Who WBU? Mortifying train incident.

[MikeReepySpooksard]

Ds, 15 months, has an unfortunate hair pulling habit. Today on the train he got hold of the hair of the teenage girl sitting in the seat behind his and yanked it. She screamed 'get the fuck off me' and glared at him. She kept turning round and glaring at him the rest of the journey.

That would be a very good response.

It sounds as though she shouted in instinct, lots of people have very sensitive scalps as well to be fair. I'm presuming you apologised?

Massive x post OP!!

YDHWBU to not supervise the baby properly
She might not have been unreasonable if she shouted first in reaction to having her hair yanked.
If she knew it was the baby she shouldn't have shouted, but also your DH should have apologised.

If you apologised straight away and ensured no further hair pulling incidents then she wbu for the continued glaring. The initial reaction was just a reaction to something that you should have prevented.

My first thought when I read the OP is that my 13 year old DD would not have reacted like that. She's slightly passive, a little anxious and not at all assertive/aggressive so she wouldn't have reacted like this even if she was being assaulted or being touched inappropriately by anyone on a train. I really wish that she was assertive/aggressive enough to shout get the fuck off me to anyone who threatened her safety, whether it was a real threat or not.

Yeah he probably should have but I can understand if she was looking ragey that he was concerned about starting a ruckus.

It does sound like the girl shouted instinctively at having her hair pulled - good for her!
When she turned and realised it was a baby, she should have had an apology from the parent.

She doesn't know it wasn't your DH. Is she psychic? Your son holding his arms out means nothing.

He's not usually a bellend

Well he was this time. Your DH doesn't control your DS and then you have the nerve to refer to the other person a "knob". You both sound utterly charming.

Her reaction was perfect normal, I'd have sworn like a trooper if that had happened.

She was probably being U to keep glaring - but it really depends on how you dealt with it

Oh well.
Another day another dilemma.

Just as well it wasn't my dd's hair he pulled. She is wearing some really nice clip in hair pieces at the moment. What a shock! like a scene from last of the Mohicans.

But do you not understand that 'get the fuck off me' is an instinctive reaction, and one that we should be encouraging young girls to have? This time it was a baby, but she didn't know that. It could've been someone trying to assault her.

This

It's perfectly reasonable to look daggers at useless parents who fail to control their child, don't apologise, and clearly think that their child's behaviour is acceptable.

"Your not giving someone a chance to apologise properly if you start shouting fucks at them are you."

Think this through though, you are on public transport, most people stop their children before they cause physical harm to a stranger. And very few passengers are normally small children. So you are likely to assume that the hair puller is an adult, and that it was done maliciously.

If you think someone has just deliberately tried to hurt you why would you wait for an apology rather than instinctively yell at them to let go of your hair?

Does you other half not know that your baby likes to pull hair ?

....and I agree with the poster who said they'd rather teen girls did react this way.

A toddler will have been scared by someone shouting eff off. But he won't know what it means and he'll forget it by next week.

Whereas, teen girls do get groped and assaulted in public. Asserting oneself if one is travelling alone is actually really healthy. Maybe she was on her own on a long train journey for the first time, feeling nervous about managing on her own, full of advice from her mum about watching her purse and not going anywhere unlit and all that.... And then someone grabbed her.

I'd rather that reaction than frightened acquiescence.

all, exactly my earlier point. I hope your DD is able to find her voice. Actually, I hope that she never needs to find it.

DHWBU. He should have apologised immediately.

Mortifying train incident indeed

Expecting something a bit better

This all sounds a bit weird to me.

How can you say the girl spent the rest of the journey turning round and glaring at your son when you didn't even know about the incident until you got off the train?

Surely if this girl had actually done that, you'd have noticed and, at the very least, ask your husband why.

Your DH was BVA. He should have had better control and apologised to the girl.

I've got fibromyalgia and I have 2 spots on my head that are permanently painful. If my hair had been pulled in either of these spots I wouldn't have said get the fuck of me (I'm generally not like that ) but I would have screamed loudly because I would have been in a lot of pain. People would have thought my reaction was extreme because I don't look ill.