WWYD - toddler's friend's parent?

[Oneandonlyone]

My three and a half year old has a best friend. They're in nursery together, they're in dance class together, they're in swim class together. So we see the parents all the time. The little girl is having some mild behaviour issues, and frankly it is all down to parenting. Dad's parenting is all right, pretty good actually, but Mum's getting more unbearable by the moment.

Fine, not everyone has the same parenting style. Maybe she and I are just different. Her personality doesn't really mesh with mine anyway. She's one of these people who has a reason why she won't do anything, is very vocal about it, and wouldn't dare change her mind, however weak the logic behind her argument is. Hey, it happens. She is also into "swatting" her child on the bum as punishment. The kind of parent who when told at nursery that her child has had a very good day, proceeds to announce to the class that "well, she's always bad at home!" Again, not my style but nothing to get bent out of shape about.

Until this past weekend, that is. We were getting changed after swim class with a couple other parents and similarly aged kids. And the slightly tired daughter started disagreeing with her mum and mum went completely off on one. The kid was hysterical, and mum was completely baiting her, almost trying to make her more hysterical. She didn't want to do something, so mum took her crackers away as a kind of random "well, since you won't do what I aksed immediately, then I'm taking your crackers." As the kid got more hysterical, mum proceeded to give all the other kid some of her crackers, telling each kid "you can have some but X can't because she is so terrible." The kids didn't know what to do except take the crackers - they're three, after all. And then Mum kept on ramping it up. When the kid didn't want to go to the toilet, Mum just hauled the screaming hysterical child in there, shut the door and even more hysterical screaming ensued. It just got worse and worse. No attempt at all to calm the child or reassure her or anything except aggravate her. The other mothers and myself just kept looking at each other, silently trying to figure out what to do. To my shame and regret, we did nothing. The mother in question would have turned on us just as badly, and sadly we let it stop us.

So what do we do now? I can't stand this woman anyway, but this has really driven me over the edge. I don't want my kid around her, but it also isn't the daughter's fault that her mum's a loon. I don't want to leave the kid even more isolated or my daughter to lose her best friend. What should we have done on Saturday? Everyone just signed up for the new term so we have classes until Christmas as well. I couldn't deal with this again, much less all those weeks.

For what it is worth, I think dad knows she's not a great parent but has no influence on her in this area at all and has given up. (She above about her reasons (which she will happily state) about why she never changes her behaviour, etc.

She sounds terrible, OP. But I don't think there is much you can do. Presumably her parenting is "good enough" so the situation will continue throughout this poor LO's life. Once the children get into mainstream school - if they go to the same one - you may be able to raise matters with the school. But for now, nothing seems feasible to me.

Try to get play dates without the parents though, the little girl may enjoy a peaceful trip to your house with regular rules and clear expectations.

She sounds awful, it certainly sounds like emotional abuse to me, constantly saying and calling a child naughty even when other people are telling her shes bwen well behaved, taking things away from her and giving them to other children.

Just because ss have to deal with awful physical abuse doesnt mean its ok to ignore emotional abuse. Any sw thinking that should not be doing the job imo.

If this was an adult women saying her husband was constantly putting her down everyone woukd be calling ltb but its ok to do it to a 3 year old? What the fuck is going to happen to this poor childs self esteem. Poor baby

While i agree that this parental style is a bit dodgy i still feel that there isn't really anything OP can do about it. cromer has suggested a word with the nursery. This might be the most tactful route if things get any worse.

Could you ask the nursery if they would run a parenting class - along the lines of 123 magic. Our school did one & it was very good. The LA might do it for free & the nursery could just host it. It would be her choice if she went or not.

Only read first page,so sorry if repeating what's already been said.

I don't think it's all to do with the child's behaviour,from what you've described I'd be more worried about the way the mother responds.It could be the way she was raised,learned lessons can be hard to break or she could have issues of her own going on.

I'd speak to her Nursery and Swimming school,that way they can both keep an eye on what's going on with little one and her Mum.

They can run a parenting course-she is probably the sort of parent who wouldn't go. Other than be nice to the child, distance yourself from the mother and support the father I can't see what you can do. Maybe the father could get her to parenting classes? While I think her appalling in her treatment of the child, I think it very common and many suffer far worse.

