My mother slapped my son, need advice please

[3luckystars]

I am not sure what to do and am looking for some advice please. This happened yesterday at my parents house.
(I had just given my mother some very bad news that my nephew was in the hospital and had a serious injury, he is only a baby and we live very far away so this was very upsetting for her.) My parents are elderly.

Anyway, I was in another room talking to my dad and my two children were fighting pushing each other off a chair and my mother shouted at my son and managed to slap him in the face. I wasn't there but I don't think she meant to do it, she was just trying to stop him hurting my daughter who is only very small. She has never shouted or ever ever said a cross word to them before, this is all totally out of character.

My son can be very difficult to manage at times, he has Asperger's so I can understand how all of this happened because he actually does hurt my daughter at times and I know my mother was trying to protect her, but I am still very upset over it.

She apologised straight away and I told her never to ever do that again, she said she barely touched him, but its just the fact that it was his face that is upsetting me.
We left and my son was very upset, cried the whole way home and said he never wants to see her again. I told him that she was sorry and that she had been upset at the bad news and she did not mean it but that it was still wrong.

He really means it though, he is very black and white and I know he wont forgive her or visit her house again any time soon. My mother rang me again and apologised this morning, she said she totally over reacted when she saw him hurting my daughter.
My husband said just forget it now and tell her if she does it again then we will have to keep him away from her, but I am just so embarrassed about the whole thing. Like if his mother did this, I would go INSANE.

I feel like I have handled this very badly and am not sure how to sort this out now. Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.

She needs to apologise to HIM. Set up a time that the three of you can sit down & she can say sorry in person, one the storm has passed.

OP was it an accident? It's not clear.

If it's an accident you need to be quite clear with your son that this is different. I've worked with kids with ASD and it is a struggle - but it's very important for when they're older. I've had to break up very dangerous fights when a 15 year old thinks it's ok because they were "hit first" (accidental knock) by another large teen. It's hard to teach the difference but can be done.

No it wasn't an accident, she slapped him out of impulse, it was a mistake.

I just wanted to thank you all so much, just to update, I sat down with my son after work and we spoke about making mistakes, I asked if he ever hurt anyone by mistake and felt sorry afterwards. It has happened a lot with his sister and he seemed to understand. I asked him to forgive granny and he went away and wrote me a note that if I bought him a certain bag of sweets then left them in grannies, then all will be forgiven.

I rang mam and told her she is back in the good books and she said she had bought him a card today so that was really sweet. Alls well that ends well. Thanks very much again.