Child picking up bad behaviour
Hello, hopefully someone can offer us some advice or can relate by having a similar experience, but we're slowly but surely getting to the end of our wits with this.
Our son (5) is generally well behaved, empathetic and well socialized. He plays in team sports and he has adapted easily to those situations. We take him to any playground or friends group and he is easily able to play nicely or make friends with pretty much any kid. Overall we think he is well adjusted.
Except for one wrinkle...
Our next door neighbors also have a boy, about 6 yo. He's not a bad kid perse, but he doesn't seem to understand personal space, he's very touchy with other kids, and tends to get in their faces. He grabs things from other kids without asking. He doesn't seem to get pretend play and ends up getting physical with others. He has a tendency to get very close to other kids and speak loudly right in their face - not willingly yelling, but those are just his conversation skills. He seems unable to pick up on the social cues kids have at this age and does not appear to actively listen when told by his parents or others. Perhaps on their own these behaviours are not a big deal but put together they quickly get on your nerves. As such, he doesn't get along with most kids in the neighborhood, as he seems to rub them and some of their parents the wrong way.
When they see each other, our son is completely mesmerised by him. If he shows up while our son is playing with other kids, he completely forgets about them and only plays with this one kid. We've had to apologize to our play dates and family at times because this kid showed up during dates and again and again our son just forgot about his other friends/family and got mentally stuck with this kid.
We're also next door neighbors. This kid hears us leave our place or return home and out he pops. Countless times we've been delayed going out or bringing our son back in because he simply stops listening to us whenever they meet in our building hallway.
And maybe we could live with this little obsession of his if he didn't pick up all of the annoying behaviours from this kid. When our son plays with other kids, they appear to be imaginative, they have nice pretend games, they get along, respect each other's spaces and requests, ask one another nicely when they want something etc. When our son plays with this other kid, he becomes his mirror image and picks up the same behaviors: they get in each other's faces, grab each other, getting physical and holding hands constantly, talking gibberish, grabbing things from each other and that's their way of having fun. I watch them play and just get annoyed, because they don't play like other kids or have a normal interaction. Together they just act, for lack of a better word, stupid.
Those bahviours then come into our home. He starts grabbing things from his little brother's hands whereas before he didn't. As mentioned above, completely forgets about others around him. For a few hours after seeing this kid he exhibits the same lack of active listening. On the days he spends any considerable amount of time with this kid, our son has a meltdown.
We've gotten to the point that we can't wait for these neighbors to move. They're nice people and seem like a good family, and far from me to say how they should raise their kid. But at this point, what's the solution? Pull our son in the house every time this kid shows up? Tell our son he needs to play with the other kids otherwise we're going home and actually follow through with that? Tell the neighbors our kids need a break from each other?
Like I said he's not a bad kid, and we don't want him to be made to feel rejected, but it's getting to point where our son is becoming obsessed with playing with him to the detriment of his relationship with other kids. Every solution we've thought of seems unfeasible, either because of their proximity (difficult to pull them from each other because they meet so easily) or because we end up looking like A-holes if we get more drastic.
Any advice or support is greatly appreciated!