Children apologising: who IBU in this situation?

[FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop]

Disclaimer: I’m neither family in this but my friend is.

A year 2 (age 7) girl gets shoved in the playground by a boy when they were playing cops and robbers. This really upsets her but she's not forthcoming with standing up for herself. When she gets home, because she knows the boy lives around the corner, she gets her (6ft tall and stocky - this is relevant) dad to take her to his house so she can knock on the door and ask him to apologise. The boy’s mum is a widow, an older mum (early 50’s) and it’s just the two of them living there. The dad/family of the girl know this.

When the girl and her dad arrive and say Thomas shoved her today and they’d like him to come to the door and apologise, Thomas’ mum says no because “it’s just what happens when children play sometimes they get shoved” and that the dad was out of order to come round as it’s intimidating for her living on her own to have an unexpected and ‘burly’ man knock on her door making demands.

The family of the girl say they think this is out of order and an apology should have been given, they’re trying to teach their daughter to stand up for herself especially when it comes to boys being rough and crossing physical boundaries.

Who is in the right?

Totally inappropriate behaviour from the dad under any circumstances, and, in the context of the boy’s dad having died of COVID, utterly appalling. The boy’s mum would be justified in reporting the incident to a community police officer, as has been suggested, and complaining to the school.

My DDs have complained about various isolated incidents in the past, and I’ve simply said that if they’re unhappy about something in the playground they should tell a teacher or TA about it. And then it’s just blown over never to be mentioned again.

The DD is being brought up to be a right little madam sadly; her parents aren’t doing her any favours.

Honestly, if anyone came round to complain about a shove in the playground at age 7 I would consider them unhinged.

The school should have been asked to deal with it. The father shouldn't have gone round. Very intimidating behaviour.

@Nogoodusername yes she did in fairness she saw how her DH doing that could be intimidating- I guess she thought because she doesn't find him intimidation neither would somebody else.

She still thinks they went the right way about it though. When I said it's better to go through the school with stuff like this she said the school haven't been good in the past with helping with their DD's friendship issues 🤷‍♀️

@Talkwhilstyouwalk

Out of interest are you the mums friend or the dads?

The mum of the girl

And my friend said they both assumed because it's a fairly cosy estate everyone knew where everybody else lives and didn't think about maybe she wouldn't have realised that

Who knows if she was shoved. Children often say ( and in fairness believe) they were shoved but adults watching may have a different interpretation, children running around often knock into each other. It’s not that I don’t believe the girl, I would always listen to everyone but a conversation between the children, facilitated by staff at the time would have been the appropriate way to deal with this and may have made the children understand the events.

@bongsuhan - personally I feel the issue with male intimidation has a lot to do with context. If we're talking about problems between the kids then, if one of my DS's friends dads approached me in the playground I wouldn't have thought anything of it. Because I know them, I trust them and I know the conversation would be one of 'got a minute? X says that your DS did such and such today. I know kids will be kids but...'. And we'd have a sensible conversation.

If it was the dad of a kid I didn't know it'd be the same as the mum approaching me. But I'd be a little more on my guard as a 6ft man to a 5ft 4inch woman is a potential threat IF he is bent on a fight or doesn't want a decent conversation. Depends how they broach the subject. Treated politely I'm all ears. Get too close or loom over me and I'm intimidated. The conversation changes at that point.

But turning up at my door? Man or woman you'd get short shift I'm afraid. Because if I wanted you to know my address and use it, I'd have given it to you.

Well done @MadMadMadamMim I wonder if more boys were told this we'd have fewer problems with VAWG

@Memedru

I remember living in Germany when I was a child, my younger brother had pushed a girl while playing, they was both 5 years old!

The young girls father new my Dad had been deployed to Iraq, so came round banging on the door, and started shouting at my mum, mum was quite scared and I remember being scared to I was only 8!

Dad phoned up 3 days later for his phone call, my mum told him what happend, she was crying down the phone, my dad was fumming, he managed to get the mans phone number, through work, well a couple days later the bloke came round with flowers and apologised to my mum, still didnt stop my dad popping round his house to have a quiet word with him on his R&R!

