Upset at friends son who keeps hitting mine!

[AmberSnake]

I have a history with a very close friend who’s son (2 years) is currently going through a hitting phase, every meet up he hits / bites / pushes my son (3.5 years) my son doesn’t hit, so he just gets really upset when hers does this. So far we haven’t made a big deal out of it and we just tell my LO “its fine, he doesnt mean it, he’s too young” but today it got to me because enough is enough. When her little one hit mine I told him off (quiet polietly i must add) “no darling please don’t do that again okay?” His mum got quite upset that i told her son off and also said apparently i gave her son dirty looks (which i dont recall but i may have looked upset). I don’t know if i’m right or wrong, i mean even if lets say i gave him dirty looks isnt it about damn time? How many times am i supposed to just let her kid beat mine up? For me i know her son is too young and is porbably just doing it for attention, but on the other side of the spectrum my son goes to nursery and i dont want him to think its okay for other kids to hit him. AIBU? was it rude of me to (polietly) tell her son off and lets just say I gave him a dirty looks? His parents don’t do much other than say no baby we don’t do that. But he keeps doing it again anyway so 🤷🏼‍♀️

Give the kids a break from each other and say as much to her, I expect your child finds it too upsetting. You can meet mum in the evenings.

I did this and after 3 months the child had got out of the routine of hitting mine.

Don't let your child learn that he needs to be abused to maintain someone else's feelings. She's not a good friend if she doesn't stop her child from hitting yours.

The worst thing about all this is you and your partner thinking it’s ok to repeatedly put your child in a situation where he is getting hit and no adult is stepping in. You ain’t gonna change her parenting, you can’t really encourage your son to hit a younger child, the only solution I see is not to see them while the kid goes through this phase. If their parenting is that rubbish though, there will likely be more problem behaviours that are left unchecked that your son will bear the brunt of. I honestly wouldn’t bother. Just meet up without the kids.

My 3.5 years old DS would be very vocal if we kept meeting someone with a child who hits him. Why don’t you say “DS doesn’t want to meet up with you because he’s said it upsets him when he gets hit, happy to meet up but will need to make sure he isn’t being hurt”. I have an 18 month old who likes to give a good whack and when she does we intervene very quickly with a firm No. we also watch her like a hawke and if she looks like she’s gonna hit we jump in, say no and move her away…

"It makes DS upset and anxious to be hit, I'm afraid, so I won't be able to meet up with the kids just now as I can't put him in that situation. Happy to meet up without kids though for a coffee."

I was lucky with friends. We met through NCT and parented the dcs collectively. Not really telling off big time or anything. We would use phrases like “no thank you” and asked them to have “kind hands”. Perhaps you could try this. I’d probably block him or pull your ds towards you as saying this.

You need to tell her that her son hitting your son is unacceptable, yes there's an age difference but she needs to parent her son

Your son doesn’t need to learn self defence and I wouldn’t teach him to hit back. This isn’t an older child picking on him, this is a 2 year old that isn’t been taught correct behaviour and doesn’t have impulse control.

I also wouldn’t damage a friendship over this but if she continues to get upset if you chide her son (and you should continue if her boy hits your son and she fails to say anything) then just say to her that you feel you need to step in on behalf of your son as you don’t want him whacking her kid back or getting upset.

She’s probably very aware of the hitting phase and is defensive but just hasn’t learn that being stern with your kids if they demonstrate poor behaviour isn’t going to scar them for life if you are a good loving parent the rest of the time.

Advocate for your child. If the mum is not going to stop her child, then step up. If she says anything, explain that you’re advocating for your child and don’t want him to be hit.

@AmberSnake She’s quite a close friend of mine and she’s really nice overall. I dont want to throw the entire friendship away
The problem is that i don’t want this to have a big strain on our friendship

As a parent you have one job: to look after your child / look out for them / protect them / make sure they feel loved and safe

Do you really think her feelings are more important than your child's feelings??

It's your choice

Just to add a different perspective, I am the mum who’s kid always ended up resorting to physical behaviour- he’s now 4 and diagnosed as autistic so makes more sense now but for me it was absolutely mortifying any time he did anything to another child. It got to the point where I felt anxious about going on play dates and I’ve left them in tears a few times because I just felt sick that once again it was my kid that couldn’t control himself. He would often also cry on the way home and then hurt himself because he felt so ashamed. So it’s not always a matter of shit parenting and naughty kids which seems to often be the general vibe on mumsnet. That said, I watched him like a hawk constantly (which is why play dates are never relaxing for me) and rarely let it get to the point of proper hurting another child. And then I’ve left things early because his behaviour was clearly showing me he wasn’t coping and it was time to go for everyone’s sakes. I wouldn’t have been offended if someone said something to him at all, although I did find that other people were never very quick to judge their own kids behaviour- as I found my kid was often not the one to start an argument with another kid, but he was often the one to finish it! So obviously that’s not acceptable but also it would have been nice for the other parent to accept that their kid was also not being great when they snatched toys or shouted at my son etc. so it did feel a bit like we were always the ones being judged. Not saying that’s what’s happening here, just to add another perspective.

I think as well, when you have a 2 yr old, a 3.5 yr old seems an awful lot bigger and she probably has unreasonable expectations of your son's capacity to equably tolerate being hit by a smaller and younger child.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. Is that really what you want to teach your son??

