to be ever so shocked by .....

[cookielove]

I clearly love children, working in childcare and everything.

A few weeks ago i was out shopping when a mother and her two children walked past, the shop i was in had pillars that held metal hanging poles at all different levels, so the mother walks past shouting at her children to hurry up the smaller child catches her head on the end of the pole, (bless her it had to really hurt) so she starts crying the mum turns round and basically thumps the child in the back of the head and says will you Fing stop whining. Shock and horror across mine and my mates face. Her sister pipes up as they are leaving 'mum she hit her head' and the mum turns round and says 'well she's always whining anyway' is she trying to justify her actions, i couldn't believe what i saw and what i heard.

Do wish i had the nerve to say something, and i wish the mum gave her a cuddle after she left the store but something makes me think she didn't

If I knew I wouldn't ask. It just seems something a newbie would say. Sorry.

we currently have a large mix of children that don't mix well, there is a lot of personality clashes and there is lots of tears, we have children that have some limited social skills and we have a room that is to small for us, we spend alot of time trying to get children into good play experiences. I think the main problem is that they are a bit like a gang, they have their leaders and all they really really play up. For some reason we have children that don't tend to listen, apart from a few and it can just be really stressful sometimes

i've worked in childcare for over 6 years

I have to say it sounds bloody awful.

But all 2 year olds have limited social skills dont they?

I also wouldnt lable a two year old as 'not listening'. Perhaps 'not understanding'?

Fair do's. What prompted you to write about the mum and her DD? I would have thought that in 6 years of stressful childcare you would have seen or heard of a lot worse.

bollocks to all to that justification for hitting children. end of tether, blah blah blah. child got hurt. parent couldn't be arsed to ask child what had happened, and then hit her again.

my two are whiners and i do lose the rag with them.

i'm not exaggerating when i say ds1 hardly uttered a word today that wasn't said in a sobbing, wailing, horrendous shriek of a voice. dd isn't much better. and yes there are times i've shouted at them for wailing at me and realised afterwards that that once of the 6000 times that day they actually had reason to be crying.

i haven't thumped either of them in the head but i've had to leave the room to avoid doing so it's gotten so bad. and if you were to see me in the shops with ds1 when there's no baby and toddler trolleys available you'd probably think i was a right bitch as after the first 16 times he's run off and when he pulls at every shelf we pass i often have to grab him by the arm and haul him along... which isn't exactly comfortable for him if i'm pushing the trolley with that hand too.

you sound like a silly patronising little girl, which i'd imagine is exactly what you are.

children behave very differantly for their childcare than they do at home... i once had dd's playschool teacher tell me 'i can't imagine [dd] throwing a tantrum

and you only have to be there 5 days a week for 8 hours a day.... o dear, so you've had to leave your lunch once or twice try not getting the chance to eat breakfast or lunch for years on end and see what your tempers like then.

'For some reason we have children that don't tend to listen'

that would be most 2-4 year olds sweetie

pink, that for me? because even when my children don't listen I don't tend to smack them around the head.

yeah of course they have limited social skills, however we have few children that are unable to communicate in body language and verbal, e.g we have a child with selective mutism, and a child that is very much in his own world, we have two children that english is there 2nd language.

As for not listening i'm refering to when i say something like stop running, no hitting, sit down, and they tend to stop for about 2 secs and then carry on again.

It shocked me to see a mum hit her daughter for crying, everyone on here who has said a their story to why they acted they way they did, was a story about why their child putting themselves in danger this child wasn't in any kind of danger and this is what is shocking for me, it just seemed to me like her first reaction was to smack.

And i have not seen any of the parents in my setting hit there child, in any form. however i have seen things in public that i wish i hadn't and i have witnessed suspected child abuse injuries while training

Worldsworst. Would love to have stopped and listened to my three years old daughter's explanation of why she'd run off in front of bus etc but felt that for the price of a few tears I would have a daughter that could still breath.

There is a yawning gulf of difference between an isolated incident of over reaction and systematic physical violence.

cookie, I am with you all the way. I have walked out of rooms to stop myself lashing out at a child who has driven me to my limits and beyond. to pick on you because you are outraged at this instance of child abuse but have no children of your own is pathetic.

fgs, we have all seen it, and judged it, quite rightly. the scenario she described is all too plausible, an tragic. she doesn't need to have given birth to be outraged by it.

WWM... nope, that was quote from the ops post about how terribly difficult her job is.

i've never thumped my kids round the head either, and i'm in no way defending the woman's actions... i'm simply finding the op's tone and patronising manner quite irritating.

yes the woman was wrong, maybe she is a terrible mother, but the op can't possibly know that from witnessing 2 mins of her life, and all this nonsense about 'i work in childcare and know how to deal with kids' doesn't mean squat.

you can't understand how awful it can get some days unless you've got kids and it would be in the op's best interests to reserve her judgments on others parenting skills until she's had to deal with her own kids behaviour day in day out for a few years.

thank your worldsworstmummy

you are the only one i feel is being patronising pinktulips, have you actually read anything i have written on this post, i have quite clearly said that i feel it was most likely a one off, and i clearly my job is a breeze compared to your life, how dare i assume that my job was anything compared to raising children, oh wait i didn't

tattifer, that kind of rage I totally get. But I bet you didn't slap her around the head for it. You grabbed her, shouted in her face, told her exactly what she had done. but you didn't hit her in a slack response to her crying.

actually you did cookie, several times.

but this in paticular struck me;

'Yes, we all have meltdowns we have meltdowns at work and we may say things in the heat of the moment, although at work these are all said out of childrens ear shot'

there is no out of earshot with your own kids, 95% of the time there's no-one to cover for you while you nip out for a cuppa to destress... in fact most of the time even going to the toilet is done with an audiance.

i don't think the woman did the right thing or was justified in any way but did it ever occur to you she might have been in as much of a need for a hug as the child?

