To think this woman had no right to tell my son off

[WobbleYourHead]

So we were in the car park of a supermarket often the subject of a MN thread when DS (9) had taken the trolley back to redeem the £1.
Being a bit of a monkey he was trying to put the trolley back "handle to handle" as opposed to slotting it in. I called across to him to put it in right which he did. In the meantime I jumped in the car and drove the short distance for him to get in the car.
As I approached a woman was telling him off saying something along the lines of he shouldn't have spoken to her like that....
I asked what he'd said and she said "He was being cheeky" so I questioned again what exactly he'd said & she just repeated that he was cheeky. So I told her she had no right to tell him off, she said she wasn't and the exchange went on for several minutes with her still refusing to tell me what he'd actually said!!
I asked DS again and basically she'd told him it wasn't nice for him to put the trolley back wrong so in return he'd basically repeated back "well that isn't nice" (her telling him) at which point she had a go at him!
AIBU to think that if she had an issue that the least she could have done was spoken to me but in the grand scheme of things there was absolutely no need for her to say anything to him at all?!

Even if the slightly backtracked ops version is right, it all sounds pretty minor. An adult said you're not being very nice to your 9 year old, and you are so upset you are posting on here- this says it all just on its own. I am not sure I would notice an adult saying that kind of reprimand to a 9 year old when I can see myself their behaviour isn't perfect. I would certainly have asked the 9 year old what they said- not doing so is treating them more like a three year old or a snowflake . If the adult had said you are a little shit then maybe you would be a bit more justified! But they didn't ...

OP you really need to stop making so many excuses for poor behaviour. Being this defensive will not help you in the future.

Teenagers are hard work. Your "little monkey" is in danger of becoming... well... most of us can imagine.

He didn't "witness me telling her off" He witnessed me asking her what he'd said and had she bothered to do me the courtesy of answering she could have witnessed me tell him off too.

She had the size of you at that point, and wanted nothing further to do with you.

Also, I'll remember that at 9 trying to see if 2 trollies fit together back to back isn't funny it's obnoxious, antisocial, rude, little shit behaviour

At 9, that sounds like normal 9 year old behaviour. The mimicking back is just bloody rude though and you know it. Or at least should do if you were halfway decent.

OP why bother asking on AIBU if you are already convinced that this woman was an interfering busy-body who dared to speak to your 'little monkey' in a way that upset you?

By the way, I agree with everyone else, you were totally in the wrong and I wish you the very best of luck with the next 9 years with your darling angel-child

I actually don't think he's a "little shit" and I've never said that, I grew up around far worse kids who were mugging at 9. But I do think that something else happened here that OP can't fully explain because she wasn't there and she's filled in blanks using the kids story and blind hope. People don't just go around telling kids off. My DS is 7 and if anything comes back with a quid for "being so good". Older people love to see a child behaving and are often the first to praise, not scold.

So if respect doesnt have to be automatic do we start off by looking down on everyone and being rude until they 'prove' themselves? Ridiculous.

OP do you watch Eastenders? I haven't in a while but last time I did I remember a character Sharon Mitchell and her kid Dennis. He was a brat and she justified everything he did, thought the world was against him. You remind me of her. Good luck with the teen years.

If you read the thread I've given his version of events. I'm done.

So the trolley bay was close enough for you to tell him to put the trolley around the right way but far away enough that you got in your car and picked him up, eh?

I've RTFT and I can see where your son gets his attitude from.

Your son was a cheeky shite.

The point is, Op, that something happened while you were out of earshot in the car, between trolley lady and your son. You don't know what, because your 'little monkey' is fly enough (as all kids are) not to get himself into deeper trouble by telling you what exactly happened, and the lady clearly recognised you as 'one of those' parents and decided to say no more on the matter. Your child had been rude to her and there was a fair chance that you were also going to be rude to her. Everything you have said indicates, to me, that you would defend your DC's right to be obnoxious to the hilt. You find him amusing, or he wouldn't have been messing about trying to put the trolley back the wrong way and laughing about it. He knew he would get a mild ticking off and no doubt a smile as well, because he is a monkey and therefore everything he does is amusing. Given the time frame you describe, whatever the woman had said to him, it was nothing very much, but for your son to mimic her words back to her says volumes about what he has learned about acceptable behaviour. While you may not think that adults should automatically deserve respect, I would suspect the rest of the world begs to differ. You would be the first to squawk if some other 'monkey' was rude to you.

There is a way to teach your child to speak up for themselves without being rude and which also allows them to be respectful to others. I agree with the majority of other posters - YABU!

