Perspective needed - I made another Mum cry yesterday.

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I need some help to decide if what I did was ok, I felt right about it in the moment but then this poor woman cried and I feel worried I did wrong. Tell me what you think.

I was at a busy playpark yesterday with lots of children. There is a tall treehouse thing which has a slide out of it. There are steps around the back to get up to it, but doing this is out of eyeline of the slide.
There was a small boy, probably nearly 3ish, at the top of the slide he wasn't coming down but wasn't letting anyone past. His mum was at the bottom of the slide cajoling him 'come down x, come on darling, ok well let the other children come down etc'. He wasn't moving, this continued for 3 or 4 minutes. During which time the queue of children waiting snaked all the way back through the tree house and down the step sections.

Not sure why, but then he turned and started to hit the other children around him. Really hitting hard, one little girl next to him in particular was getting beaten around the head and face. His mum then walked off around the back to go up and get him. Lots of parents at the foot of the slide were shouting at the little boy to stop hitting, there were 4 children crying from being attacked and he wasn't stopping. So I ran up the slide to get to him and took his hands and said 'don't hit them, it's not kind'. The mother then appears behind him and sharply tells me 'I can handle this'. She lifts him down the steps. I go back down the slide.

A few minutes later she appears beside me telling me she doesn't think I needed to intervene, that my child wasn't in danger from him. I told her that none of those children up there were my children actually, mine had changed her mind and left the queue. I calmly told her that he was hurting and scaring the children and I couldn't let him do that. She said 'he is very tired and only little' so I replied ' I totally understand that, we all have days like this, but I had to step in, he was really hurting them'. Then she burst into tears. I told her it was ok, we all have days like this. But then her friend came over, gave me an evil look and took her away.

I feel bad now that she cried, but I also feel like there were 4 children crying and scared. Did I do the wrong thing?

You did the right thing I think

I found a little boy near an open lake at Chester zoo years ago. He was around 2. No parents in sight.

Dp and I panicked and picked him up and took him to a nearby kiosk that was selling ice cream iirc, we had our own ds with us.

Parents were found around ten minutes later, didn't seem too concerned and muttered "thanks" to us.
I was utterly gobsmacked that he was missing for god knows how long and they were very calm about it.
Saw them later in the day and he kept wandering away and the parents were seemingly oblivious.

I think in times were the child is in danger or could be dangerous to others it is totally acceptable to "touch" them.
Though that phrase somehow makes it sound seedy

You absoloutely did the right thing.

My ds has SEN. When he was little he was very unpredictable. I never took my eyes off him.

If I was anywhere and I saw a child, whether it be mine or a comeplete stranger, being attacked or hurt by another child I would intervene, physically if necessary, to prevent or stop the hurt.

Well, maybe the other mother will now know to intervene a bit sooner because if she doesn’t someone else will do it for her. Rightly, IMO.

Absolutely zoflo.

When ds was about 4 my mum was in tesco and he ran off, through the store past an assistant who could have stopped him but didn't and out onto the car park.

The only reason he wasn;t killed by a car was that anothr shopper yanked him back by the hood of his coat. (so hard it left a mark on his neck but to be honest, we didn;t care, we were just grateful)

I would have done the same

And so would I - what if one of the other children had fallen or been pushed fro the slide because of his behaviour?

And would she have been quite so blasé if her child had been the one getting hit, instead of the one doing the hitting? I'll bet she wouldn't.

Bursting into tears seems a bit extreme, though- I wonder if there's more to this than meets the eye? I'm not doubting your account - I'm wondering if he is a particularly difficult child, or if she is perhaps waiting for some sort of assessment regarding his behaviour, or she has had a very difficult day/week/life and this was just the final straw.

I think you did the right thing - you let him know his behaviour was unacceptable, but without being unkind to him, or rude to her. You may have prevented another child ending up with a broken arm or a split head.

Don't beat yourself up.

I was once assaulted by a man. Another man, a complete stranger to both of us, stepped in and stopped him. I was quite pleased he intervened.

Legally, the right of self defense extends to the defense of others.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-defence_in_English_law

I feel a bit sorry for the other mum tbh. Her child was malfunctioning in public, she was flustered and embarrassed, and by stepping in (not unreasonably) you made clear that you didn't feel she was dealing adequately with the situation. Which she wasn't, if she let it get to the point where her son was out of her reach, having a meltdown and being shouted at by a mob of adults.

