To have confronted this poor excuse for a mother?

[TeddyPickleStick]

So I'm sat at work, window open. I hear a commotion outside so get up and look out the window. There is a heavily pregnant woman with two small children - a boy of around 3 and a girl of maybe 4.

She is screaming at the boy .. ' you fucking piece of shit, what the fuck are you doing? ' and ' Come on you little prick ' etc etc.

I shout down ' Don't do that! Don't say that! ' in complete shock. ' Who the fuck are you? Fuck off ' she shouts back.

I then deliberated on what to do. I felt really angry so ran down the stairs onto the street but she had gone into the bank. And then I ground to a halt and couldn't work out what to do.

So did nothing more. I mean, what CAN you do? Only a bit of swearing after all eh? I have no idea what I would have done if I'd managed to confront her anyway.

I detest this, really hate it. If you swear at your children like this, in the street, then you are a shit parent.

Aren't you?

Wise words JassyRadlett
Good point well made IMHO.

Agree totally with Crashdoll and Marriedinwhite.
And Pram, the post where you state that only people in Africa could not afford to feed their children speaks volumes. Are you actually for real?
Have you not even seen the donation points for foodbanks in local supermarkets? Really?

What do we do if we don't critisise this behaviour then? I agree she should be given support if this is a pattern of behaviour but people will only change if the open their eyes to the fact that e is wrong!

OP did it occur to you to say something like. It's hard sometimes isn't it? I have torn mine of a strip on occasion albeit never in public and not necessarily with that sort of language because that sort of language isn't what I grew up hearing but by golly I can let rip and have made them cry probably too often. Parenting is hard when everything is right - exceptionally difficult when it isn't.

So the woman's calling a small child a 'fucking piece of shit' and the more correct response to the woman would be 'it's hard sometimes isn't it?'

Honestly??

Read marriedinwhite's post again MrsDeVere.

I'm sorry MrsDeVere that we are never going to agree on this. I am looking at this from the pov of the abused child whereas you only seem to want to focus on the woman. I don't we are ever going to find any common ground.

Are you saying I don't have the right to believe that a statistc telling me that 1 in 3 children is in poverty is utter bullshit? That is not goading or inflaming. That is my giving an example of the bleeding heart ideology seeping from some of these posts. It is the same set of beliefs which compel those posters to jump down the throats of people who deign to judge shocking behaviour in the street: Let's not place any blame; we don't know the facts; this could just be a snapshot; you shouldn't jump to conclusions; lots of great parents do bad things occasionally.

It is disingenuous to pretend that this woman could in all probability be anything other than your run-of-the-mill mother from hell, but some posters on here are determined to make people feel bad for judging what possibly (probably) goes on in this woman's home. It's not rocket science.

And for the record, I don't 'hate' anybody. That isn't part of my personality.

MrsDeVere and Tantrums - I understand what you have been saying throughout the thread.

There has been no minimising of abuse. There has been no-one saying that the behaviour described in the OP was OK. No-one. Absolutely no-one. There has been no suggestion that the mother was a brilliant mother the rest of the time.

There has however been the perfectly reasonable point made that the OP cannot KNOW what the mother is like the rest of the time. She can't. She has surmised and made assumptions based on a small amount of evidence. She might well be right. But she can't know that she is.

It is not the same as witnessing someone kicking the shit out of someone.

It doesn't mean that the OP was wrong to tell her to stop shouting at her children like that , but as far as I can tell only one poster has suggested that she was - and that wasn't MrsDeVere or Tantrums.

I'm confused. Just too tired to read the whole thread.

'It's not the same as witnessing someone kicking the shit out of someone.'

What exactly are your views on ea then Verlaine?

BRB, just gonna go tell the foodbanks to shut up shop. They'll be so relieved that food poverty was a big statistical misunderstanding. I know I am.

Ciao!

I am happy to stick around MrsDeVere. I'm not looking for a 'way out.'

Smite has put it much more eloquently than I have.

Married, if she'd decked her kid would you be suggesting the same response??

MrsDV, you'll note from my posts that I have been incredibly careful about ascribing comments to all posters, or to 'mix everyone up together'. I've in fact referenced specific comments that upset me, and then gave my own opinion on the OP and the discussion, which as far as I'm concerned is a valid one.

However, since you and I are in what I hope is a constructive conversation, if I'm honest one or two of your very early comments made me very angry and upset, where you said:

^But it really was just a few seconds out of their lives.

You could be right but the chances are equal that you could be wrong.^

To me, it's a few seconds in which a child was abused in public, which actually as Smite says probably reduce the chances that OP was wrong. So to me it's not 'just a few seconds' any more than a husband breaking his wife's arm or a parent beating a child is 'just a few seconds'. I'm fairly sure, reading your later posts, that this is now how you meant to come across, but I can also see how other posters interpreted it the same way I did.

And again when you said:

On a thread about a child being sworn at, there is a child who is being physically abused and no one is doing anything about it. FFS.

I became quite upset. Partly because very many people were urging yellow to take action - it had not been ignored although the thread hadn't altogether been diverted in that direction, and whether that's right or wrong is up for grabs - but also because to me verbal abuse is just as worthy of intervention as physical abuse, while your statement suggests either there should be a hierarchy of intervention, or that this was just a bit of swearing and not that serious. Perhaps neither was your intention, but that's how it came across to me.

I'm honestly not attacking you - but explaining how those comments came across to me.

However I do question other posters who suggested that it was 'silly' to suggest that it was appropriate to call SS for 'swearing at your kids', which made me very upset and angry.

That makes me feel sick to my stomach when I read posts like that. I always think if that's how she speaks or acts in public thn God only knows what goes on in private.

Doesn't bear thinking about.

Brilliant post, Jassy, thank you.

^not how you meant to come across, not now. Sorry