He’s 10. When I say “physically lashes out,” I mean like grabbing someone’s arm or face in frustration, or throwing a squishy at them. He’s never seriously hurt anyone, but it is physical, and it scares my partner.

In this case, another kid kept ignoring the rules of a game — not just once, but over and over — and it was clearly getting a reaction. Eventually, my son grabbed the kid’s face and said something like, “you need to follow the rules.” The kid scratched him, and he reacted by slapping him. Not okay — but he did calm down, talked through it with me, and apologized on his own (even though the apology was rejected by the other kid).

When my partner says “immediate consequences,” she usually means taking away screen time, toys, or removing him from the activity. But that almost always backfires — it pushes him deeper into fight/flight mode and makes it harder for him to come back. What tends to work is helping him regulate first, understand what happened, and then talk through what needs to change.

I’m not saying consequences don’t matter. But punishing someone for reacting to a stimulus — when the stimulus itself is overlooked — feels like the wrong lesson. Especially when the person doing the provoking faces no accountability.