DS aged 3.9 is stood on our gate …

[indurently]

He’s looking at cars, tractors and so on. We live on a country road. I’m pushing his sister on a swing.

And a couple just walked by and told me he shouldn’t be on the gate.

Racking my brains somewhat as to what we have done wrong!

Good point. Was he upside down OP? Is he three and nine months or three and ten point eight months? What is stood? I have never before encountered such a word. What does it mean? What is a gate? Are you rural? We are rural. Are you sure it was your gate? Have you checked the deeds? Before you know it there will be an elderly Korean lady stood on your spiky cow rural gate and all hell will break loose. Best go back in your house OP. Take your stood child of indeterminate age with you. Don't answer the door. I mean this kindly. It's for the best.

Your gate, your child, your business!

Sone people just can't help themselves and have to pass comment out loud on things which would be better staying in their heads.

@DickEmery

She's writing informally and used a long-established regional phrase in a way that was perfectly understandable. She's grand.

And as for 3.9 - again, I think it was pretty clear, but any decimal wouldn't have changed the meaning, so who cares.

My niece is 3y6m and the last time I saw her she was adroitly clambering over her Grandpa's old steel tubes and broken-down boat. I wouldn't be concerned at all about her standing partway up a gate.

People generally are too restrictive of what children should be allowed to do.

Was he eating some UPF while he was stood standing there?

Size matters, I guess.

(More stress on the hinge the further along you are, which isn't likely to be very far in non-rural settings.)

Pedant in action. Very good

Does it really matter? Ops kid is 3 coming 4. So not a just turned 3 toddler but practically a preschooler.

Be careful if you go to Lancashire or Yorkshire, there's a very strong chance you won't understand what anyone is saying.
It is common in these areas to say 'he was stood there' or 'she is stood by the fire'.
It's a regional dialect. It may not be grammatically correct, but lots of regional dialect isn't.
You are nitpicking over an irrelevant point in a post about something completely different.
Like most of MN at the moment.

In rural areas, rights of way usually pass through other people's land, so learning to respect other people's property - including their gates - is more of an issue than in the city. Climbing over other people's gates is a big no-no.

Think about the impact of damaging a normal city garden gate. The only one you use frequently is likely to be your own, and the impact of damaging it is fairly minimal.

Now think about the gates you might pass through while walking through a farmyard, and the impact of damaging them. They see a lot more traffic than the average garden gate, and are likely to be the farmer's only means of securing a field that contains livestock. They are also likely to be a lot more expensive to repair/replace than a normal garden gate.

The Beatles would never have cracked America if they'd written I Saw Her Stood There. And rightly so!

Is it regional? I've seen and heard people use sit/sitting and stood/standing incorrectly from all over the country. I'm not convinced.

Does it matter if someone uses the wrong word in a quick online post? Probably not. In this case OP asked if there was a SPAG error so I assumed she had at least a passing interest in a correction and understanding the error.

The purpose of language is to communicate with each other. The OP's post was perfectly clear, despite being informally phrased.

It is definitely rude to point out SPAG errors.

Not just that, but it makes the pedant look foolish when the writer was obviously using local dialect/slang. It certainly doesn't make them look clever - quite the opposite.

But ordering people to be "silent" is absolutely fine......

Never claimed I didn't understand it. I answered OP's question about whether she'd made an error. I didn't point it put off my own bat.

What on earth does any of that have to do with horses?!?!? 🤣🤦‍♀️

Putting weight on the gate causes the gate to drop. Making it difficult to open and close. Fine if it's your own gate but he's doing it on public property.

Maybe they were complaining, knowing that you would report it as “stood” (incorrect past tense) instead of “standing” (correct)?

but more likely it is as other posters have pointed out; even if ds is light, he will be exerting force and damaging the hinge on the gate if he doesn’t stand by the hinge.

On your own gate you can do what you want

If the OP is in some random person's garden using their swing then standing on the gate would be the least thing to comment on.

Standing/stood, sitting/sat is a common tense error. In some cases it’s regional in others it’s just a mistake. I’ve heard Davina McCall and Jack Whitehall use it and I don’t think we can say they’re from rural Yorkshire. 🤓

If they come back OP just say: my gate, my son, my choice.

Flippin eck, the pedants are out in force today!

There you go, OP.
Don’t try and “crack America” with your mumsnet post. You’ll only be disappointed