Soft play incident - WIBU?!

[Sianilaa]

I took my three year old to a soft play place the other day. He was playing nicely most of the time but then I noticed he pushed a child out of the way to get on a slide first. I went straight over, took him aside and explained pushing/pushing in wasn't nice and he was to wait his turn. If he couldn't wait his turn and I saw him do it again, he would go in time out. He started kicking off because I'd removed him from the slide and was losing the plot - he ended up lashing out at me.

I picked him up, took him to a quiet bench away from the play area, against the back wall and explained hitting was unacceptable and he would do 3 mins time out. If he repeated it, we would go home. I stood about 1 metre away from him and turned my back while he did his time out. Close to him so he knew I was there but not giving him any attention. I was calm but firm - Supernanny would have been proud!

He was sobbing hard though, but stayed put. About a minute later a woman came rushing over to me, pushed past me and picked my son up and started cuddling/rocking him! She kept saying to him, "shhh, there there. It's not your fault you have such a cruel, abusive mummy. It's ok now."

I was so shocked, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open, catching flies for about a minute. When I got a grip, I told her to put him down and stop interfering when I was calmly disciplining my own child. This woman had a smaller child with her, plus a female partner. She put him down and went back to her partner loudly talking about how awful and cruel and damaging I was to my son. I lost my temper, and went over and said how dare she touch my son and interfere when I was trying to teach him hitting and pushing was wrong and that surely time out was better than screaming/swearing/smacking him?! I walked away shaking like a leaf.

Her partner came over a few minutes later and apologised, saying she had very strong views on discipline and ignorance and that she didn't agree with what I had done but that she shouldn't have done it or been so rude. At which point I said I wasn't ignorant in any way, and that they should be careful who they say these things to as next time they might get thumped by someone or ejected for inappropriately touching a child.

What would you have done?! Is time out cruel?! I didn't smack him or shout at him, but I did have to wrestle with him slightly to get him over to the time out spot I chose.

It's still making my blood boil just thinking about it.

One thing I have learned and I hope has stopped me being quite as judgemental as I used to be about others' parenting methods is, 'There but for the grace of God...'

I no longer take all the credit for having 2 DCs who have turned into adults that I am proud of. I actually think it is nature, or luck or whatever you want to call it, to a degree.
We all (mostly), love our children and want to do the best we can for them. Our discipline methods may be from books, tv, the way we were brought up, the opposite of how we were brought up, whatever.

But on the whole, they just turn out ok.

That's all we can ask.

Isn't it called 'empathy'? In fact I was under the impression that an absence of such a trait was more of a cause for concern?

I have every sympathy with the OP but I think there is another issue here that no one has addressed and that is the entirely new sense that people have that they are entitled to judge others people's way of handling their children, and the culture war that has sprung up between the factions that are constructed around this sense of entitlement to comment. I think the real sign of the times in this is not the OP's decision (or not) about how to discipline her child, but the fact that...

A. There appears to any of us to be a decision to make. Along with the appearance o the new verb 'to parent' we have seen a proliferation of methods, approaches, techniques that appear so mutually exclusive that parenting becomes a brwildering sequence of choices and decisions. Reflecting a breakdown in consensus and social cohesion. There is no agreed way to go about this - in contrast with the French model of raising children which is much more homogenous and generally agreed upon to the extent that it becomes instinctive for more or less everyone to go about it the same way.

B. that along with that fragmentation there is a tendency for people to construct identities around their chosen method - as in, "I am an attachment parent" "I am a tiger mom"

C. This, coupled with an atmosphere of fear and loathing about future outcomes of "doing things wrong" fuelled by pseudo science and poorly interpreted 'evidence'.

D. And, which is most relevant here, is peoples sense that they are entitled to judge, to condemn and - to me most remarkable - to intervene.

So, alas a tale of our times.

Great post balaboosta

Balaboosta - think you have hit the nail on the head and I entirely agree.

I have four kids (2-13). I do not allow them to hurt others, either verbally or physically. I do not allow them to do anything that would bother others (eg. climbing on someone else's furniture, or being disruptive during storytime at the library). The way I don't 'allow' it though is not through punishment. It is through being connected to them, being very present and knowing when some things are going sour waaaaay before it happens. Sometimes that means leaving, sometimes that means avoiding certain places they just aren't ready for yet, sometimes that means distraction, sometimes it means removing them (but never in a punishing way but in a 'let's go play something/somewhere else' type way). If my child hit another child at a soft play centre like OP I would consider it my fault for not being 'right there' and steering the play in another direction BEFORE they got to that point. If I did miss it, then I would make a fuss of the hurt child, scoop up my child and firmly tell them what they did hurts (no shouting or yelling though) , and then take them off to another area to play. I don't see this as neglectful, I see this as very hands-on and I would never allow my children to hurt either their siblings or other children.

With regards the OP, I can understand why the woman felt as strongly as she did about what you were doing. I would have felt the same way TBH. I wouldn't have intervened because I think what she said to your child would have scared him and I would never want to do that. What is interesting is many of the people who are saying this woman is a loon and totally OTT would probably agree with her if what the OP did was give her child a hefty smack. Not so long ago it used to be deemed totally unacceptable to intervene if someone was smacking their child, now many people would step in. I think that is a positive sign of our times that some people would now step in if someone was using time-out and a child was particularly distressed. It shows we are emotionally evolving to realise that children should be offered the same empathy and respect as adults.

