Would you give MIL a second chance?

[Maynot]

I genuinely don't know how to feel about this as I'm shocked. For context, DH and I do not smack our DS(6). I am not here to debate that, only note that it is not how we are raising our son. This has never happened before and we are close with MIL, usually seeing her multiple times a week.

DS is autistic and when he gets overly excited he can be rough in play. When playing this morning he bit MIL. MIL then hit him hard on the back and shouted at him that he should not bite. This obviously frightened him. We tried to explain why to him we don't bite/do our usual discipline but he was inconsolable. He kept hiding behind me and asking to go home.

When I went to help DS get ready to leave, DH called her out on it. He said that he understood that it may have been an old habit/instant reaction, however we do not hit DS and to please never do that again. She said that we can parent how we want, but she will discipline as she sees fit.

DH told me this when we got home and we are both shocked and disgusted. We sat DS down and told him that is was wrong to bite his Grandma but it was also wrong for Grandma to hit him. And that if anybody ever hits him again to tell us right away.

DH has said that if it ever happens again that it will be the last time she sees us, however I now feel very uncomfortable. I would maybe agree if she'd apologised however it feels like a looming threat that she will "discipline as she sees fit". Am I overreacting? Would you give her a second chance?

The people saying @Maynot shouldnt have allowed him to get worked up clearly don’t have experience with adults who wind kids up!

meh. There is a solution to this, too, which is to firmly tell the adult to stop, and then remove the child.
I'm sure it was a shock for everyone at the moment. But tbh it would be better to use this to learn a few things, have a word with MIL about what to do if something like this happens again, and then make sure the DC is watched closely if he's with her.

I would overlook it as a one off reflex reaction to being bitten, which is really shocking and hurts! provided she agreed she was wrong and it wouldn't happen again. Her remarks about disciplining as she sees fit are not appropriate. It isn't her place to decide on methods of discipline. If there was no agreement not to smack again then I'd have to say there would be no more contact without you or DH present.

@Maynot I've read all your posts, but I'm still a bit confused. Did she lash out when she hurt, or was it a definite punishment hit to his back?

I could understand her lashing out immediately (not condone, but understand)!, but if it was even just 30 seconds later as a deliberate punishment, I couldn't.

I think her saying 'I'll discipline him how I see fit' (or whatever her exact words were) was just her being defensive of her parenting (if her own kids) when DH confronted her. Especially when it was so soon after.

Do you ever discuss what techniques you're trying for various behaviour?

It'll be interesting how it goes this afternoon.

Perhaps there should be less deflection on "but what if she does it again" and more getting a grip of the fact that she wouldn't have to defend herself, if both parents didn't just sit there until a situation had escalated to the point their child is attacking/biting people.

Are you going to take any accountability here OP? Or is the problem always going to be the audacity of the people your child bites to react.

My child is SEN too. You are doing him a massive disservice by acting like the right thing, should be allowances and tolerance for his violence. There should not be. And you need to take the responsibility as his parents to stop that happening. If your only answer is to vilify the people he bites and declare them too awful to be around, then that's on you. The problem is MIL, to you.

Your projecting a lot onto OP there.

It would be interesting if there was a parallel thread asking if you should be given a second chance too eh? It works both ways I'm afraid.
Firstly it has to be acknowledged how mortified you as parents must have felt when your clearly loved son acted so badly. It's extremely difficult to accept it, and this behaviour doesn't make you bad parents. However, as several wise PPs with SEND children have said, you cannot find your child's aggressive behaviour remotely acceptable. My child has autism and quickly learned from his similar aged cousins that if he would bite he would be hit back hard. No trauma, just clear boundaries. They're all the best of friends and he's a happy, energetic and caring child rather than mean and a potential danger to others. Your MIL was simply reacting to an outrageous act that had to have a clear warning. I would try and move forward from this, apologise for your child's behaviour and ask for her advice on how to make your child less aggressive. She probably feels really bad about her response and would be very grateful for your understanding.