So YWNBU but I can also relate to her burning embarrassment and attempt to justify herself by having a go at you!

Stop trying to rewrite the script, Snowy; you weren’t there (or were you?!)
I’m kind of hoping I never meet you in the park. With or without your children.

only she knows how firmly she gripped that child

It was a public place, and there were witnesses. The OP is hardly going to grip the child firmly by the throw and administer a damn good thrashing! Obviously she was using minimum force to restrain him.

I don't think you can call it 'an attack' if he's so little. I don't think the others children were going to end up in intensive care. You already saw mum was on her way so I wouldn't have done that. And I wouldn't have grabbed his hands. I would have told the others children to move away.

You did good. Anyone who thinks you didn't, or that you aren't allowed to gently take hold of him needs their heads examined. It would have only taken a split second for one of the other children to have fallen off the top.

When I worked in a nursery the policy in this situation, as is the same throughout education, is to only use the force necessary to avoid serious harm. A 3 year old isn't found to cause serious harm with just their hands. We would have moved children away from him. Grabbing his hands would have been more force than was necessary.

In order for evil to triumph

Oh my dear god.

You’re allowed to physically move children away from a child who is hitting, but not to touch the child itself, headinhands?
That is insane nonsense.

Headinhands - that is helpful information.

What would you do if the children were trapped in a space (say, on a climbing frame platform) together and it was difficult for them to get away or they were too young or frightened to follow instructions?

Wouldn't you pick up the toddlers to get them out of the way?

I think ywbu. She was making her way to deal with him. Knowing children it seems very very likely that they were shoving/poking or he thought they were going to push him. Regardless, she was dealing with it and your intervention would be perceived as really judgemental by most people.

You had good intentions. But it’s already mortifying if your child hurts another child at the playground, and you poured on the shame factor to someone who was trying to sort their child out.

If it was my daughter he was hitting then I'd have been extremely grateful you intervened.

I don't think YWBU. But I can see that the mother would have been upset and embarrassed and there isn't a chance she's have responded positively to you in that situation. So don't worry too much.

You stopped little children getting hurt further so in my books you did the right thing and she is at fault here for not stopping the boy sooner.

OP I think you did absolutely the right thing. Much better to stop the hitting than shout at him like the other parents were doing. When there are several spectators often people are reluctant to be the one that steps up and actually does something.
Also not seeing the relevance of whether another child had hit him first. If they had you were too late to stop it, doesn't mean you shouldn't stop the hitting that was still happening. Particularly at the top of the slide with children getting upset. Not to be alarmist but one of them could easily have given him a shove in defence or accidentally in trying to protect themselves. Really not a safe situation.
You weren't punishing, you were intervening to prevent hurt at best and injury at worst. Any passer by should do the same.

Why didn’t she climb up the slide like OP? Who knows? Off the top of my head, maybe it didn’t occur to her, maybe she’s not physically capable of doing so, maybe her child has ASD and she’s spent ages teaching him that you mustn’t climb up slides (as per the signs on every slide at every soft play I’ve ever been to), or some other unknown reason.

Those arguing that this is the same as helping a kid who’s fallen / stuck somewhere are being completely disingenuous.

Is picking up a child to either get them out of the way or stop them hitting other children called 'using force' these days?

It doesn't make sense to me. Surely if one child was hitting others, it is safer to remove the child hitting out, not try to move all the other children. Unless you have loads of people available to you to pick up toddlers and babies.

It seems to me that if you could have picked up this child and removed him from the slide that would have been the best solution. However, that would be rather difficult to do up a slide, so the best alternative is to hold his hands and stop him hitting out.

YourHandInMyHand your child is very lucky to have you and your common sense approach!

OP I could not have stood by and watched little children be hit either, so right or wrong, I would have done the same!

I do wish my 13 year old DD was less like me though, as she is in a situation where a family up the road from me really have it in for her as she stops their kids from bullying littler kids and they really think they should be allowed to do as they please!

It is not the same as helping a child who has fallen. That is true - but that is only being used to show that there are instances where other adults are expected to take responsibility and may have to touch your child to keep them safe.

In this case the child is being a danger to other children. They also deserve to be protected.

Maybe all that time the mum has allegedly spent teaching her son not to climb up slides would have been better spent teaching him not to hit, SinkGirl? Would you stand there observing the red traffic light rather than run into the road after your toddler?!