To expect other parents not to verbally abuse a two year old?

[tulip27]

Yesterday at a rather full to the brim local farm park my freinds two year old boy clonked another two year old on the head with a plastic spade.While I don't condone this behaviour (' I am sure it was a case of I want to go on this climbing frame and your in the way'),the mother of the clonked child proceeded to call my freinds son a ' nasty horrible little boy, lets go away from him he is nasty'. My freinds son stood there terrified. I couldn't believe a grown woman could release so much venom at a small child. She then proceeded to tell my friend if her son clonks others she shouldn't let him out of the house!
What are your thoughts on this?

"the mother of the clonked child proceeded to call my freinds son a ' nasty horrible little boy, lets go away from him he is nasty'."

inappropriate reaction from that mother but she was probably upset to see her toddler clonked over the head, and it is unlikely to have done your friend's son any harm. Hitting, even at that age, is wrong and someone needed to intervene.

"The reason I am posting this is that my freind went home crying saying she was too scared to take her son out again in case it happened again."

Weird over reaction and much more likely to have harmed her son and set a bad example.

Generally Speaking when an adult wants something they are not going to clonk another adult over the head for it. Why? Because the adult has learned the social skills needed to handle the situation constructively. However, a two year old is at the vulnerable stage where they are just learning how to handle situations in socially acceptable ways. The learning will continue for numerous years.

The other mother did both children a disservice by her reaction because she stole away a "learning opportunity" for the tots and taught them a negative way to deal with this situation. As has been said several times in this thread...address a childs behavior and not the child.

In a preschool setting, ideally the child being hit would be encouraged to express how angry or hurt he was and that he did not like being hit. The child doing the hitting would have it explained to him, that hitting hurts and is unacceptable, and that he should use words if he wants to use the climbing frame.

All that being said...the other woman is human and we all have bad days. We all regret things we say.

i think your friend should have knocked her out.

"The child doing the hitting would have it explained to him, that hitting hurts.."

This is something I can never understand - I have never known a toddler with sufficient empathy to care that another toddler did not like being pinched/bitten/hit. Surely at that age they are only going to understand that they must not hit.

Upwind

Its a learning process, at two they may not have empathy but they do understand, "hurt" and "unacceptable."

Its important to teach children to express themselves verbally and not physically. My eighteen month old does feel empathy for me, when she dumps her cheerios every where. But I still tell her that I she has made a mess, and that it is unacceptable. Then I have her put the cheerios back into her bowl.

It is just a process, eventually, understanding it hurts and knowing what it feels like to be hurt, will teach the child empathy(but probably not until 3 or 4).