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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

child pointed toy gun at me

493 replies

morningtoncrescent62 · 03/12/2016 14:14

I know that telling off/not telling off other people's children has been done many times on AIBU. But genuinely not sure whether I was in the wrong here. On the bus this morning, woman got on with two children aged about 5, dressed up, obviously excited about going somewhere. One of the children was dressed as a cowboy, complete with toy gun. I'll admit I hate seeing children playing with guns, but I know not everyone feels the same. They sat behind and across the aisle from me and I was reading a book and trying not to be distracted - they were fairly noisy but not unreasonably so in the circumstances.

A few stops before I was getting off I looked up to find the child with the toy gun pointing it at me and pulling the trigger repeatedly. The woman hadn't seen as she was rootling about in her bag. So I said to the child, not sharply but firmly, 'Please don't point your gun at me, it isn't very nice'. The woman looked up and apologised. Then she took the child on her lap for a cuddle and started a loud conversation with the other one about how adults sometimes talk to children instead of the adult who is with them and this is bad and wrong. Which is OK if it's her position, but nothing at all about how sometimes when you point guns at people and pretend to shoot them they don't like it and they ask you not to. I was tempted to say to her that if her child was too young to be asked by strangers not to point his toy gun at them, then he was too young to be allowed to play with it in a public place - but I was about to get off the bus so I didn't.

So, MN jury, WIBU to speak directly to the child?

OP posts:
buzzlightyearsdinosaur · 03/12/2016 14:27

I don't know..I hate children playing with toy guns and probably should get a major grip but rather than say something I would a possibly just moved to another seat.

That said I think this stems from having been held up in an armed raid years ago and I'm still a bit nervous (point a toys gun at me while I'm in the queue at the post office and I'd probably have a panic attack!).

If this is a reveres, (and perhaps I'm being over sensitive) but possibly it would be wise to teach your children to be sensitive to people around them...

JellyBelli · 03/12/2016 14:27

Pew pew pew!

Ohdearducks · 03/12/2016 14:28

Part of being out in the world us
learning to deal with other people when you have displeased them

Also learning to stand up for yourself when people are being a dick towards you for no good reason.

ChardonnayKnickertonSmythe · 03/12/2016 14:28

I would not have said anything to the child, but I wouldn't have liked what he did.

You should have addressed the mother, and said exactly the same thing to her.

GetOutMyCar · 03/12/2016 14:28

What MovingOnUpMovingOnOut said.

Ohdearducks · 03/12/2016 14:29

Bang bang he shot me down
Bang bang I hit the ground...

ShowMePotatoSalad · 03/12/2016 14:30

YABU but the mum was also BU. The kid was the only one who was being reasonable...kids when given toy guns will pretend to shoot them.

diamondofdoom · 03/12/2016 14:30

But it's a toy gun ..... not exactly like he held up a machine gun!

YABU about the gun. But I don't see why the mum then had to loudly moan that you asked her LO to stop instead of asking the mum.

srslylikeomg · 03/12/2016 14:30

Wow

Mynestisfullofempty · 03/12/2016 14:31

OP were you frightened he would kill you with an imaginary bullet? Confused
It's a child playing with a toy, for goodness' sake! No need to do or say anything. It's too trivial.

Mynestisfullofempty · 03/12/2016 14:33

JellyBelli Are you Bernadette Wolowitz? Grin

Pattakiller · 03/12/2016 14:33

Well, she shouldn't have done that passive-aggressive talking through the child thing.

But if you were that bothered you should have said to the mother, 'excuse me, but I don't like having toy guns pointed in my direction'. There was no reason in this scenario to talk to the child.

Sparklingbrook · 03/12/2016 14:34

I was held up at gunpoint in a bank robbery many years ago, however I would not mind a child playing with a gun on the bus, and would probably have played along.

I don't think there's a right way to feel though-it's all individual.

ssd · 03/12/2016 14:34

gosh sm,how scary that must have been Shock

Bertucci · 03/12/2016 14:35

I would've given him a sinister glare and drawn my index finger slowly across my neck.

That'll learn 'im.

glitterazi · 03/12/2016 14:35

Why all the getting at OP? Yes, it's a toy gun, and I don't particularly like them either.
The child wasn't doing anything wrong though. He was just playing with them as kids tend to do.
I don't see why the OP can't say perfectly reasonably though "don't point that at me, it's not very nice."
The passive aggressive talking through the kid from the mum would have peed me right off though.
Then we wonder why people daren't say anything to kids nowadays and have so many entitled, spoilt kids who are probably never told no or off for anything in their lives.

agedknees · 03/12/2016 14:36

Poor children, can't even play these days without getting told off

StillStayingClassySanDiego · 03/12/2016 14:36

One of the children was dressed as a cowboy, complete with toy gun.

Those pesky kids! Grin.

JellyBelli · 03/12/2016 14:36

Mynestisfullofempty Yes Grin

When faced with a 4 year old dressed as a cowboy, fall over dramatically and pretend to be deaded.

Pew!

eggyface · 03/12/2016 14:37

This thread is divided between people who think a toy gun is no big deal hence yabu, and those who think pointing a pretend gun at anyone is in bad taste and potentially distressing.

So perhaps the real title is "YABU to think children shouldn't have toy guns?"

(I think yanbu btw)

pigsDOfly · 03/12/2016 14:37

A gun is an odd toy to give a small child, I agree, and wasn't something I would ever have given my DC, but do you honestly think that in his imagination the child was actually shooting you? He would have no idea what that means, I hope and imagine.

Most little boys, and it was a boy's toy, of my brothers' generation played with guns. Very few of them grew up to become gun welding criminals, or cowboys come to that.They also had toy knives that they played with but likewise with those. Very few stabbings from them as young men.

In fact, the huge increase in young men carrying knives, and using them, and in rarer cases guns, has come about since small children have largely stopped playing with those kind of toys. Obviously, I'm not for one moment suggesting the two things are connected. However, it would indicate that playing with guns didn't have much of an impact on the adult behaviour of the children.

Definitely, think you over reacted to a random child's harmless game.

IcedVanillaLatte · 03/12/2016 14:37

I think you were OTT to have such an issue with a small child playing and trying to involve you in the fun. However, what the hell is wrong with an adult directly but politely speaking to a child in public? You were sending out what are, to an adult, obvious "do not disturb" signals, and I think it's good for a kid to understand that individuals they meet in public might interact with them rather than always going through a parent, and learn things like "people doing their own thing in public don't always want to play with you". At five they'd be expected to listen to teachers etc. asking them to do or not do things; it's not an alien concept. And it is a bit rude to point a toy gun at a stranger.

SukeyTakeItOffAgain · 03/12/2016 14:37

Sometimes things are just play. It's really very very unlikely that this child will grow up thinking that pointing real guns at people on buses is ok.

Bogeyface · 03/12/2016 14:38

I would have played dead too.

You were an arse and so was she when she did to the child exactly what she said you had done wrong by talking to him instead of you!

viques · 03/12/2016 14:38

I don't like toy guns either, but accept that some parents allow them and most kids love playing with them. The thing is, a gun being what it is the only thing to do with it is to point it at someone, it is the nature of the beast.

would you have said to a child on the bus going brmmm brmmmm with a toy car that you did not want them going brmmm brmm near you because you did not want to breathe in the petrol fume pollution from their toy car ?