Friend shouted at my 2 year old

[hmm01]

So I popped in to see my friend of 15 years today (we’re 30s now) with my 2 year old.

We were chatting and my 2yo was throwing a ball for her dog, then came to sit on my lap and was laughing and over excited about the dog and pulled my hair. This happens very rarely, slapping, biting or pulling hair when over excited and silly.

Before I had a chance to deal with it, my friend shouted so loud that it made me jump and my child burst into tears. She shouted “DO NOT TOUCH YOUR MUM LIKE THAT” she then went on a rant about how I need to do it back or they’ll keep doing it. We are not a shouty house, we don’t scream and shout at our child ever. We have a calm house so said child isn’t used to this. We explain why they are not to do it, show them how to touch gently and then we say “what do you say” and then we get a sorry and a cuddle and then move on from it. I think I was in shock that she shouted so loud at my child.

She has 3 older kids in their teens and to put it as bluntly but nicely as I can, they’ve all suffered as a result of her verbal abuse and I’ve seen her smack them (not hard but I had no children and I didn’t realise the impact in my early 20s) when they were younger and now she doesn’t have a nice relationship with any of them. They spend all their time in their bedrooms and she recently told me she booked a holiday with them and none of them want to go, they want to go and see their Dad for a couple of weeks instead while she goes alone.

I spent a lot of years helping her with them when their Dad left, I was there every morning to help get them ready for school, breakfast etc I did pick ups when I could, had them stay at mine for weeks during holidays so she could get a break and now I feel really angry that she spoke to my child like that. She isn’t their parent. I said “I’m going to shoot” straight after that and left and now I wish I’d of laid into her a little bit and told her to keep her nose out, it’s my child and I’ll speak to them how I see fit and I’m certainly not pulling their hair, biting or smacking them EVER.

How do I navigate this? I am also heavily pregnant and willing to be told that I’m upset over nothing here, my emotions are all over the place recently!

Shouting usually implies aggression, frustration, anger. I think you just mean loud.

But that’s totally different! All of you being naturally loud isn’t the same as someone being shouted AT, especially a younger, weaker person. Shouting at someone, especially while standing over a child and shouting, which I’m sure we’ve all seen adults do, is intimidating and just nasty; you are going to get your own way because you are bigger, louder and scarier, not because the child is learning what is right and wrong.

And you can keep being slapped, bitten and having your hair pulled because you can’t parent a 2 year old properly.

There are a lot of authoritarian parents on mumsnet. They absolutely can not abide infringements on their right to dominate babies, toddlers, and other posters. They are impatient to solve every problem whether it is developmental (punish and terrorize child now!) or in the context of the thread (you are a crap parent, your child is a lost cause if you don’t instantly do as I say.)

This tracks interestingly with the posters who also think that all teenagers hate their lives snd their parents and withdraw from them and mope or sulk in their rooms. I had two and this simply didn’t happen nor did it happen to the other teens I knew. Maybe it was the strong bond their father and I forged with them when we did’nt waste time shouting at them as they did perfectly normal childhood learning tasks.

And therein lies your problem...

Ugh, this thread shows how far to the dogs this place has gone.

Why?

Hmm this thread has evolved 😂

I also have a 2 year old DD (and a 7 week old DS). I don’t shout at DD for undesirable behaviours because she isn’t at an age yet where she can differentiate between good attention and bad attention - shouting will make her more likely to repeat the behaviour as it rewards the behaviour with attention.

This is also why I don’t have mini therapy sessions with her about her behaviour - she isn’t cognitively capable of understanding it. A simple “no, we don’t hit/throw/pull” etc in my normal voice while removing her from the fun (putting her down away from me, removing her from the bath etc) suffices at the moment. It helps that she is very even tempered and good natured; she’s a very “easy” child.

I don’t agree that shouting is automatically abusive. Children will be shouted at for various reasons throughout their lives, by various people. It doesn’t mean that they have been abused. Some will be warranted and some won’t. What I don't want is to raise a person who crumbles when shouted at.

FWIW OP I don’t think you would have received so much criticism on this thread if you weren’t so critical of your “friends” parenting. If you are openly judgemental of others, it invites it.

