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To the OP, I'm a retired special education teacher with decades of experience with young children.
The type of behavior that your nephew displayed is extremely unusual and disturbing. While a child may say in anger, "I'm going to kill you" (just like an adult may use those words during a fight) and not really mean it, your nephew's behavior is well beyond anything that is considered "normal play".
If I observed an 8 year old actually choking a younger child until he showed signs of distress, as a mandatory reporter of child abuse & neglect, I would immediately contact Children's Protective Services. That shows you how serious a matter it is. What if someone was not there to stop it?
I would also make sure that the 8 year old was not around family pets as they are in danger. If Johnny has already killed animals, even if "by accident", that is a huge, huge red flag that can not be ignored.
On the bright side, if the nephew attends school, and he has shown any of these behaviors there he would have already been reported to CPS and referred to a special education program for children with severe emotional/behavioral problems. If he is in school and neither of those things have happened then it is possible (unlikely but possible) that this behavior was unusual or a one time occurrence, perhaps due to watching a few scary movies or having a violent video game binge right before the party.
OP, have you observed your nephew doing things like this other times? Do you know if Johnny threatens to kill his little brother and put him in choke holds until he "shows signs of distress"?
I'm glad germaine is lending her expert opinion and all the experience she has accumulated, because my opinion as a childless adult who has spent extensive time with the children of friends and relatives and who has some exposure to the educational field is also that this is extremely abnormal.
Little kids can be very weird (from my nonparental perspective and having BEEN a weird kid), but this kind of goes beyond anything I recall encountering. In my personal opinion, little kids can SAY almost anything - they will say things that will shock you to the core and creep you out and whatever. You look for patterns, repeated themes, etc. if you think something is wrong (abuse, mental health issues, whatever), but most of the time it's just kids messing around with words, thoughts, their imagination.
But this is a pairing of words AND actions, and the ACTIONS are what I find most alarming. We're talking about an 8-year-old boy who was physically tormenting a 3-year-old child. That, to me, is the point where all this definitively moves from "general kiddie weirdness" and into SERIOUS problems.
Eight-year-old kids are generally mature enough to recognize that a toddler must be treated gently. And when a little kid is getting upset they usually know to back off. I don't buy this "boys will be boys" crap in this regard - even DOGS get this concept.
No, your wife's instincts are correct. Your brother and his wife are in denial. Who cares if they make fun of you for being helicopter parents when their perspective is so clearly warped? It's time to distance yourself from them to protect your kids, and your children should NEVER be unsupervised with their cousin. I also suspect you cannot trust your brother and SIL OR maybe even your own parents to provide proper supervision, so that means there are no playdates or family functions where you or your wife are not present if the children are going to be there.
Well - looking at it from your kids point of view... I had some srsly creepy cousins that I wish my parents had kept away from us! Instead we were periodically forced to interact with them. They both managed to get themselves killed fairly young, and even as a 4 year old, it was rather obvious to me that these guys were not on a good path. I didn't know how to identify what their problems were, but I knew I got a very bad feeling just being around them. I played up being shy and avoided them as much as possible. As I grew older, it just become more obvious.
I would never have said anything though if my parents had asked me. I knew my mom felt like she needed to invite them, and so I saw it as my duty to deal with it just like she did. And to be fair - most of my cousins were fine. It was just a couple, and it was either include all the cousins (and I liked playing with most of them) or exclude the rest of the family. For the most part, I just managed to keep myself away from the creepy ones. I will note that they didn't like being around us any more than we liked being around them, so it wasn't many years before they found other things to do that were much cooler than hanging around family (they were older).
Sounds like Johnny is being allowed to watch too much tv
Look I get how your wife feels, but you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - and you don't dictate to other family members how they raise their child.
You love your family and just need to find a way of being together that is comfortable for you. Encourage your wife to keep a close eye on your children for safety's sake.
In addition, it might be nice if you as the uncle took an extra interest in Johnny and gave him some special attention when you are together. Help him to grow past this phase by exerting a good influence on him.
They should have Johnny professionally assessed. If it is nothing, oh well....but if there is something too it, the sooner they are aware, the more help and assistance they can get with Johnny....(and believe you me as a Psych nurse, if he needs professional help now, they WILL be in need of assistance). As difficult as it is to accept, some people are just "hard wired" differently and pose a serious risk to themselves, and others.
I'm in total agreement with Germaine. This is not normal behavior and it has nothing to do with parenting style or movies watched/video games played. Johnny has some issues that need to be assessed and I would be absolute in limiting contact unless I was there to oversee all contact with my children.
Since your brother does not want to listen to you with regard to his son, perhaps you can get your parents or another sibling to intervene on Johnny's behalf to have him evaluated.
You have good reason for concern. Your first priority ALWAYS is to your own family, not any relative's families. With all the craziness we are seeing in the world today, kids killing kids, etc, I would simply tell my Brother I have serious concerns and have to do whatever it takes to protect my own........even if it means limiting their exposure to this child.
Your relatives are not taking this seriously enough, so don't make their problem your problem.
When I was a kid, I never played with knives, or things like that. We did have waterguns, lighter guns, TV toy guns, and electronic guns, Laser tag, and etc. I never even had wooden pirate swords even. I think the kid was mimicking some sorta fictional work, that he enjoyed, and was acting it out. You know what I mean??
I mean the wrestling. Yeah I will admit, when I was a kid, me and my cousin would always wrestle. Tackling each other, and one day we were charging each other ( yeah like that ), and I was hurting my cousin up with each punch. But again we were less then seven years old, probably younger. Then we got older, and started to mimic fighting moves from movies, and Wrestlemania, back when Hollywood Hulk and the Undertaker was a big thing.
Yeah supervision is needed but it will not turn them into monsters. We also had a lot, and I do mean a lot of Churching. My cousin mother was an advid Church goer. I mean it was so nice to grow up going to church, or being forced to by a mean woman as a mother, she was. I think part of the reason why I am a good person, is because I would go to church, when I was a kid. My cousin also had sunday school.
If it wasn't for those days, I would probably be some r-tard, who does all of that street crap. Or worst I might have done something extremely wrong
I wouldn't start assuming things, and just make him do Sunday school, or even go to Church from now on. Not Catholic either, that is far too extreme. Even an outside activity like sports or camping. Summer is here, why not?
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