Perspective needed - I made another Mum cry yesterday.

[widgetbeana]

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?

YWNBU.

I think it is good for children to know that in a community situation, the adults will step in. What is it teaching our children if the minute another adult lets them know they are crossing boundaries, their parents swoop in bleating 'Only I discipline my child'.

I have intercepted quite young children doing very dangerous things to be told in an insolent manner 'you're not my Mum' as if they can do what they like.

3 is perfectly old enough to make another child bleed if basked in the mouth. They others couldn't get away because of the queue, and the other mother should have got herself up there quicker, like you did.

I feel for her: she obviously feels at the end of her tether, I don't think you made her cry as much as the situation generally

Wow, ok, just back from school run. Let me read back and check if any more questions for clarity are needed.

Perhaps she has also been trying to teach him that. Quite likely, I expect. And she was going after him. It’s not like she was sat on the other side of the room having a chat.

How is being 'tired and only little' an excuse to smack other children? It baffles me the way so many parents make excuses for fucking awful behaviour. He was being horrible and she didn't intervene quickly enough - and when a child is hitting others, intervention needs to happen immediately. Had that been my DD, like fuck would I be standing at the bottom of a slide giving it, 'Oh, come on down now dahhhling!' I'd have shot up that slide like a bullet and marched my DD straight home if she couldn't behave nicely. Wishy washy pandering like this breeds nothing but entitled, brattish behaviour, and nobody wants to know or play with an entitled little brat who cannot be nice!

Have the people on here dismissing the power of a 3 year old never been hurt by their child(ren)? I've had slaps from them that certainly made me wince. OP doesn't say how old the other kids were but it doesn't take much to make a younger kid wobbly in their feet.

If OP had intervened because the other mother was nowhere in sight, ok fair enough. But she took it upon herself to run up the slide. Getting there by her own admission all of 10 seconds quicker than the mother who she knew was making her way to her child. There was just NO NEED for her to have done so. The other mother was of course going to feel judged. She was on the way to her child to deal with the situation. Just because she chose not to dive up a slide (and it would not have occurred to me to even do that if I was in the same situation) the OP made it VERY clear that she thought the mother was not dealing with it right. The very thought of running up a slide to get to a child, seconds ahead of a mother who was on the way there is just ridiculous. As soon as the other mother saw her child start to hit, she moved to go and fetch him.

I would have done exactly the same, OP. As for 'not touching' another's child, bollocks to that. He was happy to touch (hit and abuse and hurt ) other people's children around the face and body and causing them to cry while his mother took too long to take action. He should never have been up there in the first place without an adult if he's that little and that unreliable behaviour-wise.

You didn't do anything wrong, OP. Sounds like the mother was stressed and probably embarrassed by what happened - we've all been there, some of us manage to hold in the tears until we get away from the situation

Reminds me of the time I saw a small child shove another toddler off the top of the slide, the poor thing fell right to the ground. The shoving child’s mum had been shouting at him from the bottom of the slide as she could see what he was up to but unfortunately she didn’t run to get him. I was too far away to get there in time. It was bloody horrible to watch. Op you did the right thing.

OP. You did the right thing. First you stop the kid hurting the other children (and my DS1 has a scar from a whack from his little brother - 3 year olds most certainly can hurt other kids!). The mother wasn't acting quickly enough, and other kids were getting hurt, so you took action, and that is exactly right in my opinion.

I think you did the right thing, although it depends how far away the mum was from intervening herself. I would have thanked you if it was my son. It's ridiculous that some people are saying you should only step in if your own child was being hit. How selfish is that?! I think too many people stand back gormlessly in situations like this. My 2yo son ran away from me and almost ran out of a shop recently which is right on a busy road, I was shouting for him to stop and although he ran past several adults who were watching him, not one tried to stop him. It really upset me. We need to step in to help others out, I agree with previous posters saying it takes a community to raise a child as parents can't be there 24/7. As to previous posters talking about physical restraint/ use of force, technically force is defined in these contexts as anything that restrains free movement. However, it can be used when reasonable and proportionate to the situation. I'd say a group of children being hit to the extent that they were crying, in a confined space, with a potential risk of falling, would definitely meet that definition. It was not unreasonable to intervene. They don't need to be at risk of serious injury for it to be reasonable to stop them getting hurt. The other mum was probably having a bad day or there might be a back story. It sounds like she did all she could in the situation and was probably just a bit flustered. It sounds like you were very empathetic. Some people are just very protective with their children and can't see when actually it is appropriate for others to step in.

I have never read as much utter silliness as that posted by snowymountains and cherrypie.

Of course we intervene in cases like this.

I am so so glad I live in a culture that won't just stand by and watch other children get hurt because 'it's nothing to do with me'. This is a repulsive attitude.

First they came for...

you poured on the shame factor to someone who was trying to sort their child out I don't know if this is a cause or a result of "you must never touch or tell off anyone else's child", but either way, there's nothing particularly shameful about somebody else doing telling off your child. Unless you are looking at and standing next to your child 100% of the time (which is difficult and unnecessary when they're old enough to play safely without you), then inevitably they're going to misbehave at some point when you're not looking. You should be glad that someone else is there to pull them up on it, not ashamed.

The posters on here defending a woman not doing what she should have been, but not giving a shiny shite about little kids being repeatedly hit is staggering. I suspect you’ve hit a nerve OP, with parents who’ve had to have strangers step in for their own kids in some cases on this thread.

You did the right thing, widget. Your actions were reasonable, and proportional. I'm still

Blast...I'm still so surprised at how much, indeed apparently endless sympathy there is for the perpetrator, and next to nothing for the victims.

I agree YeTalkShite. (and you don't, btw! Unlike others on here )

In all honesty, my child has usually been the one that gets hit in the past, or waited for ages while some other child hogs the swing or something. And as I said I have said something to other children before if they were hitting, or asked them if they could give another child a turn at something.

My whole point is, if you read the op, the child was stood at the top of a slide, not budging, mother there trying to cajole him. Child then starts hitting so mother moves to get the child, probably going the way most if us would, up the bloody steps. OP, for some reason, runs up the slide, getting there by her own admission, 10 seconds only before the mother did. I have not got a problem with other people intervening. It was that there was no need at all for OP to have done so in this situation.

But hey, she looked great I am sure, running up a slide saving all those children. And now has a thread full of validation and many posters slagging off the other mother. All for 10 seconds.

BookMeOnTheSudExpress thank you I’m frequently told the opposite

You did the right thing. The other mother sounds completely ineffectual and should have moved her child long before it got to that. Crying over it is just ridiculous.

10 seconds is quite a long time when you count it out. It's certainly a long time when you are being hit.why do we continue to think that children need less protection from violence than adults? You did the right thing IMO

I would have gone up the slide and put myself between the violent kid and the others (assuming mine was there). Not sure I would have touched him.

So you would position yourself between them but without touching them? It would have to be a pretty big slide!

I'm only tiny. I had to go up the slide loads to fetch my nervous toddler.

I think you overstepped the mark OP. Your own children were not involved so why was it any of your business? And then you had to give the poor woman a little homily to tell her how she should have parented better/differently.

If the 3 year old at the top of the slide was was panicking and needed space, I'm not sure some strange adult manhandling him was the best solution.