Inappropriate behaviour from a 4 yr old friend

[Noma81]

My friend and work mate constantly wants play dates and for me to babysit her 4 year old but I feel very distressed and confused by her sons behaviour with my 2 1/2 year old daughter. If I leave the room for even a moment or stop watching for a moment he will take my daughter into another room and shut ( and sometimes lock or try to block) the door and remove her pants. I am very quick to get doors open and try to never allow him to be alone with her but he waits for times such as me having to go to the toilet or getting food out of the oven and so forth. I have repeatedly told him that he is not allowed to touch my daughters underwear or pants or to shut doors but it doesn't seem to make any difference to him. He mainly does this when his mum is not present or if she has just arrived and knows that we ate distracted.This has been going on for months and my friend always says oops sorry don't know why he does that and brushes it off. I am at the point of walking away from the friendship but am also getting concerned about her son. Is this normal behaviour or am I over reacting?

[RockRose]

I think most mothers would be beside themselves with seeing this kind of behavior so often.  Then there are the mothers who just refuse to deal with reality.  

If you send her these last two posts of yours I think it will make it very clear that he is making this his focus all day long when you're together.  

At some point it is less important "why" he's doing it,  but rather that he stop it.  

I'm also curious about his day care.  I don't believe he can be doing this there - it's too obvious and relentless and I don't think this would go one for one day at a day care center before they would put a stop to his coming back.

[Life360_Dave]

It just depends on your relationship with her, so far she dosent seem very concerned that its bothering you even though you have already mentioned it to her, so just maybe a friendship with her might not be in your best interest at this time. Maybe she not a very good friend after all.

[Noma81]

I should also add that being in public doesn't change much, we have even been at a park with around 15 other people and he tried doing it behind a cubby, a slide, a ramp and tried locking me out of the men's toilet (which I did enter and crawled under the door) and we were only there about 1 1/2 hours. His mother sat drinking her coffee and said that she thinks he is confused about Indy toilet training. This was 3 months ago and we did step back from them and I avoided play dates for about a little over a month hoping he would lose interest but he seems to have just gotten more interested. His mother has seen this on many occassions and seems to think it is just curiosity. She has apologized on this last occassion and said she just doesn't know why he does it. Sorry to be long winded.

[Noma81]

It happens more when his mum isn't there, my breaking point came when I minded him from 6.30am to just after midday and I had to intervene on at least a dozen occasions. This little boy is also in day care a few days a week so I feel a bit of an obligation to protect other children from this behaviour also but that is very hard. She has told me she hasn't got many other friends and just about all her mothers group do not come any more either. And she has just found out she is pregnant again. I don't want to cause her stress with the pregnancy but should I sit her down and try to talk to her calmly or is it always going to end horribly as everyone is always protective of their own child. Thankyou for putting my mind at rest that I'm not over reacting to this

[ticked]

No you are not over reacting at all. I would be just as concerned as you are. I would approach the mother again and if she still does nothing about it I wouldnt have the kid over for a play date. I know kids do stuff and I understand that but when you have a parent not telling their own child that it is inappropriate behavior and it isnt tolerated then she is the actual problem not so much the child. Kids experiment but we as parents are supposed to be there to make sure they know what is acceptable and what is not.

[Life360_Dave]

Hi and welcome. For the best interest of your daughter, i would not have the boy around her, i mean who needs more stress in our lives than we already have! As RockRose mentions it is a bid odd and i feel the same. You can still be friends with her and just tell her how its bothering you and you would rather not get involved if her son does have a behavior problem.

[RockRose]

To do this once or twice is completely normal - to make this a top priority  for months,  as you describe,  is odd.

Concretely, how often does this happen?  3X an hour?  One time a visit?  How many times,  that you've witnessed, has she seen it happen?  More than 10 total times?  

Four year olds rarely are so completely focused on any one thing and to have his focus on her private parts for  months is really very unusual.

At this point this is probably having an affect on your daughter,  to have him be constantly interested in her body.     I wish I'd have acted quicker when my kids were little to distance them from my friends and situations where they were not being treated well.  

I do wonder,  if he would benefit from some kind of kid's book about differences in boys and girls and drawings or medical type photographs where he could finally get his curiosity satisfied?