Acquitence went to kiss toddler

You are embarrassed that you were flustered and struggling and didn’t comfort your child.

You feel judged because of it.

You are projecting and trying to find blame in this woman when all she was trying to do was help a fellow mother.

I have to physically stop myself from going over and helping mums out if they look stressed or their child is playing up.

When mine were little, I regularly had women helping me.

Mothers know how challenging little kids can be and so we try and support each other.

Her intentions were only for good and so you can’t get worked up over it.

This morning I physically kissed my neighbours cat on the head.
It was pure habit from doing it to my own cat.

This woman didn’t even kiss your child but you’re overreacting saying what if she did etc.

Are you always so stressed out?
Can you ask DH to take toddler for the day so that you can go for a walk and unwind?

Imagine if she hadn't helped...why did this woman I knew stand by watching me struggle with my pram and crying toddler. So much for it takes a village.

It sounds like she wanted to help you and comfort a distressed child. Whether you are overreacting because of something else going on in your life or not it's impossible to say but take it as a kind gesture.

OP, I’m sorry to say but you are grossly overreacting here. Worryingly you are also making up false situations that didnt happen to try to convince us that you are right (eg it was not a man, the woman didn’t actually kiss your child).
It really sounds as though this woman was just trying to be nice and help you. You say you didn’t need help - well maybe you looked like you did.

@sarahmaguire I think it’s completely reasonable to feel uncomfortable with someone you don’t know very well taking your toddler out of the pram. That’s how you felt in at the time and you would have preferred to have been asked which is fine (as well as being flustered and feeling undermined)

I don’t think it’s reasonable to think this is a completely disgusting / gross thing to do. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say in one post that the acquaintance took your child and put them on their lap and you immediately took them back, then in another post to say they took your child out of sight. Those two things can’t be true at the same time. As other pp have suggested you say multiple times that they didn’t kiss your child then when others have disagreed with your response have said “would you like your child to be kissed by a stranger” - pretend kissing to a toddler who is clearly upset and actually kissing a toddler are two very different things and the connotations are very different so @nomas yes I think OP should be clearer in her posts.

As others have said the intent behind what happened is extremely unlikely to have been malicious. The fact you feel undermined by someone else picking up your child is sad - it’s fine to have moments where our kids have tantrums - they all do it in public - you did nothing wrong, and in my opinion she didn’t either. I appreciate you may have preferred to have been asked and I think I probably would have asked too - but also wouldn’t think it was disgusting or gross if someone did this to my child. What about it disgusts you? And could you please clarify the level of acquaintance - you mention a baby group - with kids of toddler age are they not all playing together - interacting with all the different adults? I’m a bit bemused to be honest

Yes.

You never said this was in Laos.

Someone's definitely weird in this situation...

I can confirm they are not vampires! I've never noticed any vampire like activity.
P. S a lot of women seemed to want to kiss and cuddle them. It was always the blue eyes. My late DH had very blue eyes as did his mum. Sadly mine aren't! 😕

@User79853257976i think she meant acquaintance- so someone she knew basically, which makes this post even more ridiculous!

Do unclench

Wow.

So many posts on MN lamenting that they have no "village" and no help and here is a woman who sees another woman struggling and steps in to help try and diffuse the situation.

And the OP has a wildly disproportionate response-no wonder ppl sadly opt to look away these days.

And your whataboutery is ridiculous.

She is not the weird one.

For goodness sake. A woman, who you know, came to help you amuse your toddler while you were sorting the pram. She didn’t take him out of sight, she sat next to you and played with him by making kissing noises. What exactly is the problem with that?

Did you use your big girl words and ask her not to? If not, you can't expect her to have known you didn't like it.

You think Budget is over invested ?? 😂

There was no kissing of the child though... just to be very clear. The acquaintance made faces at the child. No kissing.

The OP has not given any context about the acquaintance at all so it’s very vague. If the acquaintance is a Mum who she knows by name at the baby group or event they both attend and is there every week for the last 18 months and they make pleasantries and have a coffee together then that’s one thing, if she is a friend of a friend who’s sister lives across the road and they have never spoken to each other, it’s another.

The context is massively relevant. Did she look like a nice, normal Mum helping one of her peers out? Because that’s what it sounds like. Most of us have the intellectual capacity to make these judgements. Had it been a man, with no children of his own at the event, who smelled of fags and started trying to kiss a child, then yeah OP has a point.

If she had been a complete stranger I could see your point to an extent but you know this person. You are being completely unreasonable

Got to laugh at you calling someone else overinvested in the OP! 🤗

Politely, you need to unclench.

I am not over-invested, I am being factual. She literally used the words gross and disgusting.

I would assume that yes, if she is trying to make a valid point that she doesn't leave out the important details.

Instead of asking would you be OK with your toddler being kissed she should say would you be OK with the toddler being entertained with kissy faces... COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.

She did put her child in the pram and left... but that was the original plan, nothing to do with the nonsense story she's made up.

Bye buddy

My kids are confident healthy happy and successful adults in their mid-40s, raising their own kids now.

At 2, I’d have given them to a passing stranger to keep, never mind comfort.

But in your scenario (and nobody kissed your child anyway), yes, I’d have been fine with it.

Her OP isn’t full of lies, OP said mock kissed a few times, any reasonable person would deduce that saying ‘kissed’ in subsequent posts refers to the mock kissing.

You seem very over invested in the OP, she isn’t being ‘horrid’ or calling people ‘gross’ and ‘disgusting’ or any of the other things you’ve said.

She put her child in her pram and left.

And on that note, I’m off out.

I'm suggesting that the acquaintance cannot have known abiyt the OPs 'wishes' or 'boundaries' if she didn't bother to vocalise it. Do you think the acquaintance is a mind reader?

It wouldn't be confrontational at all.
But going online to make up a story full of lies and being horrid about a simple interation and getting pretty manic when people don't agree is a bit mad.

Incidentally, my dad is from a south European country where small children live as gods and has always been charmed by them. He absolutely loves babies and small children (even the spoiled bratty ones) and used to go up to them in supermarket trolleys in England and talk to them, then wonder why their mothers were a bit perturbed. I mean that was in the 80's and 90's. These days, if he still lived in the UK, they'd be calling the police.

Back in his country, this is still fairly normal. And yes, waiters and other people in restaurants will take a baby off you and entertain them. It's a lovely thing.

A slightly different story:

Once when we were on holiday there, my gorgeous 6m DS1 was approached and talked to by a friendly German tourist woman while playing next to me in the sand. She grinned at me and said 'mine!' in a jokey way, then carried DS back to her husband about 10 yards away. Naturally I leapt up smartish and was right there. She showed DS1 off to her husband and then I gently pried him away from her and took him back to our parasol. I'll admit I was a bit nervous and definitely kept an eye on her until we left, but - because I'm a normal human being - I could tell this woman wasn't acting out of harmful intent. Perhaps she had grandchildren she couldn't see? Perhaps she'd been unable to have children herself? Maybe she was just a bit mad? It made me slightly uncomfortable but even in the throes of PFBdom, I could feel compassion for her. I think the fact that I'm partially from a culture where small children are universally adored meant that my default setting was not 'OMG kidnap! Paedophile!' but 'Sad lonely woman'. (Admittedly I don't like to think what might have just possibly happened if she'd picked DS1 up if he'd been unattended, but then he was a baby so he wouldn't have been.)