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?

If you have been called those things MrsDeVere they certainly didn't come from me.

Interesting that those of us who have experience in working with safeguarding issues all seem to agree that writing off this lady is a bad idea. I, for one, am grateful that people like tantrums and mrs dv work with vulnerable families. I'm sure all of our codes of conduct expect workers not to disempower individuals by labelling them.

Have skim read the thread, not interested in the slinging match(es).

OP, I totally agree with you. It was appalling parenting, and she is an appalling parent to speak to her child in that fashion. That's it.

I am sick to death of people constantly aiming for the lowest acceptable standard. Why can't people aim high and have some shame if they fall short, instead of excusing poor behaviour with "well, at least I didn't do x...", or "well, there were extenuating circumstances in that...".

And yes, I know that woman is a bad mother, without having even witnessed the episode. If it was true, good (or even passable) parents do not behave like that. Bad parents do. That is all there is to it.

whu has this turned into a bitchfest? MN at its worst

I think everyone genuinely cares about child welfare on this thread, even the ones that might have read as "apologists", which I am sure they are not

I know its AIBU

but I find it depressing we could have had a chat about "dont walk on by" and how hard it is to challenge this. aBout how we do need a cultural shift.

and no, its turned into a spat and someone who should hide thread and have a wine (thats you MrdDV) is getting increasing upset

Its such a shame

WE CAN DO BETTER

KATE

I mentined Daniel upathread, its haunted me,

sentancing for those evil evil people this week

yellow if your still reading this I understand your pregnant and scared but your neighbour needs to be reported. Those children have the same right to a decent life as your unborn baby. If you can't face it then pm the details and I will report.

Yanbu op the child's mother behaved in an appalling manner and I wish I had your balls.

I'm disgusted by some of the comments regarding ss and people who work with them. I would rather work down a cesspit then have to deal with the shit they do.

They are over worked and how they cope with the emotional baggage astounds me. I think we all have a moral obligation to support ss and report abuse when we see it.

I didn't say you didn't care. I said you were focussing on the woman. I stand by this. I've had shitloads of flak on this thread. Somebody said I was making an idiot of myself, everything i've said has been jumped on. I've said sorry if you were upset and you haven't had the courtesy to acknowledge this.

It wasn't you MrsDeVere. I said SOMEBODY did.

This thread is ridiculous.

MrsDevere - what are you posting for? You aren't actually contributing anything, providing no opinions or information. Only defending yourself repeatedly without actually posting anything it's really derailed the thread. And you seem intent on putting yourself above the OP in terms of she only ran down some stairs, but you work daily with people - please use your experience to discuss usefully rather than post without actually saying anything!

It's utterly baffling that it's being criticised on this thread to make the assumption that this woman is not a good parent, and probably worth referring to social services. Isn't it better for a family to be involved with social services than not, if they are struggling or not doing right by their children (which this woman clearly is not)? Mrsdevere do you not think OP is entirely human and compassionate and correct in what she did?

Got to agree with shreddies here

I doubt I would have been brave enough to do what you did OP but good on you, she was being horrid and no child deserves to be spoken to like that, no matter how much of a bad day their mother may have been having. I can also understand the frustration - yes, the OP does not know exactly what kind of mother this she is, but that small glimpse is worrying and shocking and probably indicative of what goes on on a regular basis.

There is an awful lot of frothing on this thread.

I've read it all.

At no point did MrsDeVere* condone/minimise/be an apologist for this woman's actions.

She just pointed out that yes it was awful, of course it should not have happened but that it wasn't the whole picture.

And OP - you said you ground to a halt whilst the woman had gone into a bank? Did you phone the police or anything while she was in there? Clearly you feel she was a shit parent?

I'm actually staggered at the Do you work in Africa?? Comment from whichever mind-glowingly offensive person posted that!

mind-blowingly obvs!

