Did DD deserve to be told off??

[PillowFeather]

My sister came around earlier. DD (9) was being quite animated dancing around in the living room. I went to make a cup of coffee and just as I walked back into the room I heard my sister say “don’t come clarting around me!”. DD stopped dancing, gave a nervous laugh then retreated upstairs to her room. I shouted up that I’d made her a drink and got no reply so I went up to find her crying. I asked what was wrong and she shouted at me to go away.

I went back downstairs and asked my sister what had happened and she said “she was doing that stupid dance around me and I can’t be arsed with it, she needs to grow up”.

DD is quite immature for her age and it doesn’t help that my niece (sisters DD) is the same age but mature for her age. Niece is spending the holidays hanging out with friends whereas DD doesn’t have any friends 😞

I can’t get it out of my head, I think DD was embarrassed and I don’t think she deserved to be told off?! Or am I being soft?

I feel for your little daughter: she is clearly a bit lonely and missing out on friendships. Mine was rather the same at that age! Other PPs have suggested various things, but she may need some support socially, I would think.

Dancing happily around - perfectly understandable at that age. But doing it in the living room when an adult guest is present...not so much. I would differentiate between the joyful experience of self-expression etc in dancing, which is great in itself, and the rather attention-seeking habit of doing it in these specific circumstances. I may have been more polite than your sister, but when I was subjected to friends' children showing off in this way, I was not amused and just wished they'd clear off so I could talk to my friend.

Her other behaviours (playing the piano in a martial arts class) does also smack of attention-seeking, rather than anything to do with wanting to play the instrument. I really feel for your little girl - but I think she needs a bit of the right support (maybe school could advise) with social skills. However you might feel about unkind family members being harsh with her, I would take that as a wake-up call and give her help so that she doesn't annoy everyone she meets. i once taught a girl who sounds like this and she wasn't popular in the class because she always craved attention. I really wish her well and hope that she can begin to enjoy life a bit more soon.

just to add. I think it would be more helpful to her if you quietly and kindly gave her some tips on behaviour at family gatherings, but also let her know that you support her. And let your father/sister know that it is not their place to discipline her by public criticism, it is your place to guide her and you are doing so.

it’s difficult to know without knowing her but it does sound like she is attention seeking and annoying.

when my kids were young, if they were being annoying or interrupted adults then I would tell them not to.

One of my friends daughters also put on a really annoying voice for a few years and she constantly wanted us to play pretend games with her. Aged around 9 too. She has friends, including my own daughter, and is a nice girl but for a few years annoying and her mum just loved it and encouraged it.

I love watching my kids dance and do shows because I’m their mum. Also happy to play with them. But I wouldn’t have let them annoy and keep playing and interacting like that when we had friends. It’s not the time or the place.

You should be teaching her that otherwise she’s going to continue not having any friends.

Maybe let her join drama classes where she can get people’s attention and be on the stage and she can act and dance and sing?

The difference being that this kid was in her own home.

Takes a certain joyless wanker to tell a kid off for behaving like a kid.

I had to google "clarting" and I hope it doesn't mean what popped up 😵

If I take it to mean jumping around or whatever and that's all your sister said to her then I really think your DD is over reacting, it would be annoying have someone hopping around in your space. At 9 years old she should be able to take someone telling her to stop bouncing around in their space, come on OP

But the DD wasn’t dancing in the aunts space, she was dancing in her own living room in her space

Again. You are having extreme difficulty understanding, apparently, what people are saying here. The aunt felt that she was too close and asked her to back off. Since we weren't there, and since I personally feel there is a little of the unreliable narrator in the OP because obvs she feels protective of her daughter, we can't be sure that she was hugely nasty or just annoyed about having - for example - hands flapping near her face.

