8 yr old hurts 6 yr old brother

[dad90210]

Have pieced the following together: My 8 yr old son took his epi pen from his school backpack, removed the cap, cocked the needle and gave it to his 6 year old brother. Told him it was safe, no needle b/c it was the practice version (epi pen kits come with a dummy pen for practice).  Proceeded to watch his bother inject his hand with epinepherine. This took about 4 minutes while I was in kitchen preparing dinner.

Post ER visit for his brother, my 8 yr old admitted to some parts of the story, rest pieced together from talking to 6 year old, then 8 yr old admits full version.  In addition, 8 yr old was talking to his mom on the phone, who questioned him about what was going on, but lied to her as he was determined to go through with his plan. 8 yr old says he did it b/c he was curious to see what would happen.  He has had an epi pen since he was three and has had one in his school backpack since kindergarden (with full knowledge of the school).

Magnitude of this seems huge to me.  The planning, premeditation, willingness to sacrifice his brother's well being are all hard to understand.  My son knows how serious the epi pen is and knows that someone injected has to get to the hospital within 20 minutes. Neither child has historically been a discipline problem and they generally treat each other well as brothers.  

Struggling to understand if this is an instance where my eight year old is just a concrete thinker and didn't have the abstract reasoning to grasp the consequences of his actions (i.e. couldn't weigh curiosity about this powerful item in his backpack vs the danger to his brother) or if he understood his actions, but the curiosity won out.  His mother and I are married, both kids have lots of friends and do very well in school.   We use timeouts or taking away priviledges for disclipline.

In this case I am struggling with what the right response is.  I have not shown anger.  Have talked to both about what went on.  Have taken away some big privileges for a long period and gone through several concrete examples about how dangerous this was and how many people it affected.  My 8 yr old is showing some remorse, but I am still just floored and trying to figure out what my comprehensive response should be (my wife is out of town for a couple more days- is aware of what transpired).

Wanting some guidance on proper response and understanding how much of this was likely willful disregard for his brother vs being limited by his age in understanding the magnitude of his actions.

[margypops]

I doubt very much if your son intended to really hurt his brother, and could it be there is some sibling Rivalry there, does your Younger son get more attention is he the easier to handle in your eyes,Is he missing his Mom who is gentler with him ,it seems like there could be more going on in the Family dianamics, maybe he thought it was serious enough to bring his Mom home, How about you his Dad do more guy stuff with just him so he knows how important he is,let Mom have the younger one, and you could also get someone like a councillor to have a chat with him.

[LAR614]

Wow. Kids really know how to throw us curve balls don't they?

I don't have any 'expert' advice to offer but I will pass on a similar conversation my husband and I had after taking away our son's brand new BB gun. Kids that age-particularly boys I think-have a lot of curiosity about the natural order of things and not much inherent morality to stop them from finding out answers in the most direct way possible. We have an expectation that because they are 'innocent' that they are also 'good'. My conclusion is that the truth is that innocence cuts both ways-because they are innocent of the nature of evil or 'bad' they are incapable of being consciously good in the way an adult understands it. In our case our nature-loving child killed a bird-despite being forbidden from touching the gun without direct supervision and also several speeches about only firing at paper targets and the sanctity of life etc. He just wanted to see what happened...but somehow was surprised when the bird actually died. It's like he just couldn't process that his action would have permanent consequences. Anyway we are putting the BB gun up out of his reach for another year or so and then we will give it a try when he is more mature. He was also grounded and we made him bury the bird and give a service for it. Now we have him working on making bird boxes for the woods and he is in charge of putting out the bird seed every morning. We also walked him through the steps of "what do you think will happen now if that bird had a family?..." to try and build in some of that framework for consequences. Of course he didn't try to shoot his brother. If he had I imagine our response would have been more like a  spanking and the gun would have been given to charity that day. Then we might go on a tour of hospitals and ER wards-maybe arrange to talk to emergency services like the police, fire dept., or EMT's to satisfy his curiosity about the human body and what really happens when it is hurt. This might serve a two-fold purpose of showing him the reality of pain and suffering or even death as well as satisfying curiosity. I admire your calm response. Good luck finding the right answer-hope this helped.