Would you ever tell off someone else’s child?

[Ellaalltheway]

If the child was doing something dangerous or spiteful that was affecting your child? Parents nowhere to be seen and not intervening.

Have you ever been in one of those situations out and about where another child is doing something spiteful/annoying such repeatedly pushing in a queue, bothering your child or taking their stuff, or even doing something dangerous.

Like for example I was at the park and a small child was going round with a big tree branch whacking all of the play equipment while it was being used. Or another time my child was taking their turn on something and another child tried to physically take it off them.

Do you speak up and ask the child not to do it?

Yanbu - you would speak up
Yabu - say nothing

I loudly corrected my friend’s 4 yo DS who decided it was fun to yank on my dog’s tail. Ddog was a gentle soul and just looked confused and tried to get out of his way. When my friend came in to see what was happening she was horrified and talked to him about being gentle with animals. After that, he was always so loving with Ddog and they became firm friends.

I have once - child about 4 or 5 aggressively chasing pigeons and trying to kick them. I was with a friend who was mortified, but he was really trying to hurt them and old enough to be told to stop.

What about older kids though? We don’t know what happened yet but three kids have been charged with murdering a man at a Kent beach “after an altercation”

Yes. I used to run a toddler group and most of the families were wonderful but we had the occasional live wire child with an ineffective parent and for the good of the majority, including my own kids, I’d get involved if I needed to.

I had to tell a boy on the school run to stop touching my daughter, his dad was there but seemed to think it was sweet even though she was trying to get away from him so I firmly said “please stop touching her she doesn’t like” and the boy apologised while his dad continued to look pretty gormless. He hasn’t done it again since.

You often find that children who rarely or never get told no respond quite well to it.

He didn’t bully anyone into leaving and the only thing he did wrong was to threaten an appropriate consequence he had no way of enforcing. He just reacted in the moment as the “parent” was doing sod all parenting. He’d have done the same if the girl was there with her dad.

So you reckon non-disabled children of average size and ability should be able to play withing their parents and carers hanging over them every second, but every other child should be allowed to -how horrible.

So because he’s a man, he just allows other kids to bully his? Behave.

I was in a large queue waiting to get onto the tube, had a child behind me kick me several times. I said "please stop kicking me". Mum went nuclear 🙄 until the person behind the child piped up to say he had been kicking him too, swinging his legs.

I would still say something. Wouldn't stop a child from hitting equipment though unless they were purposely following us, I'd just stay away. Recently have had to ask older children to leave my daughter alone as (at different locations) they kept trying to take her hand to play with her.

I do, find it much harder with friends kids though - it's more awkward.

But last weekend a kid was jumping a queue and pushed infront of my DC who had been patiently waiting her turn. It came out of my mouth - 'ahhh no'.

He'd done it to multiple other kids but it's when I said something that his Dad came and removed him. The kid just gawped at me.

I wouldn't yell at a kid though. Honestly an 'ahhh' noise is usually enough.

'Ahhhh no' with a finger raised - has generally resolved every issue I've encountered when I've needed to stop/correct another kid.

No one can then accuse me of telling off/shouting at their kid, but if they did then I'm happy to give the bollocking to the parent. It's not down to me to tell off another kid, it's down to me reflect fairness and safety to my child.

But I have a particularly stern voice - so I find it's enough. It also works on dogs too. The right kind of 'ahhh' works wonders 😂

Yes I would and I have. If their parent dealt with it, fine no reason for me to get involved but if parent isn’t there or doesn’t deal with it appropriately and their behaviour is affecting me or my child, yes absolutely I will tell them off. And I would be happy for another adult to tell off my child if they were misbehaving and I wasn’t there.

Infact I think that sometimes another adult telling off a child works better in some situations. Not exactly what your talking about but I was in a supermarket with my 2 year old, he started acting up, just the usual 2 year old nonsense, I was struggling trying to get him to walk while carrying bags, you can imagine the scene, we’ve all been there, an elderly gentleman turned round and said “right young man that’s quite enough!”, it stopped him in his tracks immediately, stopped his tantrum and he walked nicely next to me. I was very thankful! 😂

I have been known to deploy my teacher voice.

