What would you do?

[Sethomas]

Well, my thoughts are that it could really be quite nothing, maybe he's a fine and normal kid who just had a bad day or had some specific reason for awkward behavior at that specific hour. Just as easily, though, it could relate to a deeper problem in social development which could come from mental chemistry or child abuse or post-traumatic stress or whatever else. To me, at least, it's worth the risk to investigate if there's a problem.

In American society, there's a huge taboo against attempts for individuals to raise other parents' children, so the only thing you could do personally is to report the episode to the school and advise an incrementally increasing amount of psychological analysis. It would probably start passive but should probably get more involved.

I personally think I have developed a talent for discerning psychological trouble in people through passive means, but I doubt it would work well for me or most anyone else on a child. The reason is that when it comes to things like shame and guilt, kids younger than and sometimes beyond adolescence have a hard time varying in degree of internalization between things like "I just peed my pants" and "I think I killed my sister".