Friend “hit(?)” my 8 year old.

[NetflixandKill1]

Help. Long time reader, first time poster.
so I am in a friendship group of 3 women. Myself, and Carrie and Nieve (names changed) We’ve been friends for a good few years. Between us there are 6 children. 5 girls, and my boy. Usually we all get along so well. Myself and my 2 friends have shared some deep things and we’ve bonded well. On the odd occasion I will feel like the outsider of the group. Carrie and Nieve tend to arrange things outside of our group chat. This hurt in the past, but I’m grown and accept that they’re just closer in general.
So, to the incident.
My child (8 M) was walking toward me and Nieve and Nieve child (8 F) launched towards him and tapped him, she he did the same back. Nieve got mad and said to my son “don’t punch my daughter otherwise I’ll punch you) he reacted quickly and replied “ok go on then” so she did. It was with a clenched fist, and a light jab on the top of his arm. This completely shocked me. I got upset and left. It couldn’t leave my mind so I ended up messaging her and telling her how I felt. I said it really upset me, and I don’t hit my own children so for another adult to do that, really hurt. She apologised for hurting my feelings, but will not apologise for what she did. She can’t see her wrong doing. She’s very impulsive, so I assumed she acted on impulse and I gave her a few days to think it over. I asked her if she had chance to think it through and her response was “no, should I have?” I’m heartbroken. She’s adamant she’s done nothing wrong. I basically told her she needed to apologise, but she has flat out refused. She spoke to another mutual friend we have who confirmed it would upset her also, but she still can’t accept it. I’m ready to walk away from this friendship. I don’t know if I’m making this bigger than it needs to be. Help. I am perfectly able to hear saw honesty. AITA

Call thr police she hit your child in anger and thats assault and perhaps a caution from the police will teach her never to lay her hands on a child again

Imagine someone threatening to punch you and then me replying with “go on then” and YOU are made to look like the problem. Crazy. If I wasn’t ready to hear the truth, I certainly wouldn’t have posted here. I’m more than susceptible to hear opinions that make me uncomfortable. I appreciate your input.

A few others have mentioned this. I won’t lie, it does give me impending doom when I think about it.

It may make you feel uncomfortable but ask yourself how you would feel if she does it to another child and causes them physical or emotional harm?
She needs a short sharp lesson on keeping her hands to herself, being questioned by the police and cautioned is probably the only thing that will sink in. It might also stop her hitting her own children.
Someone who is willing to punch a child should not have care of any children its safeguarding 101

Foul.

I personally wouldn't because I think it's an overreaction and sends the wrong message to your son. He's already making a big deal of it telling everyone at school - not that he's wrong to do that - but clearly it's been blown up to a really big deal in his mind.

If it were me I'd say to my son "whew Nieve was so out of order wasn't she? We won't be seeing her any more!" and then move on.

There's no need to keep escalating it and poking the bear. It's a lesson he'll have to learn eventually: there are some people who are very unreasonable, and have a hair-trigger temper, and the best thing to do is avoid them and spend your valuable time with nicer people instead. Why do you need to "win"?

What I mean is...It seems like you care what the other mums, eg Carrie, think - and I'd care about that too - if you keep escalating this, their sympathies will start to switch to Nieve. Rightly or wrongly.

She lashed out, lost her temper, and hit your son. She was extremely unreasonable and is clearly a woman to be avoided/shunned. But most people would not consider it a police matter and would raise eyebrows if you got them involved

'Raised'.... He's 8. Good luck when he's 17.

Well, it’s easy to say what you would have done/said if you weren’t there.

Another way of looking at it, is that as she seems to be very impulsive and quick to anger, if you’d confronted her there and then the situation could have escalated even further. As some people seem to be blaming your 8yo for causing the situation by talking back (wtf) you can’t in the next breath criticise you for being non-confrontational. I’m not sure what you being hot headed in the moment would have added to that incident

Unfortunately, it may be time to walk away from this group if this is how nieve is.

also, just by virtue of your child being the only boy and they have girls, your outings will change. The hang out time between kids will change. I had this with a good friend, no falling out, but she had a boy and I had 2 girls. The girls eventually wanted to do girly things and her boy wanted to do other things. My friend and I had to change our get together time to mid week dinner and a movie. Now our kids are adults and our weekends are more free, while our husbands do their hobby or watch a match of some sort, we’ll get together to do things we enjoy on a weekend afternoon.

Every parent I know would have called the police but ww don't abuse children nor make excuses for abusive women.
Thankfully I live in Scotland where its illegal for anyone including parents to hit any child

She has behaved like a queen bee with you op, excluding you and letting you know your place. She has now moved on to your son. As she sees it, she has now put him in his place also. But you and your son must not tell others and she is trying to control and contain the fall out.

As for Carrie, she has been happy to be the bff, and has been happy to go along with your exclusion. You do not have to do as she says or proposes. She is no loss.

Walk away op. It is all very mean girl behaviour which you can do without.

Thank you for the well wishes ☺️

I voted YABU although that’s mainly because I think your account is a bit unreliable.

your first post talks about the two kids “tapping” each other, and then Nieve giving your son a “light jab” in response to him saying “go on then”.

Through the actual language used, the whole thing sounds relatively harmless - I read a “light jab” as a bit of a bop on the arm with no force behind it.

I’m not saying Nieve was right to say what she did to your son or indeed to act out her threat, but the description of the action (in the first post) doesn’t sound that serious to me.