So he only stopped being intimidating when a man stepped in. Imagine my shock 🙄

The dad is way out of line.

As others have said, handle it through the school or get her number through the school register and phone her up - totally inappropriate to show up at her doorstep and demand an apology. I'd think any parent who showed up unannounced at my door for that reason was a maniac.

That's not teaching her to stand up for herself, that's teaching her to be passive and seek out the protection of the biggest toughest male who can physically intimidate on her behalf.

The appropriate course of action would be to phone the school and let them deal with it both in teaching the boy a less rough style of play and in teaching the DD how to be appropriately assertive.

I would be livid if some bloke turned up at my door in this situation! Kids get knocked about in the playground, that's just life, and when my son whines about being 'shoved' in the playground, I get him to explain the situation and 9 times out of 10, he was running around like a loon too and collided with another child.

The dad was a complete twit to take the word of a 7 year old at face value. I'm also slightly judging the 7 year old here too, i bet she knows daddy is big and that the boy would be scared. 7 year olds are not stupid!

@Italiandreams

Who knows if she was shoved. Children often say ( and in fairness believe) they were shoved but adults watching may have a different interpretation, children running around often knock into each other. It’s not that I don’t believe the girl, I would always listen to everyone but a conversation between the children, facilitated by staff at the time would have been the appropriate way to deal with this and may have made the children understand the events.

All of this.

Cam2020 a man shouldn’t go to a front door to demand an apology from a child full stop. They absolutely mustn’t do it if they are aware the child lives with a woman alone, and no dad is there.

My issue is, where does it say he demanded anything? OP states they said luke, an, apEveryone is assuming that - yet saying 'two sides to every story'.

@feedex
A man turning up with the intention of scaring a small boy is 100 times worse than trying to intimidate the mother. Should have made it clearer

@Italiandreams

Who knows if she was shoved. Children often say ( and in fairness believe) they were shoved but adults watching may have a different interpretation, children running around often knock into each other. It’s not that I don’t believe the girl, I would always listen to everyone but a conversation between the children, facilitated by staff at the time would have been the appropriate way to deal with this and may have made the children understand the events.

I agree with this. When I was 5 and my brother was 3, we were standing on the stairs side by side, and he fell. He swears to this day that I pushed him down the stairs. He's told my kids and his kids that I pushed him down the stairs. 😒 I didn't lay a hand on him. Our perceptions are not always accurate. Maybe I did push him...😁

To be fair, in all my posts saying the dad was very unreasonable, I’m working on the basis that the girl was shoved. It should still go through the school either way - shove, no shove, somewhere in between.

@MintyMabel

dad was out of order to come round as it’s intimidating for her living on her own to have an unexpected and ‘burly’ man knock on her door making demands.

If she said this to him, she clearly wasn’t intimidated.

The implication is if he were a small guy or a woman, he’d have been in the right to do what he did. He can’t help his height or build, his daughter shouldn’t be penalised because he is a big guy. OH is 6ft 3 and well built. He should be allowed to stand up for DD in that situation, just as I would be at 5ft.

The problem is, here’s a parent taking the “boys will be boys” stance. The father is quite right to push back on that.

I haven’t seen anyone taking a “boys will be boys” stance. I have seen people saying that you don’t know what happened. You know what the girl said happened. She said she was pushed. What did the boy say? Or would you assume that anything she said was the truth and he must be lying if he says different? Will you let his mum ask him for his side before hauling him out for a public apology? What about the possibility that he did knock into her, but he was going full pelt and she moved in front of him and he couldn’t stop? Children don’t always understand intent - they get hurt and can assume the other child meant it when that isn’t true. You can still apologise but that doesn’t make him violent, just unable to stop in time. Of course he could have deliberately pushed her but you don’t know until you’ve spoken to both of them. Assuming that he is violent just because he is a boy is as bad as brushing it off as “boys will be boys.”

I wouldn’t let a child of mine out to apologise in those circumstances, until I’d spoken to them first myself.

Someone made a comment that you just believe your daughter. Fine, but the other child is also just that, a child to be believed. Not be written off as part of male violence towards women without even asking him what happened.

