In telling friend's child not to do something?

[Booboostoo]

This is a bit long but I don't want to drip feed.

We are friends with a couple who have a 4yo and a 2yo. DP and I went to school with the husband. Last time DP happened to see them without me and they raised concerns with him about my breast feeding our 3yo. DP didn't say exactly what they said but since they chose not to discuss it directly with me I did not bring it up with them. I am not militant or judgey about bf, it's just something I do with my DD and if people want to discuss it I am happy to otherwise I don't bring it up.

We saw them again last Sunday and I was sitting next to their 2yo for lunch. At some point she used her fork to prick my hand. I looked to her parents and they seemed to not have noticed because they were talking. Then she pricked my hand twice more and since no one reacted I said to her that we don't prick people with forks because it makes aou aou (with a nice calm voice and a smile). She then pricked her food and looked at me so I said well done that's what forks are for, then she pricked the plate and looked at me so I said that is fine, then a wallet that is OK, etc. I thought we were having fun and communicating. Then her dad said don't do that, so the next time she did it and looked at me I said daddy said not to do that and that was the end.

When they left DP asked me why I had upset our friends by disciplining their child and was it because I wanted to get back at them for the bf critiques. WTF? AIBU to think there was nothing to get upset about? And I certainly didn't do it in retaliation for a perceived slight! I only said something because no one else had noticed and I thought that pricking people with a fork was probably not a good habit to get into.

If the only reason your partner can think of for asking someone not to stick a fork into you is that you're trying to get back at a relative of that person, then I wouldn't be taking advice on "reading social situations" from him...

Yep. I agree that your biggest problem is your DH, not your friends.
I like the way he is saying how bad you are in social situations, that you do things right etc but hadn't told you what you should have done instead. Maybe because actually there isn't another appropriate way to react?

Re bfing. Agree too that he has an issue with it. He clearly has found no other way to you his disapproval than saying 'other people' think it's weird too. Esp if you have been refuting his arguments in the same calm manner you have done things so far.

I simply don't believe that your friends have a problem with your breastfeeding - why on earth would they? Why wouldn't he share their concerns with you? Perhaps because they would be suspiciously similar to his concerns? And to suggest that they were upset because you stopped their child from poking you with a fork is ridiculous - as you can see from the responses, most parents would be thrilled for someone to step in and correct behaviour that they hadn't seen.

It doesn't sound as though you misread social situations - you handled the situation with the fork poking exactly as I think most people would, whereas your husband seems determined to focus on the negative which is more socially suspect to my mind.

Is he gaslighting you OP? I'll bet he probably is.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Yeah this sounds like gaslighting to me too.

I would think it really weird if my child stuck a fork in someone and they didn't say anything. I would also think it odd if they said, Hampton, little H just stuck a fork in my can you speak to them cos that would seem like overkill.

It sounds like you handled the situation just fine and I doubt the friends were upset. Quite possibly they never said anything about you BF either.

Does he often tell you you have misread situations? Has anyone else ever told you this?

Your H is attributing his own feelings to friends to try and reinforce them and make you feel bad.

He doesn't like you still bf'ing your DD - so he says that his friends don't like it and think it's bad, because him not approving isn't making you stop. It's doubtful they give a shiny shit whether or not you bf your DD still, and equally unlikely that they said anything to him about it - what is MORE likely is that he said to them - "I don't like Boo still feeding our DD, I think it's weird, wrong and unnecessary, don't you agree?" and they may have mumbled along or even agreed with him.

He thinks you were out of line reprimanding the friends' child. They probably didn't even notice! And it's unlikely they were offended, why would they be? And even if they were, they certainly wouldn't relate it back to you bf'ing your own DD, there's absolutely no link! But since he knows that you wouldn't necessarily agree with him that you were out of line (in his eyes), he's trying to magnify it by telling you that the friends were upset - to cow you into "behaving" yourself as he thinks you ought to.

Does he do this in other things as well? Sounds like he has a fine line in undermining your confidence in your own abilities - I'm wondering how inadequate he is himself, because it looks like he's putting you down to make himself feel smarter.

I'd have zero problem with someone else objecting to my child sticking them with a fork, but I'd wince at the OP's style, because I find the 'we don't do x' approach plus baby talk 'that makes aou aou' just incredibly irritating. I would hope that I don't make that irritation obvious though because really that's just about my parenting - I prefer to talk to small children in the normal way I'd talk to an adult. so in this situation I'd probably have gone for something more like 'stop it, that hurts'.

Do people other than your dp say that you misjudge situations? I know people that do (and have done so myself) and it tends to manifest itself in a variety of environments (work, socializing etc) becasue it's about missing cues, talking before thinking, or just looking at things in a different way than other people and surprising them from time to time. I'd ask a a few friends, family etc and see whether you get the same sort of feedback from them.

I thought 'a aou aou ' was a typo! Your DH does sound like he's gaslighting though. Has anyone else ever told you you misread social situations? He's successfully made you doubt yourself.

And then I do a typo! Typical.

Is your DP the only person who had told you that you misread social situations?

Thanks everyone. It sounds like I did nothing odd so I'll put it out of my mind.

Sorry about the "aou aou", it's Greek for "ouch" and I didn't think to translate!

Thanks for the gaslighting link, I'd never heard of that before. I don't think we're quite at LTB stage with DP yet :)

I suspect that it's your DP who misread the situation. The friends possibly looked a bit uncomfortable because of the way their child was behaving and because they hadn't noticed and done something about it. He's misread that as them being upset.

My DH is a bit like that - he worries so much about what other people, even total strangers might think, that he'll expect the whole family to go out of its way to avoid it - for instance when we rented a holiday cottage and the owners lived next door, he worried about the DC making a noise playing with the swings in the garden. It just didn't occur to him that the owners probably expected the swings to be used and knew there would be some noise. I could see him being like your DP and worrying about what his hosts might think rather than applying his mind to it logically.

Even if they were upset and you'd misread it, you were still right to say something so your DP is still BU!

agree with others.
you were right to do that. and you did it in a nice way too.
takes a village to raise a child and all that.