DD behaved abysmally and need to vent

[Innish22]

My DB looked after both of my DCs at the weekend and DD (11) and himself had a falling out. DB was furious when dropping them back and said outright that he won’t be looking after her again.
I don’t blame him and I’m very disappointed in her, but I also know that my brother holds grudges for ever, which means that this will cause friction for the wider family.
DD is digging in her heels and refuses to apologise, but she seemed upset this evening and I think that she is ashamed and will come around.
That’s it. I just needed to vent because it’s the last thing I needed to start the week.

I will be speaking to her.
But it was my brother who told me about what she said, not DD. If she had told me something like this that would be entirely different.

Holy fuck. I wouldn't blame him for holding a grudge for that one.

OP has already said DD said it because she was angry at being told off.

Depends on the facts, surely? Nobody should be blindly siding with their child.

Maybe read the OP’s updates. The child has already told OP why she said it.

I’m surprised that so many MNers are naive enough to believe she’s 100%, definitely, undoubtedly lying.

It is a serious thing, but I don't think at 11 she necessary understood the full context.
Teens and pre teens hear the term banded around all the time.
Someone at my daughter's school started a whatsapp group at only 11 years old asking which teacher was most likely to be a 'pedo' with a poll 🙄 kids had voted. The school had to get involved, I feel terrible for the teachers. These are children hearing more than kids ever used to - and they are left trying to interpret it by themselves half the time. Perhaps she thought he would laugh if he is the fun uncle. Perhaps she had no idea of the offence someone who is already marginalised as gay might take that it is somehow similar to being a pervert. She may not even understand what a pedophile really is, my daughter had to ask me after seeing the whatsapp poll.
She is only 11. She needs to know why he is hurt, but also what she can take from it and how she can make amends. And he mustn't hold it against her forever if she is sorry.
There are lots of bigoted people in society who are beyond help. You can both educate your daughter on what is right

Still think that now OP has told us what happened?

Gosh OP that really is a pretty awful thing for her to say. If she has admitted that she lied and said it out of anger, then you really need to delve deep into what would cause her to say something like that about her own uncle. Kids see such toxic, horrible things on the Internet and it's only reinforced by their peers parroting this among themselves. The last thing you want is for her to believe bogus stereotypes about gay people, and certainly don't allow her to believe she can falsely accuse people of such serious crimes in order to gain the upper hand in an argument. I would limit/remove Internet access as a starting punishment for this.

I think what I would do is have a very serious conversation with her about the potential repercussions of such allegations, even if made as a throwaway comment when angry. Once it's out there you can't just cry and say you're sorry and all is forgiven.
Teach her how to channel her anger in a healthy way, remove herself from the situstion, etc. Also let her know of the proper way to report such concerns if she ever has genuine concerns over such matters; if nothing else it will only reinforce the severity of such crimes and allegations surrounding them.

Then have her make a geniune apology to your brother. I wouldn't expect forgiveness immediately from him, especially if he is known to hold grudges, but at least she will have done what she can to make it right.

YY it's an adult association, though I would not treat it as an allegation personally unless she does later come out and say she's worried about something. It sounds to me from the context as though she's said it as a deliberately hurtful/insulting thing, in retaliation for being told off, rather than as an accusation/allegation in its own right. It's very immature (but all 11yos are immature, by definition) and she does need to understand that it carries a different weight to other kinds of insult e.g. you're an idiot, and a different kind of weight to even a particularly offensive insult (e.g. you're a fucking twat) - she may have assumed that what she was saying was roughly equivalent to swearing, which, expect a ton of bricks, yes, but not quite in the same league as associating someone's sexuality with pedophilia.

I am not sure it's hugely relevant to find out where it has come from. It's highly likely IME that it's another child at school or elsewhere, who's parroted it directly from an ignorant, homophobic adult in their family circle. There are always children exposed to this kind of belief in every classroom in the country, and children pass on things to each other, generally without understanding the context. Then it goes through at least one layer of "telephone" where a child reproduces the association (either as a poor-taste joke or as an insult, depending on how they originally heard it) to another child and then that child reproduces it somewhere else, none of them really understanding what they're implying but finding it a bit cheeky/funny because they can tell it's hurtful, not "PC" and involves taboos (adult sexuality, paedophilia). Your DD might be the second link in that chain or might be the third or fourth.

He would be really unwise to look after her again without another adult present, that accusation she has made is awful and could lead to serious consequences for him if she repeated it around other people.
Unfortunately I don’t think this is going to be truly fixable, even if she apologises because your Brother is always going to wonder what’s going to come out of her mouth next time she is in a jealous strop.
All you can do is apologise to him, explain that you understand how serious the accusation was and you won’t be putting him in a vulnerable position by asking him to look after her again
You need to tell your daughter how serious that kind of accusation is, assuming she knows the meaning of what she has said…. If she doesn’t then you need to be able to explain to her the words she is using and that using words she doesn’t know the meaning of can lead to serious problems.
She’s 11, I have a son the same age and he would never even use that sort of language, where on earth has she picked it up from?!