Really luckymam, you can tell something is going to go wrong before it happens, and your children never have totally unwarranted tantrums? That is lucky.

Luckymamaof4 you sound spectacularly smug. Astonishingly so. I note big gaps between your children and I think you've been able to get away with your parenting style as a result. I suggest though, that if you had had different gaps - maybe much closer together, and possibly as in my case, extremely physical boisterous boys, I'd put the deeds of my house on more than a few squabbles and fights. And unavoidable meltdowns too. For goodness sake stop congratulating yourself and consider that as your name says, you're lucky.

what a bloody idiot! her not you well done for staying so calm.

I think that is a positive sign of our times that some people would now step in if someone was using time-out and a child was particularly distressed. It shows we are emotionally evolving to realise that children should be offered the same empathy and respect as adults.

I really, truly, hope you are wrong.

You cannot always tell what is going on in a snapshot of time. And many children can turn on realistically devastated waterworks when they are simply being told off.

And I refuse to accept that a child can be scarred for life by a simple scolding.

MrsHelsBels74 Absolutely.
Luck being the operative word.

She should have kept her nose out. I think more kids need time out - as long as it's done fairly, calmly and with love, whats the problem?

i think it's also good to help kids understand why its nice not to hit and to take turns. But that is something that can be done alongside time out.

Surely Lucky is just explaining her approach which sounds quite sensible and logical to me. I don't see how that can be a 'smug' thing to do. It is like saying someone is smug in describing their use of 'time out' as a discipline method.

I don't agree with your approach and I probably would have muttered something to you as I passed but the woman was nutty. Picking an unknown child up?!! How weird.

Formica, that is a very instructive post. Do I feel victimised, bullied by your instructions on how to be a parent to my child..no I don't actually I'll get over it!

Btw "time out" is passive aggressive behaviour so don't keep saying you were not aggressive towards your child.
& yes I don't like SuperNanny. Her methods are aimed at older children in families suffering a serious breakdown in trust, respect and discipline. I don't know your circumstances but i would be surprised if time out was an appropriate response to a 3yo, or 4yo, shoving another child at a soft play area. Rough play is to be expected.
Have a read of Alfie Kohns Unconditional Parenting. An interesting approach but probably doesn't fit with Gina Ford type parents.....

I have a 4 year gap on purpose Lisa, luck has fuck all to do with it. I didn't want any less of a gap so I made that my minimum threshold.

But this isn't a debate on whether time outs are an effective method of discipline, it's about whether the other parent was unreasonable in picking up an unknown child & accusing the OP of being abusive.

There have been times when DS1 is tantrumming & I've had to ignore it because I'm sleep deprived & about to lose my rag with him, also he can tantrum over the minutest of things & often nothing is going to help that. I'd hate for someone to march in, grab my child & abuse me. I know it's not ideal but I'm not perfect.

Oh and I think 4 children aged 2 - 13 sounds like quite a challenge- a teenager and a toddler sound just as hardwork if not more so when you throw another two into the mix, than 2 boys with a close gap. Surely, you reap the benefits when they are 2 plus as they have similar interests. I find even with 4 years that I don't get lots of arguments to referee but my DS is 6 and my DD has just turned 2 and a lot of activties have to be done seperately at the moment.

Have a read of Alfie Kohns Unconditional Parenting. An interesting approach but probably doesn't fit with Gina Ford type parents.....
What was that about 'passive-aggressive'?

Because of course, if you don't follow Kohns, you must be of the Gina Ford school of parenting?

I think it give the message "Don't worry about what discipline adult x dishes out, adult B will soon be along to override them, then you can carry on being a total pain."

See this day in day out at schools. Teacher overridden by parent. Child grows up to think they can behave exactly as they like without consequence.

& for what it is worth I am the oldest of 4 kids (10 year spread, 1 girl, 3 boisterous boys) & my parents never used time out or anything similar whilst out n about. We just behaved as we knew what was acceptable and what wasn't. Was it because we were close....? No! Their aggressive behaviour at home kept us under control.
IMO passive aggressive behaviour, like time out, is the same as actual aggressive behaviour. It is not something our kids should see in their parents. It is not behaviour we should model. If adults did that to each other the world would stop working.....

Firstly, I can't believe she did it. I would have gone ballistic and secondly Thankyou for taking your child to one side and showing him right from wrong. I am sick to death of going to play areas where a child pushes, shouts, hits another child and the bloody mothers do bugger all but sit there with the latte and mobile phone! If you are lucky they might shout a half hearted "xxxxxx don't do that" before returning to the next level of candy crush.
My bloods boiling now too lol!

Your idea of agressive and mine must be quite different then, Trying. I would only intervene if I saw a child being sworn at or physically hurt - as I have done on two occasions.

I didn't put him in time out for pushing, whoever said that. It was for hitting.

Surprisingly, despite my abusing him, my son seems perfectly happy at the moment and we haven't had any repeats of the unwanted behaviour so far.