What's A Mother To Do?

So I recently wrote a post about bullying, which my husband asked me to unpost because my message wasn't clear enough.


My son is not a bully - I will say that right off the bat. My point, however, was that there is a fine line between the perception of bullying and being irritating. As a family, we've worked hard with our son to get him to understand that not everyone wants to be touched, hugged, or wrestled with. We all get that. He gets that. But could others think he's a bully? I don't know.  I do know he means well, but that he does crave a physical boyish ruggedness that I think is sometimes hard to control.

That said, I think the main point of my other post was not that my son could be a bully, or even that others could perceive him as such, but rather that I don't know how to provide a safe and acceptable outlet for rough housing. There aren't many sports at his age where it's ok to tackle others, nor do I necessarily want him to. But what's the solution here? As I said in my erased post, so many experts over the last few years have talked about needing to let boys be boys, but how do we do that? Our society is no longer built for that. Kids don't wrestle because we've taught them not to from a young age. Please know that I'm not saying that we should allow our sons to go start a Fight Club or anything, but what do we do?

I don't have the answer. Do you?