My son is almost 5 years old. There are two other boys in the neighborhood: Z is 5 months younger than him, and S is 10 years old. Both are very nice and well-behaved kids.
We moved to this complex 5 months ago. It has a gate that is closed at all time, and there is a lady who is retired, and can monitor the gate all day. So the complex is very safe, and we let our son to play alone a lot as we are very busy with our smaller kid.
At the beginning my son had no friend to play with. After a couple of weeks, he made friends with S. Although there are 5 years difference in age, they still can play games such as "tag"or hide and seek. They had a lot of fun. However, this was not very often, only once per week or less.
After a couple of weeks more, Z's parents also let him go out to play. As they are at the same age, they became good friends very quickly. They play with each other for hours, everyday.
Problem:
Occasionally, S wants to join with my son and Z, and they (my son and Z) don't want to play with him. Their favorite game is racing the bikes, pretending to be the police chasing the bad guys. When S is there, they assume he is the bad guy, and saying something like "go away", "I will punch you in the face" etc.
When I knew this, I immediately tried to talk to my son. He explained that they don't want to play with S. He gave several reasons, but they are completely nonsense, and unrelated to each other, for example: S rides a scooter and not a bike like them etc, he said so because Z had said so, etc etc
I can forbid him to say such bad things to S, but I don't know how to teach my son to value the friendship he had with S before.
What I tried:
- Remind him that when nobody played with him, S was there to play with him. He said now he could play with Z.
- Remind him that he had fun playing with S. He said he no longer wanted to play with S.
- Threaten him that Z may move away, and he will have nobody to play with. He simply said Z will not move.
I'm very frustrated, winning an argument anybody is hard, winning an argument with a kid is almost impossible. What should I do?