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
Probably did the hitter and the mum a favour by showing this is not on

I understand the stepping in for the reason of keeping the other children safe. I don't agree with posters who have said that it will make the child understand he has done wrong. That simply doesn't work with some children and a stranger intervening may make them more distressed.
It may be that this child hasn't reacted like this before and hopefully now the mother knows she will have to intervene sooner.

@SeaEagleFeather

It really doesn't matter if she was at the end of her tether she still has to parent her child, if she did then this situation may not have occurred or become what it did.

Nothing to be ashamed of. You followed your instincts. Thank goodness you're a woman. I wouldn't have dared...

OP did a kind thing & it was OP's kindness that made the poor woman burst into tears.

Or because she felt judged, or undermined, or told off (he was REALLY hurting the other children), or embarrassed

Attack is the best form of defence sometimes. She probably had a go at you out of embarrassment and she probably burst into tears because her child's bad behaviour may be a recurring issue and it got on top of her that day.
I am in two minds about you intervening - I strongly believe in the proverbial "village" but the mum in question was on her way to sort it out. Yes it may have gone on longer than necessary but she did still try and sort it out.

Nice of you to try and placate her by saying that we all have bad days, so it doesn't sound as if you were being nasty to her.

Don't worry OP, embarrassment and being put on the spot in front of lots of people by your children acting up can make us all act strangely!

I think that it is wrong to stand by and watch something unfolding, when you could intervene and help out, which you did. The fact that it was not your child/your child wasn’t nearby is irrelevant. I have previously stopped a child from throwing pebbles at ducks - my children were nearby but unaffected. Similarly, I have told an older girl (a complete stranger) to stop walloping her toddler brother in a park. I believe if you see something going wrong then you should try to deal with it, so long as you are kind, polite, non-judgmental, calm, and (my own view) do not touch. That’s the only thing that I’d question about what you did. Frankly, chalk it up to experience and try not to worry. You are obviously a good person with a good heart.

I have a SEN child and in some public outbursts I’ve had strangers shout at him, shout at me, call me a bad mother, say he should be kept at home and even had someone start video recording a meltdown, and I can honestly say I don’t think the OP did anything wrong. I would have welcomed someone to come up and kindly intervene.
I also don’t think holding his hands was wrong either. Hitting him? Yes, I’d have gone more than crazy over that. But holding his hands to stop him harming other children? Of course not.

Quertykeyboard789 that is awful that you and your kids have had to put up with behaviour like that. Filming a child having a meltdown?! What is wrong with some people???!!!! I’m sending a big virtual middle finger to the arseholes that carry on like that. Not cool 😠

Qwertykeyboard789 it’s shite isn’t it? Arseholes.

I said similar at the start of the thread.

Qwerty. That's so horrible. They're on about the behaviour or a SEN child. Yet there they were bullying his mother and almost mocking him. The disablist cunts. Is that even legal videoing a strangers child.
Also I take it their kids are/were little Saints
I blame judgemental twats like that for mothers getting ill with PND. I don't care who is offended by that comment.

Huge 👏 for Qwerty from.all of us. You're doing great.

Some posters really haven’t thought this “no touching” thing through AT ALL.
Child about to walk in front of car?
Also, if it’s only adults known to child who can touch, then please note that almost ALL child sexual abuse is by adults known to the child.
So the lesson from this is that it is certain types of touching which is wrong, not touch per se from certain types of people!

I agree with WellThisIsShit.

Everybody was doing their best in the moment, and at the end of the day a bit of empathy goes a long way. Parents can get really nasty with each other at times, but to me it doesn't sound like OP was unkind to the other mother, and IMO that's what matters most here.

Scream and be done with it

I don’t think you did the wrong thing at all. If it were my child being slapped like that out of my view I’d appreciate another mum doing what you did. Saying he’s tired and only little isn’t an excuse to hurt other children either and I agree with the pp who said she was probably crying because of her child’s behaviour rather than because of you. If she’s struggling to deal with temper tantrums she’s probably feeling like a shit mum and your involvement may have confirmed that to her in her but that doesn’t mean you were wrong. The kid needed telling. Honestly I think there’s more going on with the mum and that’s why she cried.

If you thought he was about to cause serious injury to another child then I can understand taking his hands. Saying something is fine, that's life. Her response is also fine, he's a little kid, hardly likely to cause much harm and perhaps you were being a tad dramatic. Nothing like having oldrr kids to see how over the top we are about the little ones at times.

I can understand why you wanted to stop him, but I would have left it to the other parents to be supervising their children if they were being hit by this child and left the decision to them.

It sounds like the situation on the whole upset her, not particularly what you did. I don't think you have any reason to feel bad she cried.

I’ve had very similar @Quertykeyboard789 😞

Like you, I also do not think the OP was in the wrong. Although if I were the hitting childs Mum, I think I’d have been crying also. Nothing to do with the OP!

hugs OP

There's never a clear right and wrong in these situations. You did your best. From her perspective maybe that seemed wrong. She obviously didn't think to put a stop to her sons attack by intervening and some people don't know what to do in situations or they make different choices about what to do. Personally I would always intervene if I saw anyone being attacked be it by an innocent child or a rabid dog or a wild bird or an adult aggressor. Unless I thought I couldn't make it better and only jeopardize more people, but I'd definitely put myself in harms way to stop others getting hurt. A lot of people would just stand and watch. Neither is right or wrong I don't think it's just that different people respond differently. You got cried at and it was a risk you were willing to take, you actually took a much bigger risk because a parent of a violent child could e violent themselves, you could have got sucker punched for what you did if you did it to the wrong child at the wrong time. Even if it was te right thing to do. And realistically the mom could have been sucker punched if her kid had hit the wrong kid! You do not know how a parent will react. All you can say is you did your best to be polite but put a stop to his punches and you were polite afterwards to the lady. What more or better you could hae done I do not know. You could have stood and watched and maybe a child would have been more badly hurt then. Who knows. Who knows whether the actions we take to say something or do something have bigger consequences. Sometimes we do the right thing and bad things happen, sometimes we do the wrong thing and we prevent further wrong from happening. We can only do what we can inthe moment and love with the consequences. So you have to love with the fact that your actions made a woman cry, but it seems better to have that haunt you than if a kid ha been hurt and you had to love with that consequence instead. I know If I try my best I can love with myself, if I don't try at all I will be wondering about it for a long time wishing I had tried something. I read on quora about a woman who watched a mom leave her baby on a shelf and the baby fell backwards, she must think what if I had said something? All the time, and if she had, she would never know if she had saved that child, she might only know that the mom reacted badly. When you interfere with how things are going or escalating in a direction and you stop something happening before it happens you usually can't say for sure, and usually don't get thanked. Like when you know your kid is too tired for the playground so you take him home before he falls or hits someone and all he does is throw a fit in the buggy while everyone stares at you. There's no easy way where everything works out perfectly, all you can do is hope that your choices are made from good intentions and that you can live with them. But if there was a right and wrong in life we could all make the right choices and life would be a lot easier.