OP - you can judge away because what you have described sounds just awful.

It sounds like you, the DH, and everyone else is scared of this woman. I think the best thing to do is think of some non-confrontational things that might diffuse situations in the future. It may seem daft but practice saying things out loud so you don't sound shaky when you say them to her.

I would also speak to someone who has some expertise about these situations, even if it is only to put your mind at rest and make you feel that you have done something.

Child abuse (physical and emotional, from minor to Baby P) happens because adults turn a blind eye, don't want to get involved, think other parents should wind their neck in, or maybe in this internet age some parents worry about Mumsnet thinking they're judgey! < sarcasm >

It is hard for you as an adult, but I would do my best to keep your daughter and this girl as friends, so that the girl can see that not all parenting is so violent and angry.

The more I read this the more I'm going .

This woman parents her way and not the way you want her to. She doesn't stand around trying to reason with a toddler.

She picks her kid up from nursery and [shock horror at her honesty] admits that her child isn't as well behaved at home.

You're the kind of parent and yours the kind of kids I always wondered about. Now I know that the world isn't full of perfect kids and my more difficult ones. Mine are probably no worse than any others, I'm just honest about them. I'm not trying to impress with a projection of my perfect little world.

The mother doesn't fall at her feet with gratitude when you suggest she takes an interest in cinema when she prefers Netflix? How dare she not seek entertainment as you think she should! She's not interested in your dieting tips? Hang her! She tells the child she's naughty when she's. Er. Naughty?

You "can't stand" the mother. You describe her as "a loon". You judge her for petty things, a sweet drawer, an unwillingness to go to the cinema. You appear to be judging her for not accepting your offer of childcare. Have you considered that she may not want to leave her child in the unsupervised care of someone who clearly hates and judges her?

You've got support on this thread through using your dislike of the mother's totally irrelevant lifestyle choices to encourage others to judge her. WTF has her preference for Netflix or opinions on dieting got to do with her parenting?

No wonder there are Baby P's falling through the net. The country's social services department is overrun with over-reactors whose reports are based far more on personal differences and judgments than on genuine risk factors.

There's far too much use of the verb "judge" in that rant. It makes for ugly reading . Sorry.

What YouAreAnton said. Much better than I could have put it.

I don't think you sound just as bad, or judgemental but I don't think you should step in. Chances are she is just struggling with parenting and dealing with tantrums
. Maybe spend some time with them and say something like "my dd behaved like that yesterday and I really found doing x and y helped". She might have other things going on, she may be really stressed out or it might not come as naturally to her as it does to others. The best you can do is keep being friendly and give her some support.

It sounds like she's struggling with dealing with tantrums. I'm sure all of us have dealt with a tantrum the completely wrong way when at the end of our tether. I know have.

I think offering to take her DD out for the day with your DD would be lovely. You could also ask her over for playdates where mum just drops off and picks up. It means your DD doesn't lose her best friend but you don't have to spend time with the mum if you don't want to.

You could even try to get a second hand copy of this book or something similar. You could say something like "Aren't these terrible 3s a nightmare? I've been having an awful time with my DD. Someone recommended such and such book to me though and it was a lifesaver. It's brilliant. In fact I think it's in my bag if you want to borrow it?"

Sensibly said nappyaddict.

No wonder there are Baby P's falling through the net. The country's social services department is overrun with over-reactors whose reports are based far more on personal differences and judgments than on genuine risk factors.

This particular parent is obviously nowhere near the line that Baby P's parents crossed.

But isn't it sad that a child is being treated this way? I had very strong-willed tantrumming children and I know I didn't handle it well. But I didn't treat them the way this mother does. It may not warrant SS involvement but we can but hope that the father can have some influence over his wife's ways (as clearly they're not effective)

But only on MN would the OP be criticised (and judged!) for thinking the way she does. We would all have been upset at witnessing the 'punishments' and I can't believe anyone would have thought they were suitable. The OP has seen all this on more than one occasion and is more than entitled to an opinion.

As the kid got more hysterical, mum proceeded to give all the other kid some of her crackers, telling each kid "you can have some but X can't because she is so terrible

What the actual FUCK are people reading to give such responses to the op?
Did you miss this ^ bit. The justification that so many people are giving is sickening.

