes.
I would have complained to management. The aggressor needs 86’d.
When my daughter was in daycare, there was a 4 year old boy who bit a kid. The daycare handled the situation, and told the parents it was not acceptable behavior. I was picking my daughter up the day of his second offense. The mom was being told not to bring the kid back, and she was frantic. She had to go to work the following morning, and the kid was already tossed out of the only other daycare locally. The woman was in tears, begging, but to their credit the daycare peoople took a hard line.
Was she the owner? I ask because I’ve worked in private childcare before. It is such a PITA to kick a child out without consulting the owner. Sometimes even the director can’t do it, because the owner can veto it. You had a very good daycare.
It was an incredibly excellent daycare. It was in a house remodeled (carpeted lower walls, kid sized toilets) to be a daycare. The owner worked side by side with her employees.
I am still friends with a few of the women that worked there, and the owner as well.
Awesome. Thanks for the info. 
Not necessarily; I don’t know what the rule is now, but when I worked for a school district in my home state, you had to be 5 on or before August 31 to enter Kindergarten. If the kid is newly 5, he may not be able to start school until next year.
I thought Gymboree had more granular age-group classes than “18 mos-5 yrs”.
I know my son’s class goes from (I think) 10-16 months, and then 16-24 or something like that.
I wouldn’t want him in with kids that are 4 times his age any more than I’d want a 5 year old hanging out with 20 year olds.
The Gym I take my daughter to has two different types of classes. They have free play, which doesn’t really have age restrictions, and then they have the structured classes. The classes are divided by age range (ie 14-22 months).
Feed him to a wood chipper.
Excellent username / post combination! insert thumbs-up icon here
Humm, the kid is five and the mother let him do this? My daughter is four and her gym privileges that day would be immediately terminated. Kids that age can understand cause and effect.
The mother needs to find a different source for parenting help. Classes or something.
But this is so much not your problem. This is what the gym manager if for. If the mother cannot control her child they shouldn’t be there.
“I rush over and pick my son up, comfort him etc. I ignore the other child (as I was afraid I might punt him across the room). My son was shook up but no physical damage. We went to another part of the gym and played for an hour.”
That was your initial mistake.
First, how is your son ‘shook up?’ Because he fell over? Hasn’t that been all he’s been doing since he started to learn to walk?
Second, there’s no damage, as you said, so why the intervention - or rather after you learned he was ok, why continue to coddle him?
You think the playground at school when he’s seven years old is going to be clear of aggressive children?
My advice, get him into ice hockey immediately. He’ll take care of bullies himself.
And yes, tell the gym owners and let them sort it out.
No offense but if this is the menial stuff that ‘parents’ are having to ‘deal with’ these days, and it causes so much ‘concern’ that they have to come onto a message forum to get ‘advice’ on it, then clearly quality and confident parenting is in the decline. I wonder if the mother of the aggressive five year old comes here to post as well.
You are going to be a valuable, cherished addition to the SDMB family, no doubt…
Back when I was a year and a half old, right before my first trip to the playground, my father told me “First thing you do in there is find the biggest meanest kid, at least twice your size. You sneak up on that kid and you kill him. Stick him in the kidneys with a sharpened toothbrush, strangle him with your pants, stomp his head into the floor if you’ve got to, just make damn sure he’s dead. Then everybody will know better than to fuck with you. You hear me, son? It’s the law of the jungle in there, and none of us will be able to help you once your inside.”
No, wait, that was before my first trip to the state penitentiary.