Sister angry I “yanked” my nephew’s arm and told him off

Omg!!! Why does no one read past the title… she says she DID NOT yank the arm. That is what her bil who wasn’t watching said and what her sis is accusing which she denied. She blocked the arm to stop hitting again. What was she supposed to do… bleat ‘kind hands kind hands’ as the child keeps whacking the dog

Kindly OP, why did you make this thread when you're not taking on board anything that anyone is saying? I have a child the same age as your nephew. We have a dog who he adores, but is still trying to work out right from wrong so sometimes gets it wrong. I can understand why you responded in the way you did in the moment - you're protective of your dog and presumably you don't have kids if your own so haven't thought about where you stand on disciplining etc. But I do think it sounds pretty heavy handed and I can therefore understand why your sister was upset, particularly if that's not how they like to assert boundaries. No one's suggesting that you/ an adult shouldn't have responded - children do need to learn, it's just in the way that you do it.

Your brother in law is allowed to read for a few minutes, that doesn't make him a crap parent. It would be so painful if every time I did anything that took my eyes off my child - even for a minute - I had to spell out 'please watch x' to a family member. However, he absolutely should have stepped in and responded to the situation. Bizarre he didn't, but I guess he was a bit shocked, I don't know.

To be honest, I think you could all do with apologising to one another! Id 100% apologise to a dog owner if my child hit their dog. It does sound like you were heavy handed and I'd want some sort of acknowledgement of that if I were your sister because that's definitely not ok. And your brother in law should have responded to the situation and intervened. Situations like this aren't black and white. Just please try to see each others perspectives

No, apparently 2 year olds can't process language sufficiently to understand if someone says "you were mean there." and it will traumatise them. Therefore the proper thing to do is sit them down and read them Aristotle's "Ethics", after which they will say "I see the error of my ways and will go apologise to all and sundry"

Grabbed him by the arm to stop him hitting the dog again. What ? Did you want her to wait to see if the dog would bite ?

It takes a village to raise a child, as the saying goes and you were watching him because you saw what happened.

Of course we (parents) get it wrong. But we apologise to our children when we do, learn from it and move on. There's no "refusing to apologise on principle". I always apologise if I overreact/go overboard. That doesn't mean saying that whatever my child did to make me react was ok, it just means acknowledging that I didn't handle it very well and saying sorry for that element. It usually leads to a calm conversation, which is much better for reinforcing good behaviour than being reactive.

I think it would be best to acknowledge that you didn't handle it brilliantly, say sorry and that you've learnt from it, and move on.

This.
They have offered you the opportunity to save money in it has backfired on them.
Once you move and return the dynamic changes, you are no longer their teenager who can rant, you're an adult.

Even worse if the family dog had taken a snap out of his face @Mischance
Remove the kid quickly from this type of scenario however well behaved the dog is.

Sadly the kid (young toddler but let's say kid) was then shouted at and manhandled by a non-sentinet creature.

You used too many words for a 2 year old to understand but you absolutely did the right thing.

Your BIL is a wet lettuce. If he had a problem with how you handled the situation he should have said something directly to you at the time.

Are you serious?!

the kid is not naughty nor was he being bad!!!

If the dog had woken and snapped/woofed and scared the toddler that would have been worse than you telling him off.
Sounds like you have a bil who leaves it to women to parent. Next time they come round I'd be busy and not able to spend time with toddler.

I take it you don’t have kids of your own, OP

you don’t shout at kids nor do you yank their arms. He’s 2 he doesn’t understand fgs

absolutely kids need to be taught how to act around animals but he isn’t 12 and purposely set out to do something to hurt your dog. Would you like it if someone shouted and yanked your arm whenever you did something wrong?

The kid was whacking a sentient creature! You need to be cross not kind!

So as her sister would your reaction be "why did my sister say something sharp to my toddler who she doesn't really understand because she doesn't have children" or "why is my husband coming whining to me about an incident that happened while he sat there and did nothing to prevent it, which could have ended with my toddler bitten if my sister hadn't stepped in, even if not perfectly"?

She didn’t shout or manhandle. She took his arm to prevent him from hitting the dog and then took the coaster off him. OP says she did not shout.

Modern parents, how would you prevent the child hitting the dog in this scenario without touching the child? Snatch the coaster away from them, even though we teach them that snatching is wrong? Do you then allow the child to continue hitting the dog without the coaster? I’m not sure when we reached the point where holding a child’s arm is ‘manhandling’. Are we still allowed to hold their body parts in other situations? Is holding their hand ‘manhandling’ them across the road?

She isn’t ‘lightening’, she’s clarifying. I can’t imagine your family is drama free either with your kind of supercilious ‘tut tutting’.

It's absolutely fine to speak crossly to children when they are being naughty. Put simply they should feel sad for being bad

Yep, easy to dissect everything after the fact.

Holding arm, taking coaster both fine. Better to scare the kid than let him get bitten for doing it again. You had to react quickly to protect both kid and dog. Bil should have been supervising properly.

I am not sure how bil knows what happened. He was was not watching enough to.prevent DN from hitting so how come he saw the whole thing anyway?

He's either lazy and let your nephew be at risk for hitting a dog who might react.
Or lazy and making up half of it as he was reading and not paying attention and painting you as the bad guy to get out of it having supervised properly

I didn’t like seeing my elderly dog whacked in the face whilst sleeping

Well, I guess your sister does not like her small son to be treated roughly. Sounds reasonable. He was doing what toddlers do - trying things out in life. You could have dealt with it more kindly.

@Mmemmare your parents asking you to apologise because they genuinely think you were wrong or is it literally only because your sister has thrown her toys out of the pram?

Your dog, old, slightly in pain and woken suddenly could have taken a snap out of your nephew’s face - that end result is hideous for everyone involved. So the situation needed stopping quickly and your anxiety at the possible end scenario can sometimes show as anger/ shouting/ pulling the kid.

Maybe you can simply tell your account of the situation like this? That you were really concerned about your DN being hurt and you reacted quickly and abruptly to stop this scenario.

”Apologise” for your parents sake - but say this is why you did it.

Sigh.

Yes, she's addressed this. It's in quotation marks as it's what the useless fecker BIL has described her as doing. Not what she actually did, which was hold his arm to stop him landing a second hit.

So, to repeat;

Some of these replies are a joke. She didn't yank him. She tried to get him to think about how it would feel to be hit in the face because he'd just hit the dog in the face and was about to do it again.

The BIL is a piece of work. Watches his kid try to hurt the dog. Does fuck all. Then tells tales on OP for having to step in.

A lot of dogs would have not taken well to being woken up by a whack in the face, and the second whack in the face (which OP prevented) could have been the straw that broke the camels back. How many times do we read of an awful attack with the distraught owners "he's never ever done anything like this before".

As PP says, of course the parents are cross, they look bad.

What cushy situation ? Presumably OP is paying her way and is saving for a flat. And this is entirely irrelevant to what happened because the dog is the family pet - it doesn’t belong exclusively to OP, so would still be there regardless of whether OP moves out or not.

And once again, the fact that the other person is two certainly means they could perceive it as a threat, I've answered that over and over again.

You are arguing it is literally a threat to other adults. Are you rowing back on that now?