Friend shouted at my 2 year old

My mum had a calm voice and a stern voice, but /both voices were about the same pitch.
I knew when she meant business.
Mum was a teacher - and she had a classroom voice and a playground voice.
And woe be it to any of those little kids if she caught them being naughty on the playground.
That was the scariest voice I ever heard in my entire life.
I never heard that playground voice at home, even one time - ever.
And now I miss my mum.

OP she triggered your mummy bear instinct! It happens.

However whats not ok is your jump to basically call her a lesser parent than you. Yes you helped her in school holidays and at breakfast times, but she's raising 3 kids alone and you're raising 1 with help.

Yes possibly she might have damaged her relationship by shouting, but i think its more likely to be a combination of factors if indeed, the relationship is damaged and this isnt typical teen laziness. I think you are projecting your abusive childhood onto her situation.

Also I think you might get bought right down to earth with this whole "gentle hands" thing. Yes that's the ideal way to do it, of course. You explain and they listen and you skip off under a rainbow. However i firmly believe not every child is wired to listen and take this on board. Your parenting style isnt a 1 size to fit all playbook. Maybe when you give birth to DC2 they might be the crazy second child and you might find yourself a little more inclined to shouting.

I agree your friend shouldn’t have shouted at your child but perhaps it was the final straw( in your friends eyes) because she believes you let your DD call the shots
Your post is full of contradictions actually
saying iits normal for a 2 year old to hit( and so is biting scratching clonking a pal with a wooden toy all that stuff) BUT you firmly stop them, by pulling them away if necessary otherwise they do not learn
kids need telling in that moment
Short, sharp, shock( verbal) is necessary sometimes.
You then you have good insight into teenage behaviour( not going to school, not washing, staying in their rooms) Absolutely normal( I’ve had 3)
So How did you communicate effectively with the teenagers? You could write a bestseller with your tips!

She crossed a boundary, she shouldn't have shouted at your child.

But you are also incredibly critical towards someone you claim is a friend.

You clearly think you are a superior parent but your child is 2. You are only just starting to get into the trickier phase of disciplining.

If you think she abused her children, how can you still be her friend?

I do want to teach her that we only ever use our hands on somebody to be kind (a hug, high five etc)

But she is using her hands to slap and pull hair, not to be kind.
No one is asking you to use hands to hit your dd. But your approach of talking gently explaining her has not stopped her from biting, slapping, pulling hair. You can discipline her without using hands but be firm with your voice that it is not acceptable.

Did she shout? Or did she use a firm authoritative voice? The former not ideal. The latter is essential in good parenting. Sometimes using a firm voice will make a child cry as it makes them listen and can be a surprise. Especially if they are not used to it. You need to use it when children are misbehaving and not listening, they are unsafe, they are being violent etc It brings them up short and immediately stops poor behaviour. If you want to discuss it later you can.

Shouting is different, it’s loud, scary and usually ineffective. Careful you are not perceiving authoritiveness as shouting because of your experience in childhood.

Your daughter was being violent, so that would be the time for an authoritative voice. I personally wouldn’t have stepped in as she was being violent to you and I’d have let you handle it, but if your child was pulling my hair, or my child’s, or you weren’t there I would speak to her authoritatively. When she’s at school teachers will also do this.

Gentle parenting is fine, permissive parenting is not. Over explaining to children is also often far from helpful. Especially a 2 year old who has limited understanding. Your friend sounds like she may be shouty and authoritarian (don’t confuse that with authoritative), but don’t fear becoming that so much you become permissive.

I agree with most other posters here. So she shouldn’t have shouted at your DC but you do seem to think your parenting style is superior. You can claim that biting and hitting is normal but that doesn’t mean you ignore it. How else is your child going to realise it’s wrong if you’re calmly saying ‘oh we don’t hit, gentle hands etc’? Your response should be proportionate to the action as should your tone of voice. Hitting and biting needs to be nipped in the bud ASAP so I see why your friend intervened. As for the behaviour of her teenagers, that’s pretty standard and I can guarantee yours will be the same!

But the OP obviously wasn't, and isn't, happy to follow her best friend's parenting style, or she would not have "... told her to her face" that she was not parenting her teenagers correctly!! Like I said before, that seems very much like double standards to me.

Hmmm. I agree with you that shouting at children is almost always inappropriate (the only exception would be for a moment of danger when shouting may be necessary). I can't stand it when someone says proudly, "I'm a shouty mum." Shouting can indeed be extremely emotionally abusive. I can understand it happens when parents get to the end of their tender, but it's not something that should be shrugged off or defended IMO.

Your friend shouldn't have shouted at your child. Having said that, I would also add that you seem very critical of your friend as a mother. Maybe that is because you are angry with her at the moment. But you seem to feel you are a superior parent. I would say that as the parent of a just turned 2-year-old, there is a great deal that you have yet to experience. It's all very well to say that you would insist on your teenager going to school and showering. But until you've actually dealt with a school refusing child who may well be experiencing depression, you can't really claim that you would succeed where you think your friend has failed.