The number of people excusing a grown adult assaulting a small child with needs is unreal.

There is no excuse for assaulting a child.

If she disagrees with the Op and her sons parenting or handling of it then she takes them to task for that. Or declines to spend time with them going forward.

Physically assaulting a small child is not an acceptable option. No-one would be defending it if it was a random child that had bitten her and she’d belted him - it’s no more excusable just because it’s her grandchild.

@B0g It absolutely is!

It’s madness the number of people on here who 1) think that it’s ‘violence’ or ‘assault’ when a six year old with limited understanding bites them BUT 2) think hitting children is perfectly fine.

No wonder the world is in such a fucking mess.

to everybody who thinks it’s alright for the mother-in-law to hit the child, there’s a reason it’s against the law.
op wasn’t asking for parenting advice, she was asking whether she should give her MIL a second chance even though MIL is not remotely apologetic for assaulting her child, and it is assault legally.
You can apply the same rhetoric to allsorts of instances where victims end up getting blamed. No, the little boy did not ask for it, the MIL is an adult (supposedly) and should be able to manage her shit, and know her place when challenged by her own son. She sounds like a nob.

To those saying that the OP should have stopped her son playing in such a manner when she could see he was getting too excited, please bear with me while I talk as if I am the OP for a minute:

My DH's Mum, has helped us so much over the last 6 years with our ND son. She has been absolutely brilliant up until now, so I hope DMumsnetters that you can understand the shock that both I and my DH had when DS's Grandma lashed out and hit him on his back, after he hurt her - he bit her.

Of course I know that biting someone is a horrible thing for him to do, and sadly it is something he has done for a long time now, it happens on occassions when he gets too worked up, too excited. My DH and I have been working on this behaviour of his, (with advice ftom the appropriate quarters of course) and it happens a lot less now than it used to.

Our particular problem here is that our DS's DGM has known about this problem with our DS's behaviour for almost as long as we have, she knows what triggers him, and she knows that we do not believe in corporal punishment. But on the other hand we do know that not everyone reacts in the same way when they are shocked, especially if that shock includes being hurt. So although we were very shocked that she had behaved in such a way, and I have to say we were also very disappointed by her reaction when he bit her, we could see that maybe she couldn't help lashing out in surprise and pain. So if after we, and our DS apologised - it took a quite while for our DS to calm down enough from being hit by his DGM to be able to apologise to her - she had apologised to our DS for hitting him, and explained to him herself, that hurting other people was not an acceptable way for anyone to behave (except in self-defense if you are being attacked - but I am not sure if my DS is mature enough yet to understand that distinction), then I would not be writing this here.

Unfortunately, when speaking to her on her own, she did not show even one small bit of remorse over her reaction to our DS. My DH and I were shocked all over again, when not only did she not feel terrible about hurting our DS, but despite knowing (and us having just reiterated it to her) that we never use corporal punishment on our child - or anyone else's for that matter - and that we believe very strongly that purposely hurting a child is the worst way to try to teach them to not hurt anyone else, she told us that we can discipline him in whatever way we choose, but when she is looking after him, she will discipline him in whatever way she chooses.

What I think that @Maynot has not addressed yet (probably because of all the unreasonable and non supportive reactions she had had from too many Mumsnetters on this thread, so she is not thinking straight), is that she, and her DH did not intervene earlier when their son was getting too hyper, because after 6 years, they thought that Grandma would have it all in hand, and would know when and how to calm her DGS down.

It could have been happening just a few feet away from them, but surely even mums of NT children, know that all good, involved, parents need some time out to relax. We see every day on Mumsnet's pages how single Mums, who have no supportive network around them, can really struggle, but for many - I hope for most of us - having no family support at all, is something that we have never personally had to deal with, therefore we feel so very sorry for the Mums (and occassional Dads) who suffer from that lack of essential support.

