Toddler saying "daddy stomps on me"

[pbdr]

I have a 2.5 year old daughter with my husband who is an absolute joy and the light of both of our lives.
In the past few weeks she has taken to saying "I'm scared of daddy", and when I press her on why she says "daddy stomps on me". On one occasion she also said that daddy stomps on mummy. Today she said "daddy hurts me" but didn't seem able to elaborate any further.

The thing is, my husband and I have been together for 17 years, since we were at school, and he is an absolute golden retriever of a man. He is gentle and calm, and in all the time we've been together I've never seen him act remotely aggressively or lose his temper. It's one of the things that made me fall in love with him. He is absolutely besotted with his little girl, and other than these statements she also seems to be besotted with him. He's never do much as raised his voice at her.

He does do sort of rough play with her, like tossing her onto the sofa, or dangling her upside down by her ankles, but while he's doing this she is giggling and squealing with excitement, and saying "Again! Again!" so I'm quite sure he's not scaring her. She doesn't act at all scared of him, and will happily be left alone with him or go out with him on her own.

I can tell he's starting to feel quite sad about the whole thing but he's not really sure what to do. I also don't know how to respond to her, because I'm certain what she's saying isn't true, but I would always want her to disclose if someone was hurting her, so I don't want to just shut it down. She's due to start nursery in October though and I cant pretend I'm not a bit anxious about her going in and claiming she gets stomped on at home.

Any advice appreciated.

That's a good thought. He has danced with her like that on the odd occasion, so that's a possibility. Although it still leaves me wondering why she's saying she's scared because it seemed like a happy, relaxed interaction from how I remember it.

What she says sounds exactly like the word "stomp", but whether she MEANS stomp is harder to be sure about.

There’s an episode of Bluey where Bingo finds Bandits games just a bit too rough, Bingo (age 6) loves them but 3 year old Bingo finds them too much.

I wonder if she's actually saying daddy's stopping me (from doing something she wants to do) and she's a bit annoyed about it.....

I think that is so unfair. There is nothing about the OP’s post which suggests a laissez-faire attitude. This is obviously really troubling the OP, and it doesn’t take much to empathise with that.

FWIW when he was small my son used to talk about how scared he was when I left him alone in the house😜I bloody didn’t, not once. But I used to worry he’d tell it to someone ‘official’ cos it’s quite hard to prove you didn’t do something.

I’d think your DD has probably had a bad dream, or seen a programme, or there’s a misunderstanding, but is it worth seeing if you can get her to demonstrate you what she means and expand a bit? Maybe show you where it happened? Slight danger is, the more attention you pay, potentially the more established the idea becomes. With DS I said ‘you must have been dreaming’ because I knew for certain it hadn’t ever happened. Since there’s no way to be sure what she means I suppose you do need to get to the bottom of it, as best you can.

I do agree with PP that I would leave the rough play for a few weeks to see if comments change. However, in the meantime I would try directing the question at her. I know that sounds awful but my son is 2.5 and T nursery he's been very close to a boy since he was around 8 months when we joined their stay and play session so I was really concerned when he kept saying X hits me. I asked the Nursery and they said they hadn't seen anything but I kept probing as I had got so worried he was being hurt until one day I said what do you do when X hits and he said he shouted and then he said I shouted and then I hit. It turned out to be a completely consensus rough and tumble game the pair had invented where no one was hit but they were chasing each other and just generally messing around. It may be harmless and she just doesn't have the vocabulary just yet to explain fully what's happening.

Does he think farts are funny. Has he farted near you both as a joke? Stomp could be trump, sounds crazy but I could see how it could sound similar from a toddler.

We used to play a hide and seek type game when DD was little where we would recite Fee Fi Fo Fum..... stomping around and then chasing her with a bit of a villainy laugh, turns out DD really didn't like the laugh but we didn't find that out till later as she would be giggly and laughing and do it back to me at the time.

It certainly could be her slightly inarticulate way of describing rough play, as what she is saying, and how she behaves/ her attitude towards her dad are so at odds with each other.

She has a couple of times accused me of "fighting" with her. Eventually I figured out it was to do with tooth brushing. I brush her teeth first, then it's her 'turn' (she just sucks the toothpaste off and chews the brush), but occasionally she will want to skip my turn and try to wrestle the toothbrush out of my hand. I hadn't let her do that and kept hold of the brush and she had perceived that as a fight.