'i clearly can not put myself into any parents shoes but i do feel i have a good insight on good childcare'

my situation is completly different, i completly understand this, i can't pop out the room for a cuppa however as that would make my room over ratio, i clearly can go to the toliet by myself, and when i worked as a nanny i also managed to go to the toliet by myself, without an audiance.

clearly childcare and parenting is very very different, i feel i was asked to justify my self and then slagged off for doing so

and to quote you pinktulips

'i haven't thumped either of them in the head but i've had to leave the room to avoid doing so it's gotten so bad.'

would this not be when you have left them to calm down out of earshot?

D'you know, I get really cross when people that ren't parents post these threads.
Yes they are entitled to an opinion but they just don't know how it is.

I remember once when DD was small I pulled her by the hand to get her to come with me and I did it too hard and pulled her over. I felt awful, but carried on (cuddled her sorry round the corner away from the tutters), screeched at her and pretty much dragged her down a concrete staircase as she wouldn't walk down it and we were going to miss the train, and recently I have been not a great Mum, well not in yelling terms, but that doesn't make me a bad Mum.

I don't have time off other than the school day, I am a lone parent.

It's easy for you to parent your children because they are imaginary. I was a great parent before I had a child, now I'm a parent that does her best.

I reckon it's time you stopped being so judgey, especially as you have never been in any situation involving your children.
Come back when you have them.

I have to say I agree with the OP. She may not be a parent, but I am. I think I can say my dcs have displayed a fair range of infuriating behaviour over the years, with a particularly fine line in whining, and I still think it's unacceptable to thump a child on the head. I just do.

Just because some of you (well then, all of us) may have yelled at our children or dragged them along, that doesn't make it right to thump a child in the head.

I see a lot of parents out and about who seem totally oblivious to their child putting himself in danger, but who will lash out viciously at the first sign of inconvenience to themselves, such as noise. No doubt they are under stress. But hitting a child because you are under stress is not the same as smacking a child to teach you some. I think some of the above posts are just muddying the waters.

but i'm not out of earshot when i do that cookie, i'm in the hallway with them banging on the door to get out to me, usually still screaming and roaring. and i never get to calm down before having to deal with them again, i just distance myself for long enough to allow the red mist to dissipate a wee bit.

parenting isn't childcare, it's 100% responsibility for small, infuruating at times, human beings often with no back up or support of any kind. your own kids know exactly how to push your buttons, there are days they will actively try and wind you up to get a response.

there are also days they make you smile and laugh and enjoy life all the more for them being there, i'm not trying to say every day is hell with kids..... but the bad days are worse than anything else i've ever dealt with. and i used to childmind prekids so i know exactly what other peoples kids are like. i minded my cousin for a while at one stage and he had no qualms about pushing my buttons either but for some reason you don't react the same to a child that isn't yours doing so... your own kids are so much a part of you it's a completely differant emotion when they misbehave. you feel like a failure, you feel sad for them, you feel angry and you feel completely helpless all at the same time.

No WWM, you're right I didn't.

I do agree that slapping or thumping a child to get it to shut up when "wingeing" is not the way common sense or compassion would see it dealt with.

I find labelling the mother cruel etc hard (I'm not implying CL did this) I hasten to add there are very curel people out there who really should have not had the right to have children in the first place. But there are a lot more women who simply can't cope but are not cruel. They are the ones who have been let down by a system that originally purported to care.

Ok it does sound terrible what she did, but as others said it may be a one off and if it is you can bet she's going to feel much worse about it than you did, so no need for this thread or for anyone to condemn her. I have lost my temper with my kids plenty of times but never came even close to losing control, but I don't feel like I am some kind of a martyr for it, or feel the need to look down on others.

And no offence, you are not a parent, you really have no idea.

some part of me didn't want to look at this thread, after reading some of things people have said about me. Whatever you took from in i can let you know, i am fully aware that parenting and nursery/nannying/childminders e.t.c are completly different. But i never intentionally meant to say they were the same an if i did i'm sorry.

I'm not a parent, but really can't wait to have a baby, but when do choose to have children, i hope i will never hit them, and true i don't know how i'll feel when the situation changes and i do have a screaming little one in front of me how i will react,

I would like to say though to defend myself, that while working with children we have the responsiblity of looking after peoples children, which as proven here are so so precious. It can feel some what over whelming especially if a child has an accident. this is not me saying i can't cope with my job though, before you start saying i can't. Please don't have a go at me for writing that.

My orignal point was i found it shocking that she so easily struck out at her child.