Shouted at someone else’s child, WIBU?

[wooooooop]

NC as might be outing.

I take my 10mo DS to a small church hall playgroup, it’s mostly free play time with a singing session at the end. It’s been a lovely group thus far, DS has a great time there and I get to interact with other adults! There is a little boy there of about 3 or 4, he’s never supervised by his Mum who is always sitting at the other end of the hall chatting, or on her phone. DS and I usually steer clear of him as he seems quite a boisterous child, and he often snatches toys from the other children.

DS and I were playing with baby toys today, and I didn’t notice the other boy approaching from behind us until he kicked my poor little DS in the back as he reached for a toy I instinctively shouted at him (I didn’t say anything horrible to him, I was just so shocked at what he’d done that I shouted at him to go away), he clearly went to tell his Mum that I’d told him off as she came storming over demanding to know why I’d shouted at her child while I was trying to comfort my own sobbing baby. I was more angry with her than her DS so I told her that if she’d supervised her little bully, I wouldn’t have had to shout at him and my baby wouldn’t have been hurt. Instead of apologising for her son’s behaviour, she went to the group leader and asked for me to be banned from the group!

I’m so upset, I don’t know if I overreacted or not as this is my first child and therefore my first rodeo with playgroups!

Four year olds can be mean. It doesn’t mean it’s all right to yell at them in the middle of a playgroup (or anywhere, but anywhere frequented with young children makes it worse.)

Shouting and calling him a bully was too much

a loud “ don’t kick “ and walking him back to his mum should have sufficed

What exactly would your immediate, knee-jerk reaction to having your baby hurt by a much bigger child have been? Have you never, ever shouted in shock? Not once?

This and the fact that I suspect he is more like 2-3 as a 3-4 tends to be at pre school and out of the age range

yes the parent should have been watching, yes his behaviour was wrong but yours is frankly awful too

I wasn’t about to walk him back to his mother when my priority was making sure my own son was okay as he was screaming his head off.

Truth be told, I didn’t care where he went, just as long as it was away from us!

Probably a sharp ‘no, we don’t kick.’

I can honestly say in nearly five years of being a parent I have never had a loud altercation with another mother in a playgroup or toddler class, ever, and I’ve never witnessed one either. I don’t know why you’re huffily acting as if it’s what anybody would do; it isn’t. Children sometimes are mean or unkind, or don’t fully understand what they are doing and snatch or take toys, hit, push, bite even. It is fine to tell them not to do so; it is fine to tell the adult they are with what they’ve done or that their behaviour isn’t acceptable. Shouting and calling a preschool child names isn’t OK, though.

Jesus wept, I give up 😂

Perfect parents to children who aren’t even yours, I salute you all! Never shouted in shock in your lives, and would calmly explain to a child who had just hurt your baby for fun that we use ‘gentle hands/feet’ 😂😂😂😂

Anyway my DS is fine, thanks so much for asking 🥰

A 4 year old should know better and absolutely not be kicking a baby! Supervised or not. His mum sounds terrible and good you stood up for yourself, it should be called out.

I’m definitely not a perfect parent! But there is a huge grey space between ‘perfect parent’ and ‘not yelling and causing a scene at a toddler group’!

I didn’t. I shouted ‘go away’ in a panic because my DS could have had any kind of injury from the first kick, and I wasn’t about to let there be a second one! It worked, because he bloody went away.

The other mother caused a scene by storming over and having a go at me, I explained what I did and why.

I also can’t pretend I care if I scared him

Charming. That is very unpleasant of you.
He's a small child FGS.

He was wrong to hit your baby but you need to learn that the world doesn't revolve around your son, and that things like this happen fairly often at playgroups.

Which she did because you called her child names. To be honest though the posts are littered with contradictions and ‘no I didn’t say / what happened was.’

