in telling off a child for strangling my toddler

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Just wanted opinions really as to if i over reacted and am being PFB or if i should have said more?

Went swimming today with DS 23 months. Its a private gym and theres a small soft play area in the gym and also an area next to it with a few toys in. Anyway DS loves the soft play area so he was in there and i was in the seating area within the play area keeping an eye on him- there was two other ladies sat next to me and about 4or 5 kids which i assumed were with them. Then a few minutes later my DS was climbing up some steps and this kid about 3 years old pulls him down the steps and drags him by his hood. So i go over and say 'hay don't do that' and he lets go of DS and say's 'i didn't do anything' so i left it at that, i said to the lady next to me he was dragging him by his hood, and she said he's not one of ours else i would have told him off.

Within the soft play area there is a underneath bit (toddler area) which you can't see from the seating area and all the kids had gone into there so i thought i'd better glance in at DS as i hadn't seen him for a few minutes. Anyway this boy had him on the floor and has his hands round his neck, DS had turned bright red and was struggling to get away. I storm in pull the boy off DS and say where is your mum, the kid starts screaming and saying 'i don't like you', to which i say 'well i don't like you you're not a very nice boy', then his mum comes and takes him away and i get the impression she think i was in the wrong and is trying to comfort her DS and saying we'll go swimming now.

For info DS has a red mark with brusing around it on his collar bone area, ok its not life threatening, but i don't think it is the situation where i could have just sat back and watched. should i have done things differently?

I would have reacted the same way. I witnessed a fight between dads at a soft play area once. A boy who was around 4 started laying into all the kids in punching them and pushing them over. It was a toddler area and I removed my DS. One parent asked the boys parents to stop him and the dad, who looked rather scarey, said what do you want me to do thump him? The bothe bloke replied that if the boy couldn't be stopped he must remove him. Punching started!

You are meant to label the behaviour not the child but sometimes it's it any parent picking you up on it wouldn't have a leg to stand on in that situation.
I know this is david Lloyd from the description and wonder if it's our david Lloyd. They seem to attract a certain clientele in ours, gone off it lately.

My view is that if you are not prepared to stick up for your children and take whatever flack comes your way for doing it - how can you expect your child to stick up for themselves?

If someone was hurting my child - be it a todler, child or adult - I would say something and stop the situation.

heswall yes you are correct- its in the midlands, is yours?

Ours is Cheshire oaks but we have exactly the same layout and problems unfortunately.

I recently shouted at two boys who were pinning my10 yr asd boy down in the soft play thingy. I saw what they were doing, went in and shouted at them to get off him....was waiting for the mother to moan at me but she never did :) You were NBUR xxx

YANBU, of course. Apart from saying he wasn't nice and you didn't like him.
I would have stopped him even if he was doing it to someone else's child.

YANBU. I probably would have shouted at him to be honest.

As for posters saying you should label the behaviour, not the child... OP shouldn't have had to do either... the child's mother was there and she should have done it. So in this instance I think OP was perfectly entitled to say what she did. It wasn't as if she was swearing at him.