In later posts, your story changes. You start calling it assault, and talking about a sharp hit. Now she may not be right to put a hand on your son regardless but there is a world of difference in my opinion between a bop or tap on the arm with no force behind it, and somebody actually hitting or punching your child that would cause pain to them. If it was the former, it would be absolutely bonkers and quite malicious in my view to consider reporting her to the police or the school or escalating this any further - but you’re well within your rights to end the friendship and it sounds like you should do anyway.

The actions between the two kids are really irrelevant to what followed after, but your story does change here too. Your first post talks about tapping, then you go on to talk about the daughter as someone with a lack of awareness of personal space and it sounds more like she’s accidentally knocked into him and he’s pushed her back, and then later you talk about her “lashing out” at him. Frankly it doesn’t really matter what happened here but there are versions of this that would change the context a bit of what followed after, and again the lack of clear narrative just makes it difficult to believe we’re getting the full picture here.

That’s actually very true. I can see how the 2 conflict. My son reacted and spoke up he was apparently wrong, and when I didn’t react and approach, I was wrong. Typical mumsnet. Thank you for your insight and picking that out. Very helpful.

So her daughter leapt into his space. He was running quite quickly toward me and it shocked him. And she tapped him in the process so he gave her the same back.
my friend (ex) didn’t punch him to bruise, but it was a balled fist and to the top of his arm. I can’t really think of many words to use to describe the force. It’s difficult. But it was the intent behind it that matters more to me. This wasn’t playing and with smiles, it was a threat then an action carried out. That’s what hurts the most.

I kind of agree with this poster.

Nieve was 1000% bang out of order for hitting your child. No question. Hands down.

Two things can be true at once, though.
Your son was also rude. He was rude to laugh at her daughter riding her bike. And he was rude to say ‘go on then’.

You need to break any ties you have with Nieve - she is clearly incapable of regulating her anger, and is a danger to your son and probably other children too.

But you also need to stop celebrating your son’s rudeness and inappropriate verbal confidence. He is too young to be backchatting like this; at this age he should be taught to extract himself from situations, not to confront them. He needs to report issues to his parents and let them deal with it, or he’ll end up in a whole world of trouble very soon.

I am sorry you will lose a valuable friendship through all this, but hopefully Carrie will circle back to you at some point in the future when other incidents occur with Nieve and the penny drops for her.

You’re very close to the mark. I do feel the jealousy towards me and my son and our home life. Maybe this is why she reacted the way she did, but it’s still unacceptable. I feel my life will be much more at peace without her in it and me having to question her morals and friendship.
I think I do need to have a word with my child as he is very brazen and just says what he thinks. Partly due to his neurodivergence (in which Nieve shares so I thought she would be more understanding) but I do feel tension toward him at times. Putting hands on someone else’s child is unacceptable regardless of what they have said or done.

I'm not making excuses for her. What she did was clearly very wrong.

But a "light jab" is not a police matter, in my opinion.

It's possible for something to be very wrong but still not meet the threshold for police involvement, and I think this is an example in rhat category.

You all need to learn about consent and aggression IMO. None of what you’ve described is acceptable and now you’re fretting about how it escalated. If both your kids had been taught how to behave properly in the first place, none of this would have happened.

This is true and he does get left out an awful lot because of this. They do a lot of things together and usually finish the day with sleepovers but my son is never included. I did feel it was gender related but when I look back and delve a little deeper I feel maybe it wasn’t that at all…

Nope I’m in London.

There were no cameras (shocking in a gigantic soft play!) so no proof, our word against his. Although my son had another 11 year old child as a witness.

We could have pressed on but decided a night in a cell was enough, the police told us ‘the man’ (hard to call him a ‘man’) was crying and blubbering like a baby.

Leaving aside your not-friends as it is clear that you are (rightfully) walking away from this mess... I think it's a good thing to reflect on your son's behaviour as well. ND kids can be super black and white (as you understand, and I understand as an ND mum with an ND daughter) so you need to be really clear about what you mean about sticking up for himself and giving back what he receives and any language like that and introduce some nuance into it.

While of course, no one could possibly ever think an adult should ever hit a child (or even arguably touch a child who isn't theirs except for dangerous situations or helping them in some way)... your son needs to learn to control himself and walk away if something goes wrong in future. He cannot be supported to 'give what he gets' and escalate like this, particularly as he's getting older and you'll need to encourage him to develop relationships with different people.

I do not teach my kids to be pushovers - they take martial arts and my daughter is in a specific women's self-defence class now (as a teenager), but the first rule of self defence is to de-escalate or walk/run away. Keeping your body safe is the goal, not lashing out and creating a worse situation. Contributing more violence to an angry situation isn't always the right answer and it's really important that you start to teach your son that as well.

How could instilling confidence in a child ever be wrong?

How does 'confident, brave and lovely' = brat? I'll answer that for you, it very obviously doesn't.

You have also stated that the OP's son is rude, where have you got that from?

You are right about the friend but it's very wrong to make statements about the OP's child that have no basis in anything she's written.

The OP has clearly been mulling this situation over as opposed to just 'kicking off' like some people would. The very fact that she has been pondering and is seeking advise of others here makes it obvious that she is a thoughtful person who will raise her son with the same values.

If this was one of my children I can imagine them saying go on then as they wouldn’t believe an adult would actually punch them! That is a completely unacceptable reaction from your ‘friend’ you do not hit other people’s kids!