Child Behaves Poorly at Grandparent's House

Our 5 year old son has a history of poor behavior when visiting his paternal grandparents.  We recently spent two days there during which time he ran in their house, jumped on the furniture, had to asked several times to tone down the volume of his play, and "forgot" his usual good manners.  Now, I must let it be known that while he is a typical active child who respects adults, property and plays very well with others, it has been troubling trying to determine why he feels he must act out at his grandparent's home and to a lessor degree when they visit us. When asked, he doesn't know either.  His grandparents do not play with him.  They also live in a very nice home and expect both quiet play and compliance in all that our son does.  From the time he was a toddler, it became obvious that our son was the only extrovert in the family and that he would have to adapt his personality to their needs and the needs of his introverted cousins.  He has a 5 year old cousin (also a male) who will not play with him.  Our son has attempted to share toys and to try to engage his cousin in appropriate ways, but the cousin refuses to interact and becomes passive aggressive with our son.  We have grappled for years with our son being "different".  Now I think that while he insists that he "really loves" going to Nannie's and "playing" with his cousins, that the environment apparently makes him feel stifled.  We are constantly having to correct him while we are there and it makes the experience so unpleasant.  My mother-in-law told my son in front of me that he may not be allowed to go to his cousin's home because he was a "bad boy" over Thanksgiving.  Apparently some behavioral problems (running in the house, telling his cousin that he did not want to play with a board game because it was "boring", calling people names) occurred and were discussed among the family members but never discussed with us.  This infuriated me and my husband because my son certainly is not "bad" nor does he remember what he did a month ago.  The unkind things his cousin says go uncorrected (like telling him he had the batteries for a new toy my son recieved for Christmas but that he would not let him have them and coercing other cousins to not play with our son), and his mother states that her son is afraid of mine.  My son is not aggressive, he's just more physically active than hers.  We have gotten to the point where we do not want to visit them for more than a day because we feel it is not the healthiest place for our son.  He is considered a behavioral problem and is unable to accomodate his personality to theirs. While we set firm boundaries for his behavior, the environment of his grandparent's home has him challenging those boundaries constantly.  I feel it is important that he behave well no matter where he is, but am at a loss for how to help him with this.  Your advice is appreciated.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Sometimes when children are visiting others' homes, parents are not as vigilant and reliable re: setting limits and enforcing the usual standards. Actually, though, it sounds like you do try to be consistent with your expectations. If so, then there really isn't much to be done about changing your son's behavior, and the most practical solution is to limit the visits. If so, it would be good to be open about this, in a sensitive way. That is, talk with the grandparents about how the child/environment match is not ideal, and that to promote harmony and success during contact you do intend to curtail the time somewhat. In addition, if such 'rumblings' are occurring within the family, it could well be that other issues are operating as well and that the child behavior issue is symptomatic of other family stress. What do you think?

[mdlewis]

Thank you for your insights.  I feel that when he was a toddler we were a little less apt to step in when behavioral correction was needed in the grandparent's home.  At the time, we would remove him from certain situations like furniture climbing and running in the house but we would not intervene, say, if he refused to come to the table for dinner when called.  It made a more peaceful mealtime to just let him play.  Around 4, we became more vigilent about setting higher standards to which he needed to behave and enforced stricter consequences, time out being the standard.  I do feel we uphold higher standards still and in some ways are even more determined that he behaves in their home now that he is older.  On the contrary to the issue of becoming more slack in discipline away from them, we feel we are disciplining non-stop and it is not a relaxing visit for anyone.  I think that in some way he is reacting to the stress of being expected to be someone he isn't. I do believe that children who do not get the attention and acknowledgement they seek through "acceptable" means will resort to acting out because negative reinforcement is better than none at all.  Perhaps he will grow out of it or perhaps he will learn to vocalize his discontent rather than act on it.  The family as a whole has seemed to be a well-balanced one and there has seemed to be no underlying problems to which our son would react.  The interesting thing is that my very conservative, introverted father-in-law, was apparently quite mischevious as a boy.  Nevertheless, I appreciate your acknowledgement that shorter visits may be optimal and will heed your advice to speak with my in-laws once I can do so calmly.