This is a vile way to treat a person, whether child or adult.

OP YANBU. I could cry for the dd, I really could. And IME people are generally more reserved in public than behind closed doors, so I really dread to think how the mum treats the dd when there's no-one there to see.

I would probably speak to the school nursery. Be honest, say you see this mum and dd out and about quite a bit, and you have some concerns about the relationship between the mum and dd. Hopefully this will prompt them to keep a closer eye and report anything further through the relevant channels.

So you have to continue to see her and your child likes her?

I know that this sounds radical but have you tried beeing really really nice and having a word with her? I've done this with someone who burst into tears and told me all her (many) problems. She hadn't been meaning to be horrible but she was so stressed/tired/sad that she couldn't find the love and the energy to be the rock for her child to lean on. She had been without love so long.

So how about trying to change her with kindness and friendship instead of excluding her? The outcome for her dd will be worse if you do. Perhaps her parents hit her and were horrible and that's the parenting model she follows.

I've seen it over and over in the (old people's) home where I work. Someone will treat the rudest most difficult oap with kindess and compassion and that oap will change. Sometimes we forget what it feels like to be other people.

I'm not saying don't be firm ,but there are many ways to solve a problem, and this one is a win win. Excluding her is lose lose.

YANBU. Sometimes parents lose their cool. I could imagine coping poorly with a screaming toddler and shouting something at the toddler like "shut up and do as you're told". But, this parent sounds truly vindictive - giving out the toddler's own biscuits to all the other children and rubbing it in? That's just mean. It practically sounds like she's enjoying her toddler's emotional distress

CatHackney put it much better than I did.

I'm no super parent. I had PND after ds2, and I can remember one day when ds1 was 3, ds2 was 1, and they would just not let up. Both of them were screaming and stamping about different things, and I shouted 'Shut up ' at them both, because I handled it badly and snapped. Although not acceptable, I think that is a fairly...understandable/normal...amount of 'bad parenting'.

Continually provoking a child purposefully to hysterics, rubbing in a toddlers distress, doing all you can to make it worse, which it sounds like this mum was - this is not a 'normal' amount of a parent simply struggling to cope.

I bet half the people on this thread haven't actually read what has been written. Some of the responses on here are very knee-jerk picking off just one or two things to react to instead of looking at the whole.

I think we can all agree (including the op) that she doesn't like this woman and is a little unpleasant about some of her lifestyle choices. That doesn't mean that this woman does not have some issues with dealing with her daughter. Imo her behaviour at the swimming pool was emotionally abusive.

We don't know what has gone on to get her to that point whether it is an escalating pattern of behaviour or if she is just utterly ill equipped to deal with a difficult toddler (I'll stand next to her on that one. I found life v, v hard with my challenging 3 year old. Not that I'm going to the reasons on here but we got help and things got better. That said I still feel I'm not the best parent I could be and my dc deserve better. I'm a work in progress!). Either way it's not good for either of them. Parenting classes or somewhere she can access some support could help this woman hugely and could also help her daughter. That's a relatively sensible suggestion and proportionate to what has been witnessed overall by the op. The issue comes if this woman does not choose to access the help available or if there is no help available.

But I reiterate from my earlier post - if you see behaviour like the swimming pool again please step in. Once an escalating pattern of behaviour starts it is really hard to stop. A boundary gets crossed one day and the mother feels terrible. The next time she doesn't even notice. It happens in public and nobody says anything which becomes tacit condoning of her methods and she starts to behave like that all the time and other boundaries start to get crossed.

I've speed read this thread in chunks in between housework this morning, so apologies if someone had already suggested this.

Do you have a Sure start children & family Centre nearby? If so perhaps you could suggest that you and this woman go along with your DDs to one of their toddler groups.

They will be staffed by well trained family outreach workers who would be well placed to notice and advise on any behavioral issues on the part of the child, or parenting issues in behalf of the mum.

I agree with a PP that speaking to the child's dad might also be a good idea, particularly if you can put it in the context of being concerned for mum as well as child and maybe make the point that other people witnessing an outburst like the swimming pool one might be more inclined to escalate the matter.