Op, I mean this gently you need to reread what you've been posting. Examples, he was never out of earshot, I only heard the second part of the exchange. It's all s bit contradictory as you try to minimise your sons behaviour to get people to say the woman was out of line.

Bottom line, kids should be respectful of adults, as shOuld adults of kids and adults of adults, it it should indeed be automatic and the going in default position. Until one does something out of line.

I suspect you know he was messing around and then probably cheeked her. She had a word with him about it. Adults seldom randomly give out to children standing behaving and being polite.. Which is what your trying to suggest and why no one believes it. If she said he was being cheeky we all suspect he was. So Take it on the chin as it's fair enough.

Textbook AIBU, even down to the drip feed 'well his teacher thinks he's amazing/highly intelligent/a pleasure to teach' statement which often emerges on the thread of a spirited and 'cheeky' child.

In reality: your 'monkey' was rude.

Yabu

I'd be fed up if I was trying to return my trolley and some dc was messing about. Nothing wrong with women saying something to him.

Meh.

I've got a (just) 10 year old. He might do something like that with the trollies. He is a good kid. He wouldn't mean to inconvenience anyone or make things difficult...he just simply would not think of it. (My most common phrase to him seems to be "DS, use your HEAD ") When I explained why he shouldn't, he'd have felt bad. As well he should.

If the woman saw you yell to DS, it's silly of her to say something to him as she must have seen that he'd put it right. So she should have realized that you handled it.

However, she did say something and your DS was rude. I'd be upset if mine said that and he would know it!

trying to see if 2 trollies fit together back to back
Obviously this boy-wonder was just overwhelmed by the scientific urge to test some trolley physics, not at all trying to make everyone else's day that much harder by messing with them.
And, a child who uses mimickery as his way of dealing with the public is highly intelligent, most kids just mutter apologies or something.

When people talk about the entitled generation of snowflakes, this is who they mean. We can't let our children be told off when they're naughty unless it's a prescribed list of people, WTF...the scary thing is this generation will be the ones caring for us in our old age 😩😉

Plus I could almost guarantee that if I asked those people why he'd been reprimanded (which surely is a reasonable request) they'd tell me and I'd be fully equipped to decide whether further action needed to be taken at home or whether I was satisfied that it'd been suitably dealt with at the time.

Do people actually talk like this? Aside from management-speak?

Also OP respect is NOT earned for people we converse with randomly in life...how much earning do you think needs to be done in a 5 second window? Respecting someone is the default position until they give you a reason to not respect them. An elderly lady does not need to earn the respect of a 9yo FFS

I don't think the child is a little shit by playing with the trolleys, he's a 9-year old boy who needs to be told when his behaviour is not actually funny, because he lacks the skills to see beyond the fact he was having fun. His behaviour was antisocial. He needs help developing a slightly less self-centred view of the world as he clearly doesn't understand that. I do not think the woman telling him his behaviour was not very nice did anything wrong to point that out to him. The only AIBU meriting the question is to ask why the woman did not explain what had happened if asked politely by a woman she knew to be the child's mother, and whether it was unreasonable for the mother to go on and on at her about it to try and force "the truth" out of her. A strange woman leaning out of a car and asking aggressively what was going on and then going on and on like a dog with a bone might be the way the other woman perceived it. Especially since it turns out the boy was extremely rude to her.

I've no idea if the woman was right to tell your son off. Nor have you - and asking anonymous people on the internet - who weren't there - is going to bring no further clarity.

This last fact - which is glaringly obvious - suggests that you have another question in mind, and I suggest it is this one: "Was it cool for me to have started an argument with a random woman, in a supermarket car-park, in front of my son, through the window of the car I was driving?"

The answer to this is, clearly, "No."

Some reasons why: It would have been an opportunity to show your children how to de-escalate rather than create confrontations; you could have dealt with the issue privately, between you and your son, more effectively without including the other person; public spats are embarrassing; you were in control of a car, with a baby inside, and your son was on the pavement, outside, so (pragmatically) the actual physical locale wasn't the best/safest for this sort of discussion.

There are lots of others.

I'm guessing you were a bit stressed. It happens. Go and have a cup of tea and forget about it.

If you're like this a lot of the time - eeek! Arguing with people you don't know, about things that are not very serious (she wasn't importuning him/being violent/being dangerous,) is not cool. It suggests you wander around, seeing everything as a potential affront/insult to your status, and a power situation. It must be exhausting.

Plus I could almost guarantee that if I asked those people why he'd been reprimanded (which surely is a reasonable request) they'd tell me and I'd be fully equipped to decide whether further action needed to be taken at home or whether I was satisfied that it'd been suitably dealt with at the time.

Tenner says your an NHS manager