Reinforcing positive behaviors and good manners in children

Please understand, I am of a different generation and we did things our way back then. In my opinion, of course, you need to talk to your brother and SIL and explain that you don't appreciate your child being hit. You can gently explain you'll have to stop allowing the children to see each other if they won't stop the bad behavior. But then you actually have to stop letting the kids see each other if you say you won't let them and they don't change their kid's behavior. That's harsh, I know, and you may not agree with me. But, I had to do that when my daughter was little. (Just for reference, I'm 62 but act much younger than I am and my daughter is 38 and acts her real age. ) I was born into a family of 16 kids. I was next-to-the-youngest so know what it's like having a kid the same age as my older sibling's children. They were rough and tumble boys and Pretty was a little girl who knew not to roughhouse . She was always quiet and preferred to read unless I had time to play. Then we'd rollerblade around our city or we'd ride bicycles out into the countryside and have picnics, play cards or board games. I let her choose what we did. (I was married twice but divorced both of them. I got full custody of Pretty when she was 5 years old and stayed single after that.) After she started school and made some friends, we'd invite the kids and their parents over for playdates and then, after the parents got to know me, invite the kids over to spend the weekend with us. When Pretty was a teenager, we took in two of her friends when their parents got a wild hair up their bums and wanted to quit being grownups. I agreed to keep the girls for a few days and ended up keeping them for several years. I treated them all like my daughters after asking the parents for papers giving me full custody so I could sign them up for school each year, summer camps when they asked if they could go and signed them up for baseball when all three wanted to join a team. I hope you can get things right with your son and niece/nephew. Good luck!

Better not to let your son play with them without an adult watching over them. And yeah you have to really teach your son and remind him of what is good and not. But my parents will not allow me and my sister to play with kids that has bad behavior when we were little.

Oh my, you are in a pickle. First, it sounds like you have reared a wonderful child. I honestly don’t think there is much you actually can do without simply limiting the amount of time they spend together. The hitting really should be addressed by the child’s parents, and it is disappointing you are the one who has to even have the notion to step in.

That is such a difficult situation. If I see them hitting my son in front of me, I would talk to the kids in such a way that they would understand that it is not acceptable for them to do so anywhere they are. And that you do not allow such behavior from anyone, even your child so they know it is not only them.