It doesn't matter that we haven't got the whole picture-we have enough of it to know that things are not right and frankly, the child's right to be protected ranks way way above any adult's no matter how terrible a day, life they're having.

If those who work in a professional capacity with inadequate parents really do fall over themselves looking at why the parent might behave like this instead of stepping in and protecting the child, then I really am not surprised that we regularly, after yet another horrific child abuse case hits the headlines, have social workers wringing their hands and promising to learn lessons....ad nauseum.

There is only one lesson to be learned...put the rights of children to be safe first. There is no justification for anything else. There really isn't.

As for the OP, she was right. I shudder at the fact that we are becoming a society where children can be abused in the street because the abuser knows nothing will be done. if a few more were pulled up on it by all of us, we decided that we were not going to put up with it, then not so many would do it,

The child's right to safety trumps the adult's every time. It is impossible for any reasonable person to argue against this.

Agree with missmarple wholeheartedly.

Missmarple - I absolutely agree. People always come out with so many excuses on these sorts of threads and as for all the "it's just a snapshot" "how can you tell?" - if that's not minimising - it's a pretty firm attempt to make a big thing look small and I am not impressed by people using their day jobs to support saying such guff.

People used to say exactly the same things about domestic abuse and that self same rhetoric allowed it to flourish.

We don't accept that now. We believe in zero tolerance for domestic violence - no excuses. I cannot think of any reason why children should not be afforded the same rights.

In case anyone wants to wave their professional status in response, I say that as someone who has worked with children and their families for many years.

Ok then missmarple, what would you do to protect the child from its mother's verbal abuse in this instance?

mrskeith

there is NO easy answer, one might be right in one scenario might not work in another

But what I am reading is that people think as a society we need to be more vigilent and mindful on this issue. so instead of walking by and thinking "not my business" or "i cant say anything" we should asses the situation, and either say something or tell someone.

If a mother that does this has xx strangers approach her, and xxx neighbours contact SS thats surely better for the child than NOTHING???

we are approaching a tipping point, and the simple fact is we cannot rely on the NHS, SS and schools alone

week after week we read stuff and think "how the fuck did noone say anything, see anything"

I dont subscribe to the view that contacting SS could open a cascade of intervention, and ruin lives. If we hold that view its a very negative one, and will impede progress. we have to trust our SS, and our instincts

Anybody who has any sort of understanding about families would know that children love their parents. Even the abusive ones. In this case the assumed mother said awful things that she should not have said but that child will still love her and she loves that child. You can do terrible damage to a child if you disrupt that relationship. The children in the charge of social services, because there was no other safe option, are very often not happy children. Damage has been done. There's no help for it when it gets to that point but it's not an unqualified 'good'.
Now in this case yes this woman must stop the extreme verbal abuse and maybe the intervention from the OP may prompt that but this situation is not as black and white as some posters are claiming. To properly meet the needs of a child you need a focus on the parent as well as the child because the two are so inter-connected.

I don't like threads like this.
I don't like seeing people being accussed of being abuse apologists, because I don't think they are.
And I don't like seeing :
"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."

I agree. I don't think there is any common ground here. But it is a shame, because there should be.

And it is clear that Mrs DV does care about abused children, so to accuse of not caring about them, seems like a very odd criticism.

YES. I don't like these threads.......

northern

I can see that. FWIW I am not advocating people being taken away, but for help, advice, education.

I can see that for a parent to get support, is far better that siblings being split up and put into care

But, yet again we must NOT ignore this stuff, do you see what I mean?

when people say "contacting SS can open a can of worms" it could stop people reporting the bad stuff, and I dont like that

but yes, sometimes a kid is better of with a simultaneously loving and shit parent than on their own, in foster care. Its a shame

That's exactly right, no one should turn a blind eye, if you have a concern you pass it on to someone equipped to make the decisions and who is privacy to information we aren't.

Why I am asking what does missmarple propose we do to protect these children as it's very easy to say the words and criticise social work but what would you do differently?