to think "neighbour" has assaulted my child

[BubbleBathAddict]

Basically my 11 year old son was in a group of school friends yesterday after school. On the way home from the park they played "knock down ginger" -ie they knocked on a couple of front doors quite near us and ran away. Now this is not something I was aware of or would condone, but on the scale of "crime" it's not something to get too excited about.

My son said he did not do the knocking and stayed on the pavement.
At the second house the woman came out and yelled. The boys ran. All of them more quickly than my son it seems. Half way home (a few houses only) he felt someone grab his wrist and the said woman insisted he tell her where he live and frog-marched him home. He was in tears. I was at work, but his dad and older brother were in.

I do not know the woman at all. She apparently said her children were scared. I am pretty furious that she thought it was OK to grab and intimidate a child. That might have been appropriate 40 years ago, but these days touching anyone without consent is battery isn't it?

I don't want to over-react, but will be going over there today. What would you do?

When a primary school teacher can barely put an arm on a distressed child due to safeguarding laws, how is it legal/moral for a stranger to grab a child by the wrist was the question.

This is bullshit by the way. I teach reception and I often comfort children, have them climb into my lap, hold their hand as we walk. The safeguarding laws say nothing about that kind of behaviour at all.
That said I did have a parent complain that I held the hand of her four year old as we crossed a busy road to go to church. He does not stop when asked and will often run off. I took the decision to walk holding his hand. This was inappropriate according to her so I guess next time I'll let him run into the traffic.

Oh, away with you with your assault and battery .
This is exactly how misbehaving little scrotes were dealt with when I was growing up; the only difference was you'd have a clipped ear waiting for you when you arrived home, instead of a parent bollocking on about what their legal rights of redress against the victim were.
What a world

Assault? Hilarious. Go and get a bunch of flowers, march him back, and have him aologise. And sit him down and explain how playing the game could cause trouble for other people or frighten the vunerable.

My opinion is firmly that the women deserves an apology. Not your son.

I would have been round there with him making him say sorry. Maybe then he would think twice before getting swept along with peer pressure of the wrong sort.

I agree mrsdv. I remember being a kid and doing daft things with my classmates, who were a bit immature not evil.

You can't have it both ways.

If your son wants to take part in traditional activities like "knock down Ginger" he should be prepared for traditional reactions. 40 years ago a man would have spanked him in the street for doing that, and the parents would have thought it was the right reaction.

If he wants the modern way, where strange adults don't lay hands on children, he should consider that the modern interpretation of knocking and running could be harrassment, causing a disturbance, threatening etc etc etc.

My, my what a load of angst shite over a fairly common childhood incident. Dc annoys neighbour, neighbour marches child home to parents, parents make dc apologise. Case closed, normal life resumes.

OK sorry then sparkling, I misunderstood

If the woman had young children who were scared by the door knocking, wouldn't they have been very scared when she left them home alone to drag your son home?

I cannot be bothered to RTFT.

We go through phases here when the kids think it's fun to play knock down ginger and throw things (eggs, snowballs) at our windows (they broke one, once).

It's startling and very annoying: even more so when you think it's someone you should answer the door for and you get there and there's a bunch of kids running round the corner sniggering. If one of my DC had done that to anyone, and had suffered the consequences your son did, I'd have said, serve you bloody right, and come with me to apologise in person for being so stupid and thoughtless.

I do understand that your son was not directly involved, but he was with the group and for the person at the receiving end, that's more than enough: they have no idea who did the deed, they only know that they were harassed.

Assault my arse. Your lad needs to keep better company.

My dm has a police caution for doing exactly this. Fucking ridiculous.

When a primary school teacher can barely put an arm on a distressed child due to safeguarding laws

As someone else has already pointed out, that's absolute bollocks.

How do you know she left them home alone, Buzzard ?

I guess I just saw you agreeing with blanche, who was trying to make me look like a dick, at length

Thank god there are so many parents with sense. I don't see anything wrong with what the woman did. Your son and his friends were committing anti-social behaviour and shouldn't have been playing knock down ginger. She caught one and took him home. Good for her! My mum would have done the same and our neighbours would have done it to us if we had done it. Battery! Seriously call the police, I can imagine they like a laugh now and again in the station.