I know that when my children were young, and my own DM was visiting, I could breathe a sigh of relief, have a cuppa with her in the same room as our children (I say our, because I considered my mum to be their second, and in all honestly, better Mum, than I was - I obviously don't expect most people to feel like that!), and I could zone out, and maybe daydream - my school said I was an excellent daydreamer when I was there - while my Mum looked after the children barely even a few feet away from me! I think that that is what probably happened to the OP and her DH, they just, quite naturally, zoned out.

Can all the Mumsnetters who have commented in this thread, but not been supportive of the OP, honestly say that when they have been in a room with their young child or children, and another responsible adult has been in the same room, interacting with their DC, that they (Mumsnetters) always stay on full alert? Lastly may I say that if you only ever give over responsibility of your DC to paid adults, and only outside of a home setting, then maybe you need to learn to relax, even for a little bit, or you are in danger of wearing yourselves out, and that really would be bad for you, and your children.

Massive over reaction.

What’s over reacting to say that an adult that has once assaulted a child, and has openly said they’d do it again, shouldn’t be left alone with said child?

Or that if an adult repeatedly assaults a child they should be reported for it?

Oh ffs! Children are allowed to be naughty etc. And not a single person here would tolerate any form of abuse or violence or bullying towards a child, ever.
Biting is a completely different category. It's feral, Antisocial and leads to a very delinquent future. If it's not taken seriously, those poor children will never have any friends or a chance of a happy life.

But that's fine. It's not what happened though.

OP takes no accountability for dropping the ball. Or her DH. In fact, she believes MIL caused the situation. So able to witness and recall all that, but evidently incapable of addressing the situation.

They did however find the ability to reprimand someone who just had their child sink their teeth into them. She drip feeds that they also apologised to MIL. I'd question the accuracy of that being offered halfway through the thread when it's not going the way she thought it would.

The view should be: how can we, as responsible parents, ensure our child doesn't bite any more people (as this is not a one off)

The view is: how can we protect our poor son from the reactions of people he's biting.

It's going to be a long and difficult journey if OP maintains anyone should be more accepting of being attacked, because SEN. Like a PP said, if he bites his peers, he'll get a lot more than a tap from Grandma back. Not because they are "abusive" children. Because they are defending themselves from something incredibly painful.

It's going to be a long and difficult journey if OP maintains anyone should be more accepting of being attacked, because SEN.

thats not what the OP has said.

The Op has a two pronged job. Dealing with her son’s SEN and problems, like biting, that is bringing.

And protecting him from an adult who has reacted completely inappropriately to him.

Asking for advice on the latter doesn’t mean they’re not dealing with the former.

And the fact that other children may react by hitting or biting doesn’t mean the Op should accept her MIL, a grown adult, physically assaulting her child and staying that she’d do it again.

When I first read the OP I thought that GP had lashed out at being hurt from being bitten, absolutely not okay but it happens when shocked/hurt and that the subsequent reaction was from embarrassment and hurt. I still think this, based on follow up posts.

I think you're doing the right thing by your DH picking with her. If she still shows no remorse I would find it hard to forgive. My DC has meltdowns that can sometimes be violent and I manage these with gentle parenting as they have been through trauma - I would be mortified if they bit someone but would not forgive someone who hit them and had no remorse whatsoever.

Some really ignorant responses on here. The boy is 6, he’s autistic so most likely presents as a lot younger than his actual age. It’s more than likely he was seeking sensory input and was excited. He wasn’t biting to cause pain. It was most likely an outlet. Your MIL needs time to think. I personally wouldn’t allow her around my child alone ever again. Your son could very well respond in the same way and you need to know that the people who look after him are aware of this, his needs and that they need to respond with understanding.

I agree with this but I think if the GP is remorseful and has been a doting grandparent up until now, I think they should be supervising and showing her how to manage the behaviour appropriately - unless you are dealing with this day in day out it can be a shock to see a 6 year old biting and not know how to deal with it.

