To think this is how violent men get their start in life?

[Anycrispsleft]

I wanted to know if you think I'm being U in this scenario, with a boy from my daughters' class. I'll try and tell the whole story from start to finish, but for a bit of background - my 9yo twin (shut up Mumsnet, they really are twins ) are in school with a boy, G, and a girl, M. All 4 of them have known each other since nursery, and at nursery they got on OK as most kids do, but since then G's behaviour has gone downhill a bit and he's hit one of my kids a couple of times and is often in trouble at school. Ms mum has been an unofficial childminder for G most of his life: he lives with his dad, a lone parent until about 18 months ago when he got married, so he and M are often together.

The first stushie was about 6 months ago. M Skyped one of my kids one Sunday afternoon and invited them to go and play in her garden.

1. my kids turned up - G was there as well, being looked after by M's mum/on a playdate
2. M went and played with my kids in preference to G
3. G tried to interrupt their game by taking their stuff
4. The girls retaliated by hiding their stuff from him (and probably laughing at him and stuff, I'm not saying they were particularly kind)
5. He went home in a strop and said the three of them hadn't been nice to him
6. My two came home, also in a strop, said G had been disrupting their game and acting like an idiot - I asked them whether they'd called him any names or hit him or anything - no (and I am inclined to believe them, bc at the very least if one of them had been a fecker they would have come back up the road fighting about who caused the fight)
7. The dad phones me and tells me his boy is upset and I need to talk to my kids and tell them to apologise. I tell him they've already talked to me about it and I don't see any reason for them to apologise any more than he should, that it all sounds like like normal kid falling-out and if the kids don't want to play with each other I'm not going to force them.
8. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he also phones M's mum. M's mum takes her up to his house and makes M apologise.
9. The day after M skypes my daughter to say she's not allowed to play with her any more. I tell M she's always welcome at our house.

M's mother never got in touch with me, so I was left in this weird limbo. I wasn't there, G's dad wasn't there, M's mum never spoke to me about the incident, so nobody was actually accusing my kids of anything to me but they couldn't see their friend any more and they were supposed to apologise for something (but G's dad couldn't exactly say what)? I concluded that they're all fucking mental G's dad is maybe paying M to childmind G, and so she feels obliged to make sure he has a nice time and stays to the end of the playdate, and maybe didn't want my kids there at all, but didn't feel like she could say that? Anyway not my monkeys etc... I told the kids not to go down there, we had M over for a few playdates organised by the kids themselves, and all was reasonably quiet.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, my kids were coming out of afterschool and the boy was still playing in the playground with one of his friends. He was like "na na na, you have to go to extra school" and my older daughter was like "bite me loser, the after school lady gave us sweeties" and she waved the sweeties at him and he and his friend chased her down the road, tried to get the sweets off her, then tried to strangle her, before my other daughter and their wee friend from afterschool pulled him off.
Given my opinion of the dad isn't great I said to them to just tell the school in the first instance. The teacher dealt with it pretty robustly, giving them the two of them pretty thoroughly into trouble and making them write an apology to my daughter. I thought that was an end to it - my daughter wasn't that bothered about it - and then on Thursday night I get 3 missed calls and 2 messages on my phone from the dad wanting to speak to me. I just deleted them, then he ran into my husband and chewed his ear off for about half an hour about how after this recent episode the boy had been complaining that he had to apologise and my daughter's had not had to apologise for that time 6 months ago, and the dad said he felt that it had been playing on the boy's mind, and that maybe it had even been responsible for the worsening of his behaviour over the past 6 months. He left his phone number, and asked us to think about it over the weekend. That my daughter not playing with him 6 months ago was the trigger for the boy's mental unrest, and not say the fact that his father had just got married and his new sister had been born, about a month before? That his hurt feelings somehow justified him trying to strangle my daughter, that excluding someone from your game is the same as strangling them? That boys are entitled to girls' care and attention, and if they don't get it, they're entitled to respond with violence? I mean TBH there's no point me putting this in AIBU because there is no way on this earth I would make my daughter apologise to that wee guy. I'm amazed though. That anybody could think that's a normal way to raise your kids.

What I find enlightening on this thread is how manipulative some kids can be by provoking a reaction and then play victim.

Amen. Some children love to find the "reactive" kid. With the guaranteed response.

I've got twins as well, so I know how much they grass on each other but I'll tell you what else they do, back each other up when they know they've both done wrong and don't want to get caught.

ALL children involved have behaved badly
This exactly. No one is defending the behaviour of the boy. Certainly not me but it is sad that so many can't see that the girls behaviour was poor too.

@vivainsomnia

An actual victim of a boy strangling her referred to as ‘playing victim’ An event that happened AFTERWARDS!

Of course this not acceptable. Not at all. But it doesn't erase the bad behaviour of the girls 6 months earlier!

He’d already hit them twice by that point, stole their toys and teased them.

I am genuinely disturbed at the misogyny on display here on MN, a website in the western hemisphere where one would hope, women's and girl's rights to not be abused, would be taken seriously.

Some of the responses here could come right out of South Asia, where I grew up, and my grandmother telling me that my mother should have begged for forgiveness from my father for having done something bad enough to make him beat her, was considered "normal".