I am generally a tad suspicious of posts where an OP has behaved in a way that is beyond reproach while the other individual has been so wholly unreasonable as to take one’s breath away, just because it’s not the way life goes. The OP gave the impression of a preschooler accidentally, albeit carelessly, hurting a baby, to which you responded to by snapping. I don’t think either of those things are ‘wrong’; you were both behaving in a normal and understandable way. Two reasonable adults would have been ‘sorry about George, he can be so boisterous’ ‘oh no problem, sorry for snapping, I just got a shock’ sort of exchange. As it was, it spiralled into name calling and unpleasantness on both sides and it’s turned into a malicious attack without provocation.

Like I said, I don’t care. He’s not my child. My own son was more scared than he was! My world revolves around my son, not someone else’s. Wouldn’t you be furious and upset to see your little baby hurt?

We go to a different playgroup every day of the week, and absolutely no such thing has happened at any others.

No, she came over and had a go at me because her son had told her I shouted. I called him a bully after she had already started on me. Bully parents usually breed bully children, so it figured.

I can’t help it if you misinterpreted my OP, most other posters managed to grasp that it was a deliberate kick. I wouldn’t have been angry if it had been an accident as that is a non-event and par for the course with clumsy small children. However, the kick was not accidental.

@wooooooop ignore all the goady fuckers who have come along and are baiting you, so they can turn it on you being irrational and angry. There is nothing wrong with sharply intervening when another child is behaving badly.

Not agreeing with how someone went about something doesn’t make someone a goady fucker. I don’t think it’s right to call a preschooler a little bully; in fact, I think it’s horrible. But it is pointless going around in circles here and the OP obviously does just want people telling her how right she was and how wrong the other mother was.

Oh I know, it’s AIBU after all! Always bored vipers waiting to shit all over FTMs 😌

I’m waiting for someone to suggest I seek help for my anger issues, just to complete my bingo card.

I don’t think you have anger issues. Just a bit of a bully.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Two reasonable adults would have been ‘sorry about George, he can be so boisterous’ ‘oh no problem, sorry for snapping, I just got a shock’ sort of exchange.

Good grief. No wonder teachers are leaving the profession in droves. A child of 3 or 4 is perfectly capable of understanding that he should not kick a baby. If he is the sort of child who is given to this kind of behaviour which you call boisterous and I agree with the OP is an early sign of bullying, his parents and carers should be right with him all the time. If in spite of that he still hurts another child the response is not a tinkly laugh and attempt to minimise what he's done - profuse apologies are required, and then take him home. As for the suggestion that the OP was somehow in the wrong and should apologise - WTAF!

I thought there were some ineffectual parents with poor control over their children back in the early 90s when my children were tiny. Things seem to have got much worse since.

Ignore the preachy posters who think calling a nasty little bully what they are is a horrific sin only a nasty person would commit.

If a little brat like that hurt my daughter I'd tell their mum exactly what I thought of her shit parenting and no, I wouldn't feel bad for upsetting the little shit. Nasty children grow into nasty adults if no one puts them in their place.

Yes, this.

This 3yo looks massive compared to your baby, but he is still essentially a baby himself and totally unable to control his impulses and potentially even coordinate himself - he might not have kicked your child on purpose even if it looked like he did.

Presumably the group is meant to be a safe space for kids and perhaps his mum really needs some down time. I don’t think I’d have necessarily hovered over my 3yo in that kind of scenario, though I hope I would have intervened before he did what this child did.

I can understand how you might have shouted in anger in the moment, but it was out of order of you to escalate things with his mother and call him a bully. He is only 3. When your pfb is 3 he will likely do similar.

Careful, you’ll get told off next 🤭

No problem, we know who's raising the next generation of bullies on this thread don't we.

My daughter was badly bullied at school by a boy who started his bullying with another kid when they were both in Reception. He persisted all the way through primary school, with various different targets and other children drawn in, and when his mother was finally called in to discuss his behaviour she was adamant that while he could be a handful he was no bully. None so blind as those who will not see.