Have you noticed the mum's behaviour getting worse since you've known them? 3-4 is a particularly difficult age - fwiw I know I resorted to a few disciplinary tactics that I can still remember & that make me cringe now, even though DD is now 10 and fabulous and we have a great relationship.

I'm inclined to wonder if latent, undiagnosed PND has collided with the toddler years Tbh. I think they both need help & support.

Her behaviour sounds pretty nasty and potentially damaging to her little girl.

I don't think any of the suggestions above about sure start, parenting books etc are going to work judging by what the OP has said about the woman's reaction if anyone offers help or advice.

OP I think the best you can do is raise your concerns with the nursery, in a polite but definitely worried way. They should be in a position to see if the mother's behaviour seems to be having a negative effect on the little girl. If so then that is the time to do something further.

I have been guilty of escalating tantrums and looking like a heartless cow. I just didn't know what I was doing tbh. I thought that once you and made a choice you and to stick with it, that you had to be firm and let a child know that they need to do what needs to be done without a tantrum. It makes life very, very hard if you just really aren't aware that your actions are making life worse and the tantrums worse. I don't think I was ever as horrible as this woman may have been though.

I've had those looks when my DS was going into meltdown and I was, quite frankly, following him into a meltdown rathe than prevent it. I simply had no idea of the right way to speak to a child and had watched too much super nanny and was stuck on the punishment idea of discipline. I hadn't been bought up in a nurturing type of household, I'd had none of that nice way of parenting and was basically parenting the way I had been parented without even realising it.

When dealing with constant tantrums from a toddler which are then escalated by how you'd deal with them it makes you nuts, tired and depressed. You should have empathised with her and helped her even if she was going to shout you down. Why can't you say 'it must be very hard to deal with tantrums sometimes it looks like you are struggling' Or speak to her husband about it.

Its hard when you know inside you are fucking up, being judged and not having a clue what to do about it. I am having some family therapy to help me and have also read the "how to talk book' which has made a massive difference in this house in only a short time. I honestly did not realise the negative impact of how I spoke to my DS would make things worse. How using punishments, which never actually worked, made things 20 times worse.

Have some compassion and work up the guts to speak to her or buy her the book 'how to talk'.

But I reiterate from my earlier post - if you see behaviour like the swimming pool again please step in. Once an escalating pattern of behaviour starts it is really hard to stop. A boundary gets crossed one day and the mother feels terrible. The next time she doesn't even notice. It happens in public and nobody says anything which becomes tacit condoning of her methods and she starts to behave like that all the time and other boundaries start to get crossed

This is easier said than done! You can see far worse than this any day of the week and I can imagine the reaction if I tried to step in!
I really can't see what OP can do -other than support the child and possibly the mother. Suggest books or parenting classes-maybe mention it to nursery.
You can tell from the reaction on here that you are best not to interfere. Half think it is so abusive that SS should be called and half think OP is a judgmental cow (or worse) and should mind her own business.

If you are going to tackle it then it has to be in a non judgmental, friendly way.

Well said campingfilth

The first thing that came to my mind reading the OP and updates after the poor DD was that poor mother. She sounds like she is completely stuck in a cycle of negative behaviour with her DD and yes she is the adult, but if she's not had nuturing role models herself, she may not have any idea how to be different with her DD. We all know how hard it can be to change the behaviour patterns you and your children build with each other.

I am happy to admit that I really struggled with my DS's constant tantrums at 3 and I probably did escalate them sometimes because I'm as stubborn as he is and neither of us would back down. I can honestly say that I have never done anything cruel but I'm sure other people have judged me as being too harsh with him when they have just seen a snapshot of the day and the latest tantrum is actually the 4 or 5th that morning over nothing and I've just had enough of constantly trying to placate an unreasonable toddler. I've also always been very honest about how difficult I found some of my DS's behaviour and again I know this has shocked some of my friends.

This woman must know that you are all looking on judging her relationship with her DD. If you really are as concerned about it as you say, try to reach out to her rather than make your dislike so clear.

She sounds awful and I would find it very upsetting to be around someone who treats her child like that. YADNBU.

Oh and she is psychologically abusing her child. I have no idea why some posters are being so nasty to you.