Bad Parenting?

[otterbaby]

Was making the bed this morning with the window open to air out the bedroom when I heard shouting outside. I went to the window (nosy neighbour!) and saw a woman with her maybe 5-6 year old daughter. The woman was going "are you really fucking doing this again?!" She then pulled down the girl's underwear and let her wee on the pavement directly outside of our house. I was in shock from her swearing at her daughter but then after they walked off, I felt really annoyed about her weeing there as well! There are 10-15 shops the next street over from our house. I don't have children yet but AIBU to think this is just bad parenting or is this a normal thing to do (obviously not the swearing, but the weeing)?

It's not a normal thing to post about weeing children on the internet, no.

That’s awful, that poor little girl

No it's not normal at all!
I always wonder how the overtly abusive-in-public people parent in private. Must be so much worse!

But with toileting - we've weed in bushes once or twice, pleaded with shops to let us borrow their loo, carried potty's around etc. Never just yanked knickers down in the middle of the street for all the witness

@DettolsYourFriend I can definitely understand that - if you're somewhere with no other options around, needs must! But we're on a busy street and I felt really bad for the little girl. Along with the shouting which was just awful.

Sounds like a fairly normal situation (little girl needs wee shortly after leaving house) that was very badly handled, both in terms of the swearing and the chosen location of the wee. It is not acceptable to wee in the open street like that, she should have either asked in a shop or gone behind a bush.

I overheard a woman telling her toddler to piss off the other day because he asked for something, i doubt that poor child will have a wonderful childhood. I will never understand parents that swear at their children

Plenty of shite parents around unfortunately.

No that's not normal! I've got no issues letting mine pee behind a bush on the moors if we're out walking and once whilst driving I let son who was suddenly desperate pee on a grass verge at the side of the road, but would never dream of letting them do it anywhere as public as the street outside people's houses where anybody could see them. Poor little girl.

My DCs have both just been caught by needing more than a bush stop while at a playground in a village with no toilet facilities. The nearest pub is a good 500+m away up a 9% hill in the next village. Blooming annoying, but off we trotted to do what must be done.

Making a child toilet with no privacy is grim. There normally is somewhere a bit more subtle and appropriate to maintain a bit of dignity when proper services aren't avaliable.

Swearing directly at and verbally abusing a child, especially just for being a small child is pretty high on the list of ways of destroying another human's self esteem and social skills

I helped my 3 year old wee on some grass near a bus stop the other week as soon as we’d got of off the bus. There was horrible traffic and the journey took 3x as long as normal. He would have weed himself otherwise, he’d been bursting since we were on the bus.

What if the girl has toilet issues? It's pretty clear that this was a regular occurrence from the mother's reaction. The mum might have known she had only seconds before the child would wee so thought the easiest option was her dd weeing on the pavement instead of wetting herself.

The mum is probably at the end of her tether. Medical issues around toileting can be difficult to deal with and make leaving the house very stressful for all.