My 2yo was terrified of a friend's dad. She was never alone with him once, there was never any possibility he would have hurt or upset her other than by being tall. I decided it's was a valid instinct not to want to be near an unknown or not very well known man but it was very extreme- she was even scared when I was in the room

Consider past lives interference. Or don't, if you find the idea ridiculous. I would, though.
'Daddy stomps on me. Daddy stomps on mummy,' sound like things remembered.

When my eldest was about two and a half she came home from her supermarket with her dad one afternoon and after recounting the very mundane details of the trip ("we looked at the magazines and I chose a Ben and Holly one and then we went to the vegetables and daddy chose a bag of potatoes and some carrots..") got to the end of the story of her day and added "oh and daddy punched a man by the trollies, hit him so hard he fell down... Punch-punch! Kick-kick!" Complete with Karate Kid actions.

The likelihood of DH punching a man is about 0% anyway, let alone him then engaging in some kind of martial arts battle by the trollies in Tesco. We never did work out why she said this, although I did read somewhere that kids of that age easily confuse their waking reality with dreams and what they've watched on TV, so my guess is that this was a mix of the three.

Two year olds say weird things is basically my experience.

When my son was little and we were in a department store, I turned and holding his hand I tried to walk up an escalator that was moving downwards!

I did one lurching step on it and then jumped back, pulling him with me.

It was a few seconds and I laughed and said something like 'Oops, wrong way!' My son didn't really say anything about it and we carried on with our shopping.

Later that day we saw Nanny and Grandad (my parents) and when my dad asked him if he had enjoyed going shopping with mummy, he replied in a deadpan voice. ' Mummy tried to kill me.'

My son once walked behind me in the kitchen and my heel lowered onto his foot.

He started telling people that "daddy stamped on me".

Sometimes kids just say things that aren't completely accurate and sound horrendous.

It's frightening the ways young children see things. Hope this gets resolved soon.

Some of these stories are hilarious! Thanks for cheering me up.

Seems weird to me that you wouldn't take what your daughter says to be true. I'd have packed my bags and left at that moment....wouldn't even care to hear what he had to say.
If she says this to nursery or school then social services would be contacted and they will report every bruise etc she has because you become someone not to be trusted when your daughter has said this and you have sided with your husband.

I told my year 1 teacher my dad had hit me which was why I had two black eyes. He did ...with a frisbee square between the eyes whilst playing at the park. But that's not what the teacher thought when she had a serious chat with my mum.

In a similar vein I was working with a much older child but developmental age about 2.5/3. For about a week he used to announce to people 'x hit me'- x being me! Thankfully it was well documented that the incident in question was back slaps for a serious choking incident- also thankfully witnessed by a room full of people.
As his dad put it 'he doesn't understand you saved his life'!

@Lupuswarriors don't be ridiculous, with no other signs and a general good relationship between them it's not something to be concerned about. Yes, a nursery or school might keep an eye on the situation but it certainly isn't SS level concern.

My daughter was sitting right in front of me playing with her dad, I was watching them, she suddenly turned to me and said "daddy hit me in the face" with a convincing cry. I said no he didn't I was watching he was no where your face then she laughed and got back to it. Kids have quite vivid imaginations at this age, he may have tripped over her or stood on her foot accidentally and she's just suddenly remembered it happening

I also accidentally scratched her on the neck recently trying to stop her falling off the bed, she's told everyone "mummy grabbed me by the neck and scratched me, but she saved me," not quite what happened but there we go 😂

Totally agree with this, kids remember a lot from past lives

My daughter says countless things every day that are untrue. She's 2.5 and still figuring out how to speak and make sense of the world.

I know my husband better than I know anyone in the world and I would without hesitation bet my life that he would never hurt her. Supported by the fact that she clearly adores him and had never shown the slightest sign of actually being afraid of him.

As you can see from the other replies in this thread, it is very common for toddlers to say things like this out of misunderstanding or simple lack of language development to be able to properly express what they mean. If every one of those parents had immediately broken up their families and initiated a child protection investigation then there would be a great deal of unnecessary trauma for the kids involved. I don't think a bit of critical thinking always goes amiss in these situations.