I think when it's something that can cause someone else to get hurt you have to act there and then. You can't take the time to figure out who the child's parent is and locate them when they are doing something dangerous with a stick.

In general it's a shared world, we have to rub along together and you have to expect your DC to come into contact with other people and be interacted with. You might follow a particular parenting philosophy but others have their own way of doing things.

Maybe he did go too far in threatening a consequence he had no power to enforce, but he didn't actually use or threaten violence. He reacted in an understandable way for a parent whose child was being hurt. If your child hurts someone and you do nothing to stop the behaviour, you lose control over the consequences because you can't control / dictate how others will react. If the parent had nipped the behaviour in the bud straight away, the other child's father wouldn't have had to do anything.

Yes I would. I do, and I don't mind if other people tell my child off (reasonably). No one is perfect, they are all still learning, no parents have eyes in the back of their heads.

It takes a village to raise a child after all

Yeah, a couple of years ago, doing the school run. We were walking home behind a mum and her 2 kids, and her son was eating sweets and spitting all over the pavement, obviously as we were behind them we kept having to dodge his globules of purple spit - me making sure our dog didn't also step in it.

I said something like "please stop spitting, it's really not nice" I didn't raise my voice and I wasn't nasty but the mum absolutely lost her shit and snapped at me 😂 she was outraged that I had dared to ask her son to stop spitting on the pavement... There's no reasoning with stupid though

Yes I have intervened when I felt it was necessary. Often older kids aren't thinking too much about what they are doing and asking them politely to stop doing something that is causing a problem, works.

Yes, all the time. I’m a primary school teacher. I can’t imagine not intervening. That is the village raising the child.

I agree with you about the seat-kicking. I disagree with practically everything else you have said.

Perhaps you didn’t read my post carefully enough to notice the bit where I wrote unless it was done to be deliberately intimidating or was threatening the safety of the other children.

Yes - yesterday 2 girls on their own in the cinema speaking very loudly directly in front of me for the first 15 minutes. I leaned forwards and said clearly "Girls you are talking very loudly. I don't think that's appropriate in here". Not a telling off per say but a reminder of ways in different places. Girl very politely said sorry and we watched the rest of the film undisturbed. Sometimes we all need reminders, just needs to be done politely, but assertively.

Yes I've done it many times.

@Ellaalltheway If another kid is messing with mine & their parents are not doing anything, then hell, yeah!

My now 18yr old son still recalls a time when a kid in the park deliberately & randomly whacked him across the face with a closed umbrella, to get him off a piece of play equipment. I firmly corrected said child & their nowhere to be seen at the time mother later tracked me down & complained that I'd made her child cry - safe to say, our interaction did not go as she expected or wanted. 🤣

Yes. This year's Y3 sports day a prime example. Boy sitting with his 'responsible adult', having left the main group (not his mother, but aunt and grandmother) and shouting 'I hate you Whatafustercluck's dd' getting progressively louder and louder. No attempt by his minders to intervene, so yes I told him to stop, loudly. And he did. It's pretty well known that the boy has SEN (suspect adhd from the behaviour) but so too does my dd, who struggled to attend sports day last year due to anxiety. So I saw red. I mean, I understand the challenges of parenting a child with SEN, but there's never much parenting on display where this boy is concerned. Like, literally nothing. His minders didn't even apologise because they're used to his behaviour I suppose. I'd be much more sympathetic if they'd made a token effort to tell him to stop and apologised on his behalf.

I tell random kids running up and down the aisles in Sainsburys to stop it.

I try and use the same tone my old headmistress had when in high school. It does work.

Their parents are usually far away, I'd be worried if I couldn't keep eyes on my DC in a large supermarket.

What’s him being a bloke got to do with it? Her child was being a bullying duck, she was being a useless mother. They both needed shouting at.

I voted YANBU, but actually I wouldn’t ’tell them off’, I’d simply tell them to stop.