AIBU to throttle DD???!!

[matchpoint]

Roughly four hours later and I am still frothing at the mouth.

Backstory: DD is 4 years old, and she and her sister have received (too) many Easter eggs from school, family friends, various well-meaning relatives etc. Both had a Creme egg for a treat after dinner, and the rest of their haul of Easter eggs are living in the kitchen to be dished out as appropriate over the next year/eaten by me (seriously, there are a lot).

I come downstairs to get DD up for bathtime, and she has opened and eaten parts of five eggs, two of which she knew were not hers. There was chocolate in little bits all over the floor, some of which melted and it took ages to clean up.

When asked about it, DD lied to my face that it wasn't her, but eventually fessed up (her sister is innocent in this affair). I went absolutely batshit crazy at her, and I don't feel guilty. She was sneaky, greedy and she lied to my face. She knows better. DD was sent straight to bed, no bath, no story, cried for ages, now asleep.

I'm thinking that she gets no more Easter eggs; and also want to ban her from the iPad for the next week. DH is a bit of a softy, and reckons being shouted at and sent to bed was punishment enough.

DH thinks this is too harsh; my worry is that she will see it as a not a bad trade-off---snuck into Easter eggs, Mummy shouted a bit, but she still got chocolate. MN thoughts please??

[flippinada]

Also, I recognise that it makes uncomfortable reading, but this kind of histrionic overreaction to a comparatively trivial misdemeanour (along with other factors) can be an indicator of emotional abuse.

Hopefully that does not apply in this case and OP is having a good think about how and why she reacted like this.

[WafflyVersatile]

I think going batshit crazy is far too much. And I think a punishment that lasts for a week for a 4 year old is also far too harsh. 4 minutes on the naughty step is as much punishment as any 4 year old needs for anything.

Personally I wouldn't have been able to tell her off for laughing.

[RapunzelAteMyHamster]

I never said about the poster being right or wrong. I never said it was a calm and reasonable way to treat a child. Pleas read properly and stop putting words into my mouth.

I think the op was using a whole load of hyperbole. I doubt she was actually frothing. We don't have any idea what she even said to her dd, it's all been extrapolated from what she came and said on here. Did she scream "get out of my sight and go straight to bed right now I do not want to speak to you because of this bad behaviour" or did she rant and rave for three hours about the child was mean and greedy and sneaky and she wished she'd never been born. We don't know, because she never said. A massive amount has been assumption and inference on the part of the posters who are coming up with all kind of fantastical explanations (the golden child/scapegoating one was particularly great). People have been competing for the crown of most scandalised, whose heart has been most destroyed crying themselves to sleep over the well being of this poor little innocent who is deprived of food and light and love, and who is actually the best parent because they let their child have all the chocolate in the world and washed it down with a thousand fruit shoots. It's performance for an audience (which doesn't even include the op who is long gone) and it's really weird.

She shouldn't have shouted, she probably should have gone in after five minutes of crying and she shouldn't have extended the punishment to the next day (which she said she wasn't going to so all good there). I don't think she's a dreadful child abuser, she just didn't handle it brilliantly. I'm not perfect, so I handle things badly too now and again. I calm down and sort it all out in the morning. Which i bet the op did. Piling in and screeching about how evil the op is has no benefit other than to try and make yourself look tough in front of your peers.

[RapunzelAteMyHamster]

And the teeth thing! The teeth thing was explaining why she had rationed the chocolate in the first place, she never ever said it was anything to do with why she was cross about the eating of the 5 eggs. People are just seeing what they want to.

Then people jumped on that, accused her of giving her children bulimia and low self esteem, and she came back and said, what read to me as sarcastically, "I'll take my chances with low self-esteem and bulimia." Because she doesn't think that keeping check on how much chocolate her children eat is an automatic road to eating disorders. So what I read is she's saying "yeah, whatever, that's so unlikely i'll take my chances thanks" Then she gets jumped on for not caring about if her child gets bulimia.

