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I have been dealing with DS9's immaturity/impulsiveness for a while. DH has mostly brushed it off as boy being boy.

No complaints ever from school. At home, he can get pretty wild up and hard to calm down. The worst is when he is playing with younger kids. He always acts the age of his peers. It’s frustrating to see DS behaves like a 3yo – crawling under the table, whooshing a much younger & lighter kid on a teeter totter, etc.

I hate being a helicopter parent when we have gatherings with younger kids. Once he is in that mindset of acting the age of the lowest common denominator, I can’t snap him out of it without totally removing him from the environment.

At what points is just boy being boy? He is 9, and I expect some level of emotional maturity without direct supervision. Am I expecting too much?

TIA

Based on the fact that he switches it on and off due to environmental context, this would not appear to be any sort of disability.

Forewarning: It has never been unusual to have groups of kids roller-skating or big-wheeling through our hallways and kitchen, and I might even strap on some skates myself, so consider the source here.

To me, the key question is how his perceived immaturity is having a negative effect, apart from just bothering you. When he's whooshing on the totter, is there anything unsafe going on? If not, and both are enjoying the activity, I wouldn't give it a second thought. Same with climbing under the table - who is being harmed? If Aunt Agnes is at the table in a short dress, causing spills, etc., then, not cool. Otherwise, I'd chalk it up to kids being kids.

It's not unusual to see a 9yo start to be anxious about transitioning from child to adult, and regress their behavior as a result. Gifted kids would be, I expect, more prone to this, and my DD started expressing this kind of anxiety as early as 5/6. It could also come from having lost something that they loved from earlier. This is why, for instance, I continued reading to my DD when she was 9. It reassured her that she didn't have to lose it just because she was getting older, and it basically got discontinued on her own time.

Good perspective! Yes, his behavior does bother me, but my concerns go beyond that.

When he is in the immature/impulsive mode, he becomes fixated on having fun that he becomes very rough and eventually either he and/or someone always gets hurt. On the totter case, I thought the lighter kid was going airborne.

Maybe he doesn't know how to act age-appropriate. I can try on that angle.

In that case, age-appropriate isn't the thing, it's getting too intense, and too rough. Because I don't care how old a kid is, they can still hurt someone if they're not careful. Ask any dad who has ever had a kid just the right height run straight at them.

Humans are a lot like puppies in this arena - we learn how to play without hurting each other by playing rough with each other, saying "Ow!", stopping the game, and resuming. Does he have anyone in the house to play rough with? And if so, are appropriate boundaries being established?

Rough play is actually quite beneficial, when done right: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/growing-friendships/201506/do-boys-need-rough-and-tumble-play

Other than that, I'd say he needs someone to step in and inform him when his play is getting too intense, as in the teeter totter scenario. He needs someone to point out how it can lead to injury. Little kids are pretty impulsive generally, and don't always think those things through.

One of the handy things about playing with other children is that one's peers are prone to providing immediate feedback on socially-unacceptable or unexpected behavior. One of the hazards of playing with much younger children is that sometimes they don't provide that feedback at the same stage (of behavior), or with the same clarity. It may be that he's not receiving their signals early enough to avoid hurt because they don't realize the potential for injury early enough, and he's relying on them to give him that feedback, rather than anticipating on their behalf.

aeh speaks truth, to which I'll add: one of the hazards of playing with much older people is that the adult can take what the kid dishes out, and may not be providing sufficient feedback. The child can play with excessive aggression with the adult, then bring that same mode of play to peers and younger.

I've seen one dad whose idea of rough play was to allow his son to grab him by the hair and beard and pull him off the couch. I've seen another whose rough play oftentimes turned into the kind of dominance-establishing mentioned at the end of the article between them, and it stopped being fun. I'd categorize both dads as having failed to establish proper boundaries at opposite ends of the spectrum.