6 year olds can cause quite a lot of damage, believe me and sometimes people need help and being shown how to handle difficult behaviours.

@QueenoftheNimbleFlyingCat you speak a lot of sense - I’m inclined to agree with you on reflection.

His peers would be other six year olds… so yeah they might hit or bite him, because they are six! The grandmother is an adult and should be able to deal with it without violence.

I see two possible "excuses" from the other side to this, but I'll start by saying hitting a child is unacceptable. The first is that mil hit your dc out of shock, to make him get off? The other is that if you can reason with him enough to explain about grandma being wrong to hit, then he should be able to relate this to biting? You don't want him to be taking this to school.

@OhcantthInkofaname I think you asked above when will they learn not to bite, and if it's when someone gets injured. Sadly, for both the injured and the child, this is often not the catalyst for learning due to the lack of understanding of action=consequence.

For my DS for example, at 6 he was still really impulsive. Would do the most silly (and sometimes dangerous/even violent) things for no reason at all. He couldn't explain why. Now at 9 he is like a different child. He's learned that he takes a breath before he acts, and we've taught him fidget reactions to those impulses (like squeezing his fists together instead of hitting out). My neurotypical 5 year old doesn't need this kind of intervention, but it's taken my autistic DS years to learn socially acceptable and safe ways to behave.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well but in autistic children the typical pathway of action=consequence is often lacking and/or very different. So we can't have the same expectations at the same ages as typical children.

My son is autistic as well and I ran into a similar situation when we went to visit my in-laws. After a 6-hour drive and being in many new places, my son was over stimulated. We were staying at my in-laws house for a week long visit .

My son was calm and behaving himself playing on the floor. I do not recall exactly what set him off , but he started screaming loudly, crying and thrashing - full meltdown mode. At this point we had already worked on teaching him coping skills and ways to calm down at home so I knew how to handle it. Before I could walk over to attend to him , my MIL thought it was best to hit him on the face , yell at him ,then yell at me telling me that he needs a good spanking etc.
I told her that you cannot "smack the autism" out of a child . Imagine how it would be when every time you are overstimulated and cannot verbalize it someone comes up and hits you making you feel further confused or emotional. If anyone of his aides acted that way, I would have them fired and press charges. How would she feel knowing others could do the same and were abusing her grandchild.

I took my son outside, held him while he kicked and screamed, but I had him calmed down in a matter of minutes - I however was still livid. We talked about his meltdown and he if we had to stay because now he was scared of my MIL . Meanwhile I had no idea of the sheer hell I had caused inside. DH later told me that my FIL gave my MIL a whole speech about her behavior. He had never seen his father act that way. We all had a nice long chat later about Autism and both myself and DS got an apology.

I would some time and then speak together to your MIL . Be an advocate for your child and explain Autism to her , she may not fully understand or know all aspects of it and her way of discipline is wrong . Again ,how would she feel if a professional in charge of her grandchild hit them the same way she did say on a daily basis at school . How would she feel ? Probably outraged that someone who is trained to deal with individuals with special needs reacted that way . Where does the line get drawn

I dont think slapping a child around the face for screaming is at all the same as hitting their back to release their grip when they are biting you.

I hope I can word this right. And I'm not saying that hitting was right in the first place. But as far as 'chances' go, it's not so much the fact that she hit OP's DS, it's the fact that she clearly stated that not only would she do it again if she felt it was 'needed', and that she was entitled to do so over their objections.

If she'd said "There's nothing wrong with smacking" or words to that effect, I'd give her another chance after a serious discussion about the 'no hitting' rule. But for someone who has basically said "I will smack your child if I see fit", there would be no second chances, at least not right now. Maybe after some time has passed and she's had time to think, there could be a discussion about her seeing her DGS again, but only if she admitted she was wrong and agreed that she was NEVER to raise her hand again. But I still wouldn't be further away from either of them than an arm's reach.