I really don't believe that I was in the wrong, but feel so angry that I have to get this out. Was at a play area with my 3.5 year old son today. Been a bad day. Found out that he has to have more bloody tests at the hospital, then bumped into his dad at a shopping centre when he'd told me he couldn't come to the hospital because he was working. I don't have much confidence, so rarely take my son to places where there are going to be a lot of people, but I thought it'd be a nice treat for him.
As soon as he started to play, he was told that he wasn't allowed on any equipment and they were refusing to let him do anything. Physically stopping him. He's incredibly sensitive to this kind of thing, so I encouraged him to stand up for himself and just carry on playing, but they persisted and he ended up lying on the floor and crying. I told him that they were being selfish and he can do whatever he likes, but he believed that he couldn't play. He cried and told me that he was scared of them, but perked up when I said I'd be near him on the play equipment. This all happened while I was sitting next to the mother of one of the girls. At no point did she step in and do anything.
The group disbanded, and were fine on their own, apart from this one little girl. She was being particularly nasty to my son, and he's not very confident, so is actually quite shaken by this stuff. It takes him a long time to get over it, and he still asks whether naughty children he's encountered in the past will be at a play area, because he's scared of them. I tried to gently deal with it for a while, but it was having no effect, so I ended up having to speak to the girl myself and tell her to stop it and that the play equipment was for everybody to play on. I felt incredibly awkward about doing this, as I'm a very nervous and unconfident person, but her mother was doing absolutely nothing. When she grabbed my son and tried to pull him off the equipment, I told her (quite angrily I suppose) to stop it, then turned to her mom in an INCREDIBLY awkward way and said something incoherent, like "Could you..... you know?".
To cut a long story short, I was shouted at by the mother and told 'She is only a child, you know', as though my son isn't. Apparently, her age means that her behaviour is cancelled out. She was visibly very angry at me. Then proceeded to tell her daughter to 'play nicely', but finished it off with 'but you are only a child' whilst glaring at me. Basically, a free pass to do whatever she likes. I think she'd been sitting there getting more and more wound up at my attempts to control her daughter's behaviour.
I was stunned. I rarely go to these kinds of places because I get so anxious that my breathing changes and I have heart palpitations! I felt gutted that his treat was spoilt. She looked like such a normal woman, too! I just raised my eyebrows at her, but really felt like punching her in the mouth.
Was I in the wrong? I tried not to step on her mother's toes for quite some time, but really, I can't let that happen. I was hoping for a plucky passer by to jump to my defence and say 'Hey, she's right! That's not cool!', but this will have to do :D