[moonabove]

Not sure why you feel the need to keep on banging your drum here rapunzel, you are making as many assumptions as you accuse others of and trying to defend someone has not been seen on the thread for nearly 24 hours.

It has been pointed out several times that there is no need for assumptions - people are forming their sorrowful and baffled responses based on the OP's own deeply unpleasant description and responses.

[Yellowtip]

I think you're the one who needs to read Rapunzel. I personally couldn't care less about other people's perceptions of my attitude to parenting but it's nevertheless obvious that this particular mother is cold and cruel.

[DontstepontheMomeRaths]

Oh for goodness sake. To yet again repeat myself I said:

I said 'I hoped she wasn't.'

And then went on to explain how I was the scapegoat growing up and was always being shouted at. And after reading about her massive over reaction, it reminded me of my Father. It wasn't an outright accusation, so stop putting words in my mouth as well. Re-read my original post on 31-Mar-13 22:36:22. I also said 'I hope'. I was talking more at Norks tbh.

Plenty of people accused her of far more and more directly as opposed to my thought. And her behaviour does remind me of my upbringing and others also felt the same. Not just me.

There's a reason I'm on the Stately Home thread and it's because of my Dad treating me like she treated her daughter but repeatedly, my whole childhood. But I cannot be arsed to argue about this. As you said she isn't coming back to the thread again.

[DontstepontheMomeRaths]

Oops less 'I saids'. Typing too fast.

Anyway I'm off to bed.

[littlemisssarcastic]

Rapunzel 'Piling in and screeching about how evil the op is has no benefit other than to try and make yourself look tough in front of your peers.'

Please elaborate, because I must be misunderstanding.

I have only gone on what the OP has said, not what I perceive to be going on, or not going on, and the idea that I posted that I think the OP acted in an evil cruel way to her DD was for no other reason than to make myself look tough in front of my peers is a very odd and bizarre thing to say.

Is that an Aprils fools post Rapunzel?

[Morloth]

It isn't normal to react like that to a 4 year old sneaking some chocolate.

I keep a close eye on what the kids eat, we are all inclined to tubbiness in our family if it isn't monitored.

My two spent Sunday morning eating their weight in chocolate, and now it is back to normal. No harm done.

I have overreacted to my kids before, and I have apologised. I actually consider myself a bit of a hard arse with them, but hell would freeze over before I let them go to bed and cry themselves to sleep. My time with them is short and precious and won't be wasted like that.

[RapunzelAteMyHamster]

I'm saying that piling in, after the op has long gone, and saying the same thing that has been said hundreds of times before yet again has no point apart from showing off how outraged you are to an audience of your peers. It's not about telling the op, because it doesn't really look like she's here. So, why continue to post about how outraged you are?

[AgentZigzag]

Caring about a small child - even when we don't know them - is 'showing off'?

It's your posts that are provoking the thread to run on longer Rapunzel, if the OP's not coming back to it, what does it matter whether people are still giving their opinion?

They're as free to post here as you are.

[Eggsauted]

Rapunzel I think you are provoking now. I and agent and a few others have given you very genuine and rational opportunities for discussion on the subject of reacting to children's behaviours and invited some more possibilities for seeing things from your point of view as well as their own. but you seem so stuck in your own views you are unable to consider these opinions and just like the OP you are choosing what to respond to and you appear to want to confront other posters opinions as being unreasonable and accuse posters of pilling in. Wether OP is responding or not is neither here nor there people are free to post as long as they wish.

[Eggsauted]

Oh damn I just remembered I have NC on another thread.

[RapunzelAteMyHamster]

Why do people have to register your caring for the child by posting another "op what you did was mean and evil and I feel sorry for your child who should be taken away from you" though? The op isn't here. The child isn't. What does it achieve, other than telling other people about your feelings to be part of the group?

I'm genuinely really interested about this, I think it's an example of how mob mentality can be whipped up and I'm trying to understand why it happens on such flimsy evidence. We don't know what was actually said to the child and we don't know how the op behaves to her children on a regular basis. All of which you should need to know if you're going to pass some of the harsh judgments that have been passed here. All we know is what the OP said while she was in a strop about it.