I have two girls myself, I do not want male violence to women to continue, but this is really not what this is.

@MintyMabel - why are you defending the indefensible?

My DH is over 6’ and built like a rugby player. It’s never occurred to me to think of him as ‘intimidating’ or ‘scary’ because he’s kind, funny, gentle, and known for his diplomacy.

If he said to me he was going around to someone’s house - a single, recently-bereaved single mother’s house, no less - to demand an apology from the also recently-bereaved child, for our DD being shoved in an active playground game, I’d be horrified.

It would be so entirely out of character for him, that I’d assume he’d lost his mind (this sort of interference clearly very much isn’t out of character for your DH, which I’ll come back to).

Obviously I have zero chance of ever physically restraining him. But I would do everything in my power to explain why it’s the worst possible idea (and means for getting ‘justice’ for DD), and hopefully discourage him from doing it.

It would not be OK. Ever. Under any circumstance.

I’m trying to understand why you’re being so blinkered and vehement that you’re right on this issue.

It must be because your DH does this sort of thing all the time, and you’ve been conditioned to think it’s OK.

Let me be clear. It’s not OK. It’s not excusable. It’s not the way to either handle conflict, or give your child the critical skills to manage their own issues.

I also have two DC, a DD and a DS. There has been many a time in their younger past, when I’ve had to comfort a very aggrieved party who’s been ‘wounded’ through play, and even witnessed by me to be entirely an accident.

The wounded party feels nothing but aggrieved, though. It doesn’t matter to them that it was an accident. They’re hurt, and that’s all that matters. And they’re angry at the person who hurt them.

Young kids don’t always have the skills to step back and put things in perspective. They’re just hurt and that’s all that matters.

That’s where parenting comes in. ‘It was an accident’. ‘These things happen’. ‘X didn’t mean to hurt you. X can apologise to you - for accidentally hurting you. But you’re fine now, so let’s move on’.

Oh, and just in case it seems as if my gentle giant DH just rolls over and accepts everything that’s thrown his way. No, he doesn’t.

We had an incident where DS was on the receiving end of some unkindness from a friend. We knew the parents, so DH called the other Dad, explained the situation, and suggested getting the boys together to sort it out. Which they did.

If DH - or I - didn’t have the other parent’s contact details (or we weren’t good friends with them), we’d either get in touch with the school (if it was serious enough). Or give DS the skills to deal with it himself (preferable).

We wouldn’t go around to the house of someone we didn’t know, and knock on their door.

Not even in the most extreme situation is that or. Or defensible.

I agree with the boys mother! The school should be initiating any dealings over the incident as it happened there. Does he not see the irony of a man going round to a vulnerable woman making demands of her?

Dad is the idiot here. Total over reaction by the sounds of it. The girl should have said something at school. There's no way anyone should be going round to someone's house. I think the girl initiating the visit is also a sign that she is a proper manipulative madam and her parents are there to do her bidding.

@MintyMabel

Pray tell oh wise one, what is the "wrong way to feel intimidated"

Wrong way react. Not to feel.

Should women STFU when being intimidated lest they actually have the nerve to stand up for themselves?

Should girls in the playground accept they can be shoved because a boy is allegedly having a hard time? I mean, it was just a shove, right? If OH is having a hard day, he can shove me, yes?

”Fight or flight” instinct is a very well known thing when someone is scared.

Sure, in extreme situations. Not because a bloke asks your son to apologise.

I'd tell them to get lost too, you have no idea what he would do to your son. He's bullish enough to storm round demanding an apology for something that happened at school which the mum may or may not have any idea about.

There isn't a wrong way to react, there are only reactions. My reactions have changed since I've had DC and well I can't always control some of them as they are reactions not planned actions.

You have no idea how she felt, she said she felt intimidated and I have no cause to not believe her as I have felt the same from a bloke asking me directions on the tube, it wasn't what he was asking but how he backed me into a corner and wasn't letting me get away. He was probably only marginally taller than me so about 5ft 9 or so. It was intimidating, I'm sure he probably has a wife saying its ok as he isn't a huge, burly bloke and was only asking for directions; it wasn't ok as it left me intimidated.