You should be teaching him to move away and that you, as his mum have his back and put him first. That unfortunately means keeping him away from the other child if their parents don't stop the hitting, son unfortunately, yes, this is your sacrifice to make and that means accepting less meet ups if needs be to meet without your DS and putting him in that position.

Really think about it: if your husband liked meeting his mate and his mares wife smacked you each time, what do you think would make you happy, stopping making you go or telling you that he can't stop her so you need to sort it yourself?

It's beyond unfair of you to make this your sons problem to solve. Does hitting back apply to girls? What age are you going to unpick that lesson? So damaging to teach him wrong to avoid an awkward and direct conversation woth your friend. You'll be teaching him that he's on his now to solve problems and mum won't help.

Yes, this. That's the age gap between me and my next sibling and my mum's approach was to allow my sister to whack the bejesus out of me because I was "much bigger" and apparently therefore it didn't hurt or affect me(!).

She didn't let my sibling do it to the younger kids, though, because they were "too little".

Some parents absolutely think it's OK for older kids to be hit by younger ones, I'm afraid.

We have a friend who has a 'physical' son. They're a bit older so possibly easier.

But I was impressed by the one mother in our group who turned up to a meet alone saying her son declined coming because he didn't have fun and hated getting clobbered.

To be fair, the mother of the aggressor takes no prisoners when her son is out of line, but it still doesn't stop him.

This would annoy me because 2 years old is not too early to have your child understand 'No thank you', and 'Kind hands please'. Two phrases which my hitty 2 year old can understand perfectly well and which you will hear at nursery settings up and down the country where staff have to control aggressive toddlers.

I was in just your situation OP, but I wasn't as close to the mum as you are so it was easier for me to just put the friendship on pause until her son had moved out of this phase.

He doesn't hit now, but interestingly he is not very nice and says nasty things. Perhaps it's just his nature but I do wonder if lack of boundaries might have produced that.

“I love you and your son, I really value our friendship, but I can’t stand by when your son is hitting mine. It hurts and upsets him and it’s not ok. If you won’t deal with it, I have no choice but to step in. If that’s not acceptable to you then maybe we meet without the kids until yours is past this phase. Please just think how you would want me to deal with it if the situation were reversed- what would you expect from me?”

No her son is not too young to understand and you did perfectly right to intervene. If not what sort of message are you giving to your son? Approach your friend being upset with some practical suggestions and ask her how she would deal with it the other way round. No need to put your friendship iin jeopardy.

I’m going to get hate for this but I had this situation years ago with a friend (who is no longer in my life as I saw the light) who had a son the same age as mine (he was 3 weeks younger) and he was just awful. She just loved to tell everyone they were ‘growing up together’ and when they were 3ish every toy my son would pick up he would snatch off him. She would just laugh and tell them to share. There were lots and lots of incidents of bad behaviour but my son was once playing with a radio controlled car and he just walked over and picked the car up off the floor to stop him. He never got told ‘No’ and she used to make out they were jointly at fault all the time. The 4th time he picked the car up off the floor my son walked over and hit him with the controller - she wasn’t in the room, her son started crying and when she came in I just said I didn’t see what happened. He looked at me and I looked at him and he knew full well that I saw what happened and wasn’t going to stick up for him, The final straw was when he whacked my 1 year old son with a wooden sword when they were about 5 (I had another baby, she didn’t). When she made an excuse that he ‘didn’t mean it and that’s just how he says hello’ I just left. Some people just won’t accept that their childrens behaviour is wrong. Also, my boys are not angels and I didn’t make a habit of letting my children hit other kids but this felt like some sort of situation where my son had finally stood up for himself against this spoilt bully of a child, That’s why I think he moved on to DS little brother as DS had shown he wouldn’t be bullied any more. Vote with your feet and don’t tolerate friends who don’t discipline their kids.

Stop meeting up with her or just see her on her own.
Or tell your child hit him right back .

Your posts seem to indicate that you are more concerned about potentially losing your friendship than whether your child is unhappy at being hit

I would have had a word first time and if she got shitty about it then so be it. No friendship is worth that much

Not at all. Maybe next time she allows her son to act violently towards yours it can be settled by you slugging her. Apparently hitting is ok 👌

If her child is old enough to understand you when you speak to him then he’s old enough to understand her. She should be speaking to him and sorting it out.

Sorry but as far as i'm concerned if my child was getting hit and bit by your child you can be damn sure i would be saying something to your child about it and i have done on previous occasions. Sometimes a stranger saying it can have more of an impact than their parent saying anything.

I'm surprised so many people are recommending teaching your child to hit back. 3 year olds shouldn't be taught to hit unless you plan on spending the next few years being called into nursery/ school to talk about why your kid resorts to violence every time they get slighted or are angry with someone. 3 year olds just don't have the tools to deal with physical violence yet, it's on you to keep him away from that where possible.

A few people have recommended good scripts for a conversation. I would try once more to have an open conversation about it and come up with a strategy together. If it doesn't work and your son gets hit again it might be time for a little distance. Meeting up without the kids for a year or less while your friends kid gets over that phase shouldn't kill a good friendship.

My daughter is 2 and when we go see my friend and her 1 year old mine for some reason cannot seem to not hit, pull or kick her. I always stop her tell know show her how we can touch the baby. I have to actively sit with them so I am close enough to intervene quickly. (Toddlers are fast!) my friend has other children so she understands how it is and isn’t bothered but sometimes I feel so awful. And I’m trying to stop it!