I don't think you're being precious at all. Shouting at someone else's child isn't on, it's completely out of order.

Some of these replies -you’d think we were discussing an aggressive 14 year old - but a 2 year old!!!

Some children. Doesn't work on all of them. Some children need bigger signals.

The middle-class yobby 5 years olds with mummies crooning 'We don't hit people darling' are the ones who aren't enforcing proper boundaries.

As I said before, when you're parenting a 14 and a 16 year old, we'll see how softly spoken you are then.

But in this instance it’s what everyone’s thinking.

She absolutely should not have shouted at your child that isn’t her place.

however your two year old shouldn’t be biting/hitting or pulling your hair.

teach her now while she’s young and it’s Normal but changeable behaviour.

If the way to get your 14 and 16 year old to take notice is by shouting I suggest you've gone wrong somewhere along the way.

Perhaps too much shouting...?

And people commenting as if she's just refusing to teach her 2 year old not to hit it pull hair

OP I am really concerned by some of the responses and hope my original response didn't seem to be condemning you not liking to shout at your child or have someone else shout at your child. I thought it was pretty much accepted that it is completely unacceptable to shout at anyone else's child except in an emergency to keep then safe and that we should try as hard as we can to not shout at our own children (and apologise to them if we do end up shouting). Really shocked that people think shouting at children is OK.

This is not to say that we shouldn't have firm boundaries with children, we definitely should. However, I don't shout at adults that would be unacceptable, I don't want my child shouting at others, so why is it ever OK to shout at a child outside of an emergency?

Anyway, just in case I wasn't clear in my first post, children need firm boundaries, but I do not think it was OK for your friend to shout at your child if this is what she did. I only clarify this as she may not have seen it as shouting. However, if it was shouting, not just being firm, then I think wildly unacceptable and I would try to speak calmy and gently to her about it personally.

You can read minds too? Wow.

But definitely no shouting.

I think part of the problem is that your friend might have forgotten what developmental stage a two year old is at. You are totally within your right to request a best friend support you in whatever style of parenting you choose. Especially as you have helped her with her kids for extended periods and been a significant part of supporting her mental health, I would hope she would abide by your wishes. I would definitely tell her that you will never condone "doing it back to her", that just models bad behaviour and would make a child wonder why they have to not do something that Mum does too.

I had an upbringing that had violence and shouting in it and it definitely affects children. I swore that I wouldn't be a person who continued the cycle with my children and have a wonderful close relationship with both of mine, who are adults. They both have additional needs, so it's not like they were saints and didn't need firm boundaries. That doesn't need shouting to achieve however!! The first step to changing behaviours is to understand from the child's point of view, why they happened and go from there. Being aware that your daughter has trouble with controlling herself when she's overexcited, is not minimising it or excusing it. Two times in a year is not an entrenched behaviour either and very much better suited to a firm but calm response.

This was responding to a specific post which I forgot to quote 🙄 and yes it was most definitely what they were thinking

Threads like this certainly highlight the different styles of parenting out there. Maybe I too have been lucky but I never had those ‘terrible teenage’ years of moody bad behaviour, slamming doors, I hate you’s etc. Maybe it’s having boys, I don’t know. I’d like to think my parenting style (pretty calm, choose battles, etc) contributed to that and maybe because I did it alone (so no conflicting parenting styles). I’d imagine conflicting styles could cause tensions in the house.

You were lucky @BunnyLake. I was the single parent of a teenage boy with a similar parenting style. I was counting the days until he was old enough to leave home! He’s since apologised for what he put me through.

So you do read minds?

I'm the same - boys. One did say to me once "I hate you" and I just said "that's a shame because I love you". Within 10 minutes he apologised. I also didn't shout at them.

Oh sorry to hear that but I’m glad he’s been able to reflect and apologise. I do feel very fortunate that mine have been pretty well behaved both at home and always at school and it’s been a very low conflict house. Both adult now and I love it when they're here. That’s not to say it’s been perfect, I remember many times when they were younger I’d be crying because they wouldn’t go to sleep and would become very active at night, even if they’d spent the day outside or at the beach, and people would say ‘they’ll sleep well tonight’ no they didn’t 😭