I'd also say it's important to draw some clear lines WRT hitting, pulling hair, etc. It's certainly a developmental stage for some children, but it still needs to be handled firmly IMO.

I absolutely agree this was out of order OP. I'm really (not?) surprised at these comments you're getting. When I read your post I thought 'well this is a no brainer surely? Someone else shouting at your kid? Stepping in when the parent is right there and dealing with it? Haven't we moved out of the stone age and using shouting as a tool to get kids to do what we want?'

But it seems... no.

The first comment saying you were being precious raised my eyebrow - the subsequent pile on has really surprised me.

Mine weren't allowed toy guns, so finger guns and sticks became their toys of choice when playing goodies and baddies - they were at least junior school ages before they picked up on those games. I didn't buy them drums either - for selfish reasons (to protect my ears and headaches!). They found out what lovely sounds saucepans make when hit with wooden spoons, then with metal spoons, the metal spoons were swiftly hidden out of sight, and that was before school was even on the horizon... 😂

YANBU @hmm01, we had similar rules in our house; we're not a hitting family, and we're not a shouting family. It worked well for us, there is only one occasion when I've shouted at either of my DDs, and it was because she was doing something dangerous. Our DDs are now 16 and 18 and perfectly lovely, well behaved, non-shouty young ladies!

I would probably talk to your friend and just tell her you didn't like her shouting at your DD, and while you've been happy to follow her parenting style when caring for her children, you would ask her to respect your parenting style in relation to your own DC. Which means no shouting.

Absolutely this!

I'd be the first to roll my eyes at gentle parenting but what you've described is just common sense. We're not a shouty house either- I don't think many are, cos it's a shit way to be as a family.

I agree your friend was out of order but you’re in for a huuuuuuge surprise believing you can parent a child these days without ever shouting! It really takes me back to when I first had mine and declared there’d be “no toys that make noise, they’ll all be wooden” Ha! As if you get a choice in the matter as they get to pre-school age! So naive

You're contradicting yourself. You don't think she's a bad mum but as she is emotionally abusive that's the definition of being a bad mum!
"“Shouty homes are not abusive” they actually are, emotionally abusive."

@hmm01 can you come back here when your youngest child is 14 please, and tell us that you were right, because I think that by then you might have a very different viewpoint.

So when you were helping your best friend with her children to get them ready for school in the morning, and to have them for weeks over the holidays, did you honestly never tell them off or disciplin them in any way? If you are honest, and admit that you did have to do that on occassions, is it possible that your best friend thought that you were both close enough to each other, that is was ok to each tell the other's child off? It appears that you still think that it is ok for you to tell her how she should be parenting her children, but not the other way around?

"if that was my teenager, they would be going to school and showering. She knows this and I've said it to her face."

Apart from what appears to be a horrible double standard on your part, how exactly would you gently get her teenagers to shower and go to school - I assume you meant her children to shower before going to school, and not actually at school?

I think that it would be better for your "best friend" to thank you very much for all the help you insisted on giving her in the past, but to add that it seems your joint friendship has run it's course now, but that her door might be open to you in the future if you ever find yourself living in the real world. I don't believe in hitting children either, but I also think that in the future, during the seriousness of a situation, you might actually find yourself shouting at your own child - sadly there isn't always time to explain something to them gently.

This.

If your dd had pulled her hair then fair enough - dd needs to learn that people are different and if you interfere with different people, expect different reactions. Since she was pulling your hair, it was your situation to deal with IMO.

The friend advised her to pull her son’ hair in retaliation!! That isn’t on.

You both clearly disapprove of each other's parenting styles.

Each to their own. A shout isn't going to do any lasting damage; git child will have forgotten by the next day.

Two's absolutely tiny. Shouting at a two year old is pointless. They are still exploring the world in a very sensory way, they're very easily distracted and are only just starting to grasp the idea of rules. My kid and her friends were all raised on a "kind hands" approach and they're seven now and it has really worked. They are very careful around each other and don't see trying to hurt each other as a form of play. You parent the way you want to, OP. There is a lot of evidence-based info out there about how children think and learn and it's a real shame how many adults just brush all that off with "oh it's so annoying watching that kind hands crap", as if it's not annoying watching adults scream at children who are far too young to understand what the adult thinks they have done wrong.

Fucksake, people are being mental. We're not a shouty household either. The odd time when DH shouts at the kids I fucking hate it - probably because I grew up in a shouty household and it was bloody awful. The odd occasion I shout, because they've hurt me and I lose it, I apologise and say I was wrong.
I have a 2 year old - if my friend did this I'd be appalled.

Okie dokie

I would let it go. No harm was done. Your child was not affected in any way. It's a bit of a non event tbh.