There is a difference between the living room (space) and the aunt's personal space. Everyone has different boundaries and ideas about where their personal space is - asking a child not to clart around them is them asserting their personal space. Or don't you agree that even when you are in someone else's living room that you have "personal space"

There are countless pp on this thread saying the same thing as me. It is fine for a child to be exuberant and dance. It is not fine for them to do that in a way that annoys or inconveniences others.
It is fine for children to speak with a baby voice - but they have to accept that at the age of 9, most people will find it utterly ridiculous and it is fine to say that. Regarding the grandfather - difficult to judge. If this is something people have been remarking on for a while, it is not beyond the bounds of possiblity that he got fed-up and asked/told her to stop it. The fact that other people were around may or may not be significant. I can't imagine that a grandfather in this scenario would say "come into the kitchen I'd like a word" and do it in private. Maybe it was more that there were a bunch of people around and he told her to stop. The intention may or may not have been to humiliate. I'll take a punt at not unless he is a generally abusive and belittling person. Going on what OP has said her DDs reaction is to being corrected or "pulled up" on things, or even asked not to do things, it is likely that whatever the grandfather or aunt did, tears would be the outcome.

Part of a parent's job is to teach socially acceptable behaviour and resilliance. This is important stuff because otherwise how do children grow into adults who go out into the world? How will they react when their boss tells them something they don't like if they don't start learning from their family?

I don't see the difference.

Home or not, it's not always appropriate to muck around, especially when there are guests present (family or not).

It's not being a "joyless wanker" to tell a kid to "pack it in" occasionally.

Pretty much this.

Sounds like OP completely encourages it too. If normal interactions are classed as "telling off" then she is passing this down to the kid.

There is a huge difference. A girl in her own home is entitled to treat it as their own home. In someone else's house obviously behaviour has to be tempered to a certain degree -it's not her stuff, she might go into a room she shouldn't etc. It was her aunt, it's not like it's any kind of formal visitor/workperson etc.

Fair enough if she was getting in the sister's face but if she was just messing around as kids do then as a guest I maintain that telling your niece off for just dancing around to the point of making her cry is a pretty dick move.

Nope, I still don't see it.

It doesn't matter that she's in her own home, she's still not entitled to be a pain in the bum and play up. I mean, when I was that age, my parents would often tell me to go to my room/outside if I wanted to mess around and be silly - why is this any different? Because it's the aunt not the parent doing the telling off?

The fact that the DD cried is also largely irrelevant IMO, especially as OP says her DD is sensitive and dislikes being told off anyway - even to the point she won't return to martial arts class because she was told not to touch a piano.

I mean, I hated being told off as a child and would cry over it - but that doesn't mean my parents (or relatives) were wrong to tell me off in the first place. How else are children meant to learn if they're just allowed to play around and do what they like with no consequences?

A crying child doesn't necessarily mean the adult involved was mean. It could mean that, equally it could mean the child is sulking, having a tantrum or isn't used to being told off/called out on poor behaviour and doesn't know how else to react.

Or, it could mean that the child has learnt that crying will get her attention. Who knows.

Me too. And I wouldn't have taken kindly to my child shouting at me either, when I was just asking what the matter was.

She needs to build resilience, and I think, @PillowFeather , that your urge to protect her from prevailing winds isn’t helping.

Babytalk is going to put people’s backs up. Not paying attention and faffing with the piano in a martial arts class is poor attention skills and impulse control. Fannying about dancing in a small room (as you described it) can be annoying. She’s 9, not 6.

Learning how to be herself whilst also getting along with others is going to take a while, but bursting into tears or refusing to return to and activity will only make her more isolated rather than less.

This child's crimes are dancing around a guest, speaking in a baby voice and the worst of all, not having any friends. She sounds so much like my dd at that age, except that my dd did have friends and didn't have a nasty extended family.

Whereas the adults in her extended family feel free to make nasty remarks to her and humiliate her in public. While the cousin feels oh so superior.

I don't get how people think the child is in the wrong.

How does your DD behave at school? Does she take kindly to being corrected? Does she pay attention in class, or does she daydream or do her own thing? How is she when she is in other homes? I would be interested to know if this is general behaviour or if it is attention seeking at home I get that she gave up activities as she was 'told off', but am interested re other normal circumstances.

This has been largely overlooked by the posters falling all over themselves to tell OP how her darling daughter is so wonderful and should be allowed to annoy everybody by acting out musicals and talk in a baby voice and disrupt martial arts classes.

really OP, what the fuck ? Teach your daughter how to recognise boundaries, and to respect those of others. It is really not ok for her to annoy and irritate your guests in the name of ‘feeling comfortable in your own home’. It’s not conditioning her to be quiet and compliant to say ‘you’re here for a karate lesson, stop playing the piano’.