The boys father needs to be addressing his physical retaliations. OP needs to be addressing that her children are unkind. Again, all have behaved badly.

But that makes it sound like they've all behaved equally badly. I might be able to see that if he'd pushed OP's daughter or similar. But he strangled her. That's such a huge order of magnitude more serious and I'm horrified that anyone would think otherwise.

I am absolutely certain that no one ever deserves to be strangled, which is actually very dangerous.

I tell him they've already talked to me about it and I don't see any reason for them to apologise any more than he should, that it all sounds like like normal kid falling-out and if the kids don't want to play with each other I'm not going to force them
This is very telling too. So it's ok to go to a playdate, where another child is already playing, and then exclude them because they don't want to play with them?

If they didn't want to play with him, they should have turned around as soon as they saw him and asked to go home. Taking the attention of the host and excluding the other child IS dreadful bullying, it really is.

It's also telling that the host said she didn't want her girl to play with them any longer. She might indeed have forced her daughter to apologise for business reason but why exclude the friendship between the girls? At most she could have said they couldn't come any longer when he was there, but to say they can't play together at all is another scale.

As someone who has been physically and emotionally hurt as a child - it’s the words that I needed treatment for not the hitting.

As posted upthread, it's the fractures that I needed immediate treatment for.

And, in my case, the realisation that adults and parents would do anything that they could to avoid dealing with this issue and to exonerate the boys, even when they admitted it with the attempted justification that they might have hit me with a brick but they weren't the ones who'd broken my ribs by kicking me when they had me on the ground. They'd merely smashed my head with the 'half a housie'.

I'd love to know what I said that was somehow more offensive than the title of the post and warranted to be removed!

This place is unbelievable!

@vivainsomnia

I'd love to know what I said that was somehow more offensive than the title of the post and warranted to be removed!

This place is unbelievable!

Whereas I'm finding the apologists very interesting as an insight into our criminal and justice system and why my assailants' parents felt that they could deny their participation even when it was admitted to them.

I agree @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus. The excuses being given for a boy strangling a girl and the implications that the girl is somehow responsible for his attacks are enlightening and show the low value some people put on girls' safety and their right to not interact with or bow down before anyone who acts abusively.

Hello. We just wanted to remind everyone that we do not advocate victim blaming on Mumsnet. As we've had to delete several posts already for this reason, we'd appreciate it if you could consider your responses, please. Thank you.

Amazing that OP's daughter not wanting to play with the boy who hits her and takes her possessions "leads to" the boy trying to strangle her

But the boy being violent didn't "lead to" the girls not wanting to play with him.

With all due respect to the posters here who appear to not understand this, a boy being excluded by other children for violent behaviour is experiencing the consequences of his own actions.

A girl being strangled is not experiencing the consequences of her actions, she's experiencing male rage and entitlement from a boy who hasn't been brought up to take responsibility for his own behaviour.

This boy ran after the girl, after being insulted, probably strangled her as he tried to get the sweets (indeed, O P said her girl was t bothered), but that's it, he is bound to grow up to become a violent man! Amazing!

Good thing my friend's boy got less judgment growing up. He had a lot of issues, indeed, lost his twin sister to cancer and parents then divorced. He had issues with attention and anger and indeed, took it out at times on his school mates, a few who took pleasure in provoking him knowing he's get the blame.

Secondary school changed him and his behaviour took a complete change. My DD find out a couple of months ago that he'd graduated and had started teacher's training.

So sad to dismiss kids who've gone through difficult times and assume their future is doomed to be led by violence!

Victim blaming! When I said all the kids were in the wrong with their behaviour at least twice! Ok then

Well, if a violent child is surrounded by adults who make excuses for their violent behaviour and they grow up being taught that girls aren't allowed to say no to them, exactly how are they supposed to get their violent behaviours under control and NOT become violent adults?

The child's not hopeless, but adults who would enable him and make excuses for him are.

@Rheia1983

I agree *@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus*. The excuses being given for a boy strangling a girl and the implications that the girl is somehow responsible for his attacks are enlightening and show the low value some people put on girls' safety and their right to not interact with or bow down before anyone who acts abusively.

I completely agree - it's shocking. But this is why people always condemn domestic violence in theory but get much more 'ah, there's two sides to the story' in real life. People expect/demand perfect victims and as soon as they're not all sympathy evaporates.

Secondary school changed him and his behaviour took a complete change. My DD find out a couple of months ago that he'd graduated and had started teacher's training.

So sad to dismiss kids who've gone through difficult times and assume their future is doomed to be led by violence!

Every one of my assailants ended up in a correctional facility at a young age and prison as an adult - including for attempted manslaughter.

I would very much have liked my assailants to have had the benefit of appropriate CAMHS and SS interventions but it very much seems as if their parents would have rejected the need for them. Being able to be free from consequences for the GBH they caused me wasn't the sole driver for their later choices but I find it difficult to see how it was helpful to them.

@vivainsomnia

How about not putting themselves in that position in the first place? Either treat him decently despite his behaviour, or tell their mum they didn't want to stay.

Why are you putting the onus on 9yo girls to risk assess whether a boy will hit or strangle them?

This is why your posts are getting deleted, @vivainsomnia, because you're indulging in victim blaming and misogyny.