Seriously op though, your son has learnt a lesson. Next time he won't do it. Tell your son off and apologise to your neighbours.

Nope, I wasn't. I was interested to see if m/any people had called OPs son a little shit.

You raised a point I was interested in. Others had already said that the general consensus was that OPs son was acting within the bounds of normal childhood silliness. Only you and OP got fixated on that phrase.

So I had a look.

Buzzard, whether the woman had kids or not is irrelevant. She is entitled to enjoy her home without some idiot children ringing her doorbell and running away.

Have read most of the thread. This is something I've only done a handful of times (mostly as a child) if I was caught dammed right I'd get the treatment your son got and then told off again by my parents.

Can't believe you think it's assault! She didn't hit or harm your child just made him accountable for his actions.

I also take it OP (probably lying down to recover from the shock of it all!) that if it had been your door randomly knocked like this as a game you'd be all sweetness and light in dealing with it?!

Whatever you say blanche

I happen to think the OP is BU. However, I think the horrible bullying tone of some of the posters on here who don't agree with her is about 50 times worse.

Take a step back and look at yourselves, really.

Couldn't resist.

I wouldn't be happy if someone grabbed my son either.

But yours has hopefully learned a few lessons from this.

Mainly not to piss people off by harassing them in their homes.

And if he really was just standing by and watching his friends do it, then maybe he's also learned to pick better friends.

Not only because they are happy to bang on doors and run away, potentially frightening whoever is inside, but also because they are happy to run away and leave him to take the blame.

And also not to lie about where he lives. At least he was brought home to the right house, not to a house full of strangers. And if he was in tears, as you say, you'd want him to come home.

She said her children were scared. Whether you believe her or not, you're unhappy that your child was upset, so you should at least try to see where she's coming from in not wanting her children frightened by a group of high school boys banging on the door every day.

Because if they get away with it once, they'll do it again and again.

You say she wasn't old, but did the boys know that? Do they know if there are young children in the house? Do they know if someone in the house is ill? Do they know if someone is disabled and struggles to get to the door? Do they know if the occupants have recently been burgled and so feel vulnerable? Do they know if they've been victims of violent crime? Do they know if they work late shifts? Or have a relative in hospital, or care for someone, and so are exhausted and just can't deal with crap like this literally at their door?

Do they know anything at all about the people they bothered that day? Do you?

You've posted about your husband. Ask your son how he would feel if a gang of lads messing about banged on your door and ran off if it bothered his Dad or stopped a member of your family for caring for him while they went to answer the door.

So again, no I would not be happy about someone grabbing my child, but if he's not hurt, I think you need to accept that he was the one really in the wrong. And if you do have a word then you maybe need to be apologetic than accusatory while you discuss it with them. And don't use the word "assault" when you do it.

I'm so sorry about your husband

I hate to say it but your son really should have apologised.

I don't think the woman in question did anything wrong and agree with the majority of posters saying the OP should be marching their DS back to apologise. I also agree that it wouldn't have been nice for the OP's ill DH to have been on the receiving end of kids behaving irresponsibly like that and wonder how the OP would have reacted if it had been their door some kids had knocked.......

My recently deceased elderly and extremely frail parents would have most likely had heart failure had something like this happened to them and whilst I know the woman in question was neither elderly or frail, you don't need to be either for something like that to scare the shit out of you. I'm an incredibly jumpy 48 yr old, mainly because our dogs bark every time the doorbell goes or someone sneezes a mile away and would hate for kids to target my house in this way.

Yesterday we were told by a friendly neighbour that she had seen some young lads climbing on the wall between our house and our garage a couple of days ago. We've only lived here just over a year and have occasionally heard kids scraping sticks along our house wall (it abuts the lane, we have no pavement or front garden) on their way home from school, as our road in a relatively posh area is a cut through to a slightly less nice private estate.

We plan to erect trellising on top of said wall as a preventative measure, but TBH it's more because they'd be in for a nasty shock were they to do it again and fall off as there's a 4m+ drop into a large pond the other side. Moreover if I was to hear them up there I'd be sending our friendly(ish) but extremely loud dogs out to warn them off and I wouldn't hesitate to frogmarch them home if the situation arose. I can see now why the PO erected a complex CCTV system - I guess we should start using it