Christ alive, I despair at the nonsense on this website sometimes.

Your DD having friends is the key difference which means your comparison is a bit moot

Children outside of the family don't want to be friends with her

She didn't make friends in multiple classes

The common denominator is the OPs DD

It's not a simple case of the family expecting too much and the niece being too grown up. If everyone else she has interacted with also finds issue the problem is with the DD

I do hope you can look into getting her some support via School Senco or speaking to Gp. Girls are often diagnosed later than boys.
It’s not the one incident it’s the full picture - dancing being perceived as inappropriate, no friends, baby voice, reaction to auntie’s comments, unable to participate in martial arts class, unable to cope at youth club etc.
I’d definitely get ball rolling now.

Your DD having friends is the key difference which means your comparison is a bit moot

Children outside of the family don't want to be friends with her

She didn't make friends in multiple classes

The common denominator is the OPs DD

It's not a simple case of the family expecting too much and the niece being too grown up. If everyone else she has interacted with also finds issue the problem is with the DD

Nope.
The common denominator is OP's family.
Just from this thread, we know it contains at least 3 members who regularly talk down to, berate & mock DD. I think she is the family scapegoat, & that attempts to label her as the problem are confusing cause & effect.
I also suspect that OP may have similarly been the scapegoat. She doesn't seem to be stepping in to correct the niece, aunt or grandad for their treatment of her child. I think it's a generational inheritance from OP's family.

This. There’s clearly a bigger issue here. I don’t think attacking the cousin is helpful either. She may very well like those type of games, but not want to play them with a cousin she finds it challenging to interact with. Considering how alienated the OP’s DD is from her peers, there’s a good chance this is the reason, not because she’s ‘mature’ (i.e can read a room and act accordingly).

Whether child or adult, if you’re consistently having issues with people around you there comes a point where you have to consider whether it’s actually your behavior that’s causing it, not theirs.

Not being able to cope with an activity or behave appropriately in a class her peers do is an indication something else might be going on.
If you’ve been a leader at a youth activity you know some children stand out as different - they don’t interact well with peers, tell inappropriate stories, twirling when everyone else is listening, always the one who loses something. It sounds like Op’s daughter might be that girl and would benefit from some input.

Oh so it's the family's fault no other child wants to be friends with her?

Bullshit

It is not about being critical of a child. But recognising that she lacks some social skills and needs additional support and help.
The primary school my kids went to ran a group for children identified as struggling with social skills. The school recognised that some children need extra support in these skills, just as other children needed extra support with reading or numeracy.
And like all things, it is far easier to address a lack of skills early on.

It does sound as if she can be annoying & immature, but it also sounds as if the family have cast her in that role & take delight in bullying her her for it.

There are ways of asking kids not to do something!

Well perhaps the niece could be taught to improve her manners and social skills by saying "I don't feel like playing right now" rather than telling a 9 year old they are childish for wanting to play. I'm sure they will be happy to take criticism about their social skills given they are more than happy to all give it out to the OP's dd

It’s not that she’s ‘in the wrong.’ It’s that she needs support - it’s no good to say ‘no she’s just wonderful and adorable, better than being glued to Tiktok and getting Botox at age 12!’

Realistically this is a child who can’t socialise with other kids or adults, isn’t capable of joining in age appropriate activities as she quits the second she is corrected and isn’t able to follow along with the other children, and sees being told not to do something as a reason to run away crying and shout at her mum. She is obviously struggling and she needs her mum to support her in learning appropriate social behaviours. People are busy jumping in to say ‘well at least she’s not acting 15’ but there’s a big gap between acting like a teen at age 9 and not being able to join in clubs because you can’t understand/follow the instructions and will quit the moment you’re told not to do something. There’s a big gap between a 9 year old sitting chatting about the latest Pulitzer winner with a black coffee and a 9 year old just dancing in the middle of the room while a guest sits there perplexed. The dancing is what I’d expect from a 2/3 year old who doesn’t know how to have a conversation.