AIBU for bollocking into these kids today

[ElleBellyBeeblebrox]

Me and my two (3 and 7) were at a local stream thing today, paddling with buckets and little fishing nets etc. Lots of other children and various parents scattered about. Three slightly older boys (maybe 8 or 9) had found a dead pike, and had it in a bucket to show people. Ok fair enough. But then they started holding it by the tail and twatting it on rocks. I went over after a few minutes to say that I thought they should stop and it wasn't very nice etc,and went back to my dcs. But after hearing much shrieking 5 minutes later they had managed to rip it in half and were throwing its insides about which the other kids were watching with kind of shocked/curious/disgusted faces. At that point I went back over and told them they were upsetting the other children and to pack it in and stop being horrible. Which they then did.

I wasn't BU to firmly tell them off was I? I know telling other people's kids off is a bit of a tricky one!

It was the right thing to do.
They were chucking animal entrails around in front of little kids.

I told some kids off in the park a few weeks ago for chucking dead birds around similarly.

Told them it was a health hazard and all about avian bird flu (might have exaggerated the plague like symptoms a bit).

YAB a bit U. They were not being cruel, the fish was not poor or sad, it was already dead. Its little fishy soul was either in fishy heaven or it had ceased to exist as an individual. Comparisons to fox hunting are odd - the children didn't kill the fish.

What the kids were doing was gross, and I'd have kept my children away from it, and I'd have bollocked them if they'd chucked stuff near me, but certainly that fish suffered less 'indignity' (like a wild animal cares about that after it's dead!) than being mechanically processed in a factory (including ripping out guts etc), covered in breadcrumbs, frozen, then grilled and eaten! The local eco-system will have taken care of the remains.

I would have encouraged my children to be a bit more respectful if they'd found a dead body but logically I don't think you had anything particular to tell strange children off for as long as they were keeping it to themselves - the problem was deliberately grossing out other children, if that's indeed what they were doing, not upsetting a dead fish.

YANBU. Children show a fascination in the weird and gross and eventually grow out of it. The fish was dead. I see no merit in raising children to be so sanitised. I think these attitudes in modern day parenting is partly responsible for the big increase in anxiety and acute mental self-consciousness in young people.

Just let the kids be awful/gross/disgusting sometimes!

I meant YABU!!

YANBU. Horrible behaviour.
You'll be told on here that the little fuckers they were just expressing themselves though

It is not horrible behaviour. A bit gross maybe but perfectly normal when children find something that's fascinating (to them) to explore it and get a bit overly excited.

It's kids being kids - and they certainly shouldn't be referred to in the terms that EttaJ used - who I sincerely hope was being sarcastic.

YANBU. If they were just poking it or examining it amongst themselves then fair enough, but thwacking it on the rocks and throwing the innards everywhere? Boak! My DS wouldn't have liked that at all and he's the same age.

(He wouldn't be above poking though - I remember him coming home from school a few years ago, dead excited to have found a dead bird on the school field. I asked him what did he and his friend do, hoping he'd say they were responsible and told the caretaker... but no. "Oh we poked it with sticks for a while, then we got bored and left it there." LOL)