This mum just blocked my toddler from approaching hers

Christ almighty op, some of these responses are batshit.

I have never met a mumsnetter in real life thank fuck.

I smiled to myself reading the bit about your son showing the other child his toys. How sweet 😊

Gosh, so many miseries on this thread. I’m with you, OP. The other mum was anti-social and it’s a shame she was mean to your young child.

We've all had days where we've been absolutely up to our tits with life. Maybe she was just having one of those days and didn't need any further distractions or dramas. The amount of times my kids have kicked off over everything, all day, and I just want to get on and home before anything else happens. 😆 x

..

She sounds mean. She didn't handle it well.

Who cares? 🤷‍♀️ It’s nothing - move on.

You’re being over sensitive and it doesn’t matter.

It’s really hard to picture as we weren’t there. There could definitely be merit to the idea that she thought he was getting away from you and she was trying to help. I don’t think you’d have needed to call out for her to get that impression.
Or - though this may just be because I have to be so vigilant with my twins who are a bit younger - she could have thought that there was a chance that her child would grab the toys from your child and not give them back without a fight and so was trying to prevent that?
Just thoughts and obviously I wasn’t there (and mostly only read op’s responses as this thread is v long)

I struggle to see any other explanation than she was helpfully stopping your child from escaping from you. You just said you were a couple of meters behind trying to catch up, with your pram.
I think I’d have done the same!

Maybe her child was on chemo or immunocompromised, and she didn’t want another child in close contact for obvious reasons. She shouldn’t have to explain, but maybe there as a very good reason.

So again why do you think an adult needs to explain their life to you? Lmao miss nosey pants.

Maybe her child was contagious but she didn’t want to say?

I actually don't think they are. MN is not RL (thankfully).

When I was younger, this would have looked like a really dickish move, ( if there was a genuine reason why the mother couldn't let her toddler interact, they would just say so). These days, so many people are so unfriendly, precious and unpleasant, lord knows what the other woman was thinking.

• toddler: 1 to 3 years
• child: 4 to 12 years

🤦🏻‍♀️

I often think that the kindest thing that you can do on this overcrowded island is to minimize your interactions with other people as much as possible
So avoid unnecessary eye contact, don't make unnecessary puerile small talk and avoid impinging on peoples personal space as much as possible

It doesn’t really matter where it falls for you though, it’s rude! It just is. Like I say, it’s absolutely fine to be rude. I can’t reimagine the parameters of rude so that it falls outside the box of rudeness 😂 it just is! I mean I almost want to agree at the moment just out of politeness!

I agree. But it is the rudeness I take issue with.
I have no desire to chat to someone else's toddler. But I would never to so rude, if what we are being told is accurate.

Have had 3 toddlers, and a full time job so believe me im never just meandering about the place but i have common decency enough to accept the innocence of 1 toddler talking to another.

One person's idea of manners and positive interaction is not the same as another's. By the same token there is not one absolute morality that is independent of time or circumstance.

I acknowledge this. I'm aware people's view of the same thing will differ.

You are convinced that you are absolutely, unmitigatingly correct and that no nuance or differences in contributing circumstances can negate that view.

That says everything it needs to say about the difference between your position and my position.

The encounter is not important in any event. The other party has probably long forgotten it by now. We choose what we want to make into an issue that's worth getting het up about, and something that we quickly let go, because it isn't.

For me, the OP's encounter (and this particular exchange, interesting though it's been) fall strictly into the latter category.

Not at all.

People have pressures in their lives. They're carrying all manner of things around with them that others have no clue over.

I wouldn't describe myself as a misanthrope. I'm the butt of a joke amongst those who know me for making friends everywhere I go when in leisure venues, travelling for leisure or even conferencing. But if I'm rushing around a supermarket, particularly if I'm aware there's an imminent miniature Vesuvius about to erupt in the shape of my kid, or if they've followed through and it's currently behind their knee and I'm rushing out before it reaches their shoes, or I'm on the way to a nerve-wracking medical appointment, or I want a quiet meal in a restaurant without someone else's kid undoing my shoelaces or jolting my elbows, or kicking my plane seat etc., then no. I do not want to interact with your precious children. They are making me stressed and it's giving me a headache.

There's a time and a place for positive social interaction, a time for solitude, and a time for getting to where you need to go as quickly and painlessly as possible. And part of decent manners, civility and making your own and others' day go by quickly and more pleasantly, is recognising what is and is not an appropriate time and place.

So you would block a toddler and be rude to a little child? You are the problem sweetheart.

Yes, but it was rude. There’s no law that says you must not be rude, she completely entitled to be. And she was. Unless you want to re-write the entire history of manners in order to make you right, she was rude.

It was not rude. Parents do not owe explanations of their parenting methods to random strangers in the supermarket when they are on the run and likely have other things on their mind than other people's children. It was a nanosecond encounter between strangers who are unlikely to meet further.

A difference of opinion as to who is and is not rude is not gaslighting. Gaslighting is an insidious, longstanding method of abuse designed to mess with the victim's head to the extent that it makes them doubt their own reality. It's mental torture and a hideous form of abuse. To equate that kind of serious issue with a frivolous Mumsnet thread about a real non-issue denigrates those who really have suffered this form of clever, sophisticated, mind-bending abuse. A disagreement as to whether some fly-by-night stranger was or wasn't rude is just that: a simple disagreement.

And who cares, anyway? Rude strangers, rude drivers, rude passers-by are ten-a-penny. If you expend your energies being pissed at every one of these encounters you are going to live a very angry life.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Brilliant