Wow that’s shocking behaviour. Your poor brother. He’s probably really worried about her accusing him of something.

There’s a difference between being naive and trusting the word of a child who has admitted she only said it because she was angry at being told off. And it wasn’t DD who told OP what had happened. It was her brother himself. This wasn’t an allegation - it was something hurtful said in the moment. There’s a difference here.

Ridiculous post.

I am not sure an 11 year old would understand the seriousness of what she has said. It is a serious accusation and he is right to be angry, but 11 is very young to understand the implications and nuances of all this.

I think you need to be careful how you deal with this with her. Before getting into explaining the seriousness of paedophile activity and the damage it does to children's lives and the fact that it is illegal and carries prison sentences you first need to be sure 100% that this is what she actually meant.

I am not sure that any of my GC of a similar age would really understand what paedophilia is about. She may simply have said thst he likes little boys out of jealousy rather than realising how this could be interpreted/received.
Your duty lies in helping her to understand why her uncle reacted as he did without feeding her information about sexual perversion that she is too young to grasp and causing her psychological damage.
Your prime duty is to her.
Your brother is an adult and will just have to deal with it.
No child should be held responsible for saying something she might not fully have understood and she cannot be asked to carry the weight of being responsible for a family rift.
Please remember she is a child who needs your support and help to get through this situation.

I did thank you. I don’t know a lot about csa survivors thankfully But I do know that many women are abused by their DHs and then withdraw their police statement or play down what happened or whatever after they panic about it blowing up? So I would wonder if something like that’s possible here and I would want to make sure I had given dd a proper chance to discuss it, when I wasn’t angry and it wasn’t the heat of the moment.

So what do you think is the truth ?

OP is angry because her DD has confused being gay with being a pervert and has used a term she shouldn’t even know at the age of eleven. Unfortunately kids use these terms as insults without knowing what they actually mean. It absolutely does not mean that OP’s brother is a paedophile.

he probably is a bit pathetic given you say they bicker.

I dont agree with this. Op say he is the fun uncle, who takes them do activities and they really enjoy. From my own observations, fun uncles are usually younger than parents, single without kids. Usually end up being insulted by niece or nephew ( unintentionally) because they treat them like they are their own age and have no boundaries like in this case. In this scenario, its extreme but other insults are minor and shrugged away because they are kids, they don't understand. Of course, its not kid's fault as they were never taught those boundaries or respect fun uncle or aunt by parents.

At 11 she shouldn't even know such a word,where has she even heard it from to be accusing him. Horrible little girl,I feel sorry for your brother,if she starts telling people at school her uncle is a peado, he end up with social services around. She needs to apologise with an explanation, and be grounded with significant impact, you need to nip this in the bud

An apology is the bare minimum required here - how awful

This sort of accusation could ruin his life. She needs to apologise and quickly.

Obviously you need to dig and see if there are any basis of truth to what she is saying but from her (and his story) I doubt it.

Why won't she apologise? That's the bit I can't understand. She's massively fucked up using grown up language, she needs to be a grown up about sorting it out. Your brother is right to not want anything to do with her and I wouldn't feel comfortable (in his position) ever looking after her again.

I don’t imagine there’s only one way for survivors to disclose, and even if there is, someone disclosing abuse could have heard or seen something but not been a victim personally.
We also don’t know that she ‘openly mocked him’ we have no idea really about the context or tone or anything else. Either way I truly cannot imagine what your objections could be to op just talking calmly to her dd and checking she’s ok and investigating if there’s truth here, before jumping to punishment. She either actually knows something and this gives her a chance to disclose it, or she doesn’t, and op can crack on with the punishment if that’s what she wants to do. That’s why I’m surprised so many people are just saying to punish her.

How can she be a "horrible little girl" when hopefully she does not even understand the word she had used? In order to be horrible you need to fully understand what you are saying.
This girl will simply not know this and is probably terrified by the storm she has unwittingly unleashed.

To her she could as easily have called him a twat, which would have been unacceptable, but she has found this new word paedo has caused mayhem, when it is likely she really cannot understand why ... let us hope in one way thst she does not.

This vulnerable child needs her parents' support and love to navigate this unharmed.

The job of parents is to try and get inside the mind of their child when dealing with upsets.

To posters saying the op's DD won't understand what she said...

In a primary school children have :

been sat in a room for 1-1 work and said "I could tell someone you've touched me" - room was very clearly monitored!

Told a child they are "fucking pussy" for not wanting to fight

Called another pupil a "lesbian slag"

Called staff " a fucking bitch"

Threatened to "cut up" another pupil

Given graphic sexual description and "threats" to.other pupils.

Exposure to.inappropriate content is increasing, and sadly young children have a lot if inappropriate knowledge - possibly not fully informed but thete is a huuuuge variation of what 7 / 8 /,9 / 10 /11 + year olds are like, sadly.