[LineRunner]

She was in a strop for an unusually long time.

[RapunzelAteMyHamster]

Sure, or maybe she spent three hours watching tv, came to post and just thinking about it made her cross all over again. We don't know that she had been upset about it continually for four hours, because she didn't say.

This is what I mean about we have very few actual facts and parts of the narrative, but people are still posting about how her child needs to escape from her and she's showing signs the signs of emotional abuse and I think that's such a huge thing to say that I'm amazed people feel able to do so on so few actual facts. So I'm trying to work out why they do think they can say things like that.

[HungryClocksGoBackFourSeconds]

When I was four, my cousin and i ate all the chocolates off the christmas tree and then put the foil wrappers back on. We were found out and told that it was unfair that none of the other children would get any chocolate off the tree now because we'd eaten it, but no-one went apeshit at us and we certainly weren't left to cry ourselves to sleep. We were sheepish and very apologetic and no more was said about it, except to be reminded of it every christmas since then! We never did it again but it has turned into a fond family anecdote which reminds us all of big family Christmases and cheeky kids.

Nobody's perfect but you don't need to bully and humiliate your children to teach them right and wrong. love bombing and how not to fuck them up are good gentle parenting books OP.

[AgentZigzag]

When I'm on MN Rapunzel, I am part of a very loose group.

Not mob mentality, not trying to whip anything or anyone up, and we've all posted on the 'evidence' the OP decided was relevant to the questions she wanted to ask and to have answered.

She probably was in a strop when she was posting, but nothing in what she posted afterwards suggested she'd come out of that strop and had calmed down, she just got stroppy at posters instead.

That could make some people feel they have that loose connection with someone who may think it is reasonable to treat their child so harshly, and as other human beings that should concern us, and it's only right to try and help the OP understand just how unfair that is to a small 4 YO.

[LineRunner]

The first line of her opening, original post is: Roughly four hours later and I am still frothing at the mouth.

[Apileofballyhoo]

Rapunzel Rapunzel keep your hair on.

[ChasingDogs]

The OP isn't posting. That doesn't mean she isn't reading. Personally, I think that she fully deserves the lambasting she has received on this thread. She is an adult and can deal with it. She is not, for example, a 4 year old child.

I had an almost idyllic childhood, with the exception of my mother. She, like the OP, would fly off the handle at minor (and occasionally, completely invented) "naughty behaviour". Sadly it was due to MH issues. Even now she can be irrational and cruel. But we both now know that it is ill health that is at fault. Now that I'm an adult I can stand back and recognise that actually, I'm not a shitty human being, my Mum is just on one again.

I couldn't do that when I was little though. When I was being screamed at for "walking funny" into school. I was confused, frightened, and upset. I didn't have a fucking clue what she was on about.

Yes, at 4 a kid should be able to leave chocolate alone until it's allowed. But if you think it's never going to be allowed (cause you had one feckin cream egg on easter sunday) you'd be curious and want to open them up and try them.

The child is four. She was naughty in the same minor way that all little children are. Thinking that she is a sneaky, greedy, liar and being furious over a small incident like this is frankly abhorrent. So yes, sorry, in this case I am all for posters all pointing out the same, obvious message: You over reacted, your lack of remorse is worrying.

I wish a forum like this had pointed it out to my mum. My dad stepped in and did his best, but a bunch of outsiders saying "stop! this is nuts! it was one small mistake!" would have been invaluable.

[AgentZigzag]

People are concerned because either they remember being treated like that themselves as a small child and the effect it had on them (which is far more powerful than any words you could write about it), or they're looking at/remembering their own children at 4 YO and how devastating such an outburst and continued anger would have on them.

These are things which should be said as many times as people want to repeat them, it's not for you to say what people can talk about and when Rapunzel.

[HungryClocksGoBackFourSeconds]

Apileofballyhoo

[AgentZigzag]

Apileof