Another parent angrily speaks to my child in playground

[TheBrightBear]

There's a new playground beside my kids school. In my opinion it is really badly laid out and part of it is fenced off from the other part, and you can't see through the fence, and due to this is very hard to completely fully watch the children. I was watching my 2 year old and when I looked up another mother was losing the plot with my older child age 7. The fence was in the way of my view. She claimed he had deliberately knocked down her child. I didn't see due to the angle, maybe he did...it would be uncharacteristic of him to have done it on purpose but I suppose possible. I took her word for it and apologised and checked that her child was ok. He was. When I turned around my child had vanished. He had run out of the playground and was hiding in some bushes trembling and shaking. I eventually got him back to the car and he curled up on the floor of it continuing to cry. A friend helped me persuade him to go back to the playground for a little bit so that he wouldn't be afraid to return the next time. He was very upset for the rest of the day and still subdued at bedtime. This woman is a parent at my children's school. I am wondering if I should speak to her and tell her the consequence of her actions as it seemed like a massive overreaction. My son was unable to tell me what she said but I think it must have been very strong as he is usually fairly thick skinned. She is part of an unfriendly clique of mums and I am afraid her reaction to him was something to do with nasty gossip between them. They are very social climber-esque and I am not good enough for them and I feel because of that it was acceptable to her to behave like that towards my child. Honestly in all the years in outdoor settings and playgrounds including during the pandemic I have never seen a parent going off on someone else's child like that. I am afraid of it happening again and we have to wait in that playground a lot as my oldest is collected from school at a later time to my 7 year old. I feel a bit powerless because it was a complete overreaction and also I have bitten my own lip so many times when bad behaviour has been directed towards my own children...the most I would ever say is 'no throwing', 'take turns' etc.

It isn’t acceptable AT ALL for some arse of a woman to traumatise your child but you do have to supervise more closely if this is the result. Your boy sounds lovely but like he needs your back up. You can put rules in for your child that they need to stay where they can be seen. It is harder if you have more than one child sometimes but the answer isn’t not to do what is necessary.

I wouldn't care one bit. If a grown woman wants to leave my child hiding and shaking in a bush then I'd make damn sure she knew what that felt like.

People giving a fairly accurate, brief, to the point summation of the events isn't being "nasty".

The fact you think it is, and are snippy and defensive at anyone who doesn't think you're 100% in the right, speaks volumes.

Completely agree with this!!!!

It sounds like kids are a lot more sensitive to shouting in general. When I was at school in the 90s we usually found it quite entertaining when a teacher lost their shit and started shouting at someone who'd been messing around. Maybe kids aren't as used to it these days.

You might care when it affects your employment and volunteering at your kids' schools prospects when they run a police check.

I'm not going to read too much into the hiding and shaking in a bush because that is probably an exaggeration and isn't a normal reaction. In fact, a normal reaction would be to run to a parent for safety if necessary.

That's an excellent point actually. That's exactly what my twins would do. If they were scared, they would run to me. If they think they've done wrong, they scarper.

Yesterday, girl twin didn't wait for boy twin to move off the bottom of their slide, she called for him to move twice, then when he grinned and said no, she just ploughed down and punted him off the end. He came wailing to me. She ran round the corner and hid.

It’s absolutely extraordinary the number of people who seem to get a thrill out of fantasising about terrifying small children.

OP I mean this constructively. I think you need to reflect on the fact that you didn't handle this situation well with your son.

You said you didn't see the incident, but you did see an grown woman, in your words, losing the plot with your seven year old child in a way you've never in ten years of being in playgrounds even all the way through the pandemic seen. You said it was so bad that you even got some messages from mothers who were there checking in and saying how horrible and scary it was for him.

And yet your first reaction was to apologise to this woman.

If I witnessed another adult 'losing the plot' at my child in the way you have described my first instinct would not be to apologise, it would be to intercept, check on the welfare of my child and then try to understand what had happened from the mother.

And after her ‘letting rip’ at your son, you feel you should have ‘let rip’ at her?

I think why your son is traumatised is that he fears he’s going to get a second bollocking from you, because you apologised and it sounded as if you agreed with her.

Did he admit to doing it or was it an unjust telling off?

Geez, the drama!

You say it’s a small playground. You say she was shouting at your son. But you couldn’t hear anything she said?

Rather than rush to you, your son was “shaking” in a bush? And is nonverbal about it all?

And you have, on occasion, told his peers off until they have cried…

Unless there are done additional needs here, it all sounds like melodrama.

I think the OP is regretting being apologetic at the point it happened, it’s frustrating when you react and then think back and wish you’d have done it differently, we’ve all been there x

Well he'll not try it twice, will he.

I'm fully in the camp of dealing harshly with bullying incidents. Zero tolerance for it. I think since you didn't see it happen, it's really on you. You weren't watching him.

Yes, I get its hard, I have 4 of them aged 4 to 10. But you need to keep them in sight at this age.

OP a what type of parent are you? Gentle? Because if so that affects how I feel

a child who is brought up gently often has little resilience in practise and will sob and shake at a minor incident because they haven’t experienced much telling off before
if your child pushed over a small child the mother would be rightly furious

Or, it could have been a mum telling off an unsupervised child who deliberately pushed her own child hard enough to knock them over thinking his own mum wouldn't find out, and he's then too embarrassed to say what happened.
Either could be true, but it seems odd at 7 that even after the incident hes not been able to say "I didn't do anything" or "I just tripped over and fell into the child and she shouted at me"
I'd take the reluctance to explain and over reaction as him likely knowing he was wrong. Not necessarily always, but without additional needs it seems the most likely reason at 7.

No, it’s about showing an absolutely zero tolerance approach to bullying. Someone who terrorises your own child is not going to stop unless they are very firmly told not to. If they get scared - though shit. How do you think the victims of their bullying feel?

I believe in general the advice is to focus on the injured child make sure they are ok and then turn to the other child. As I said I thought due to the mother's reaction that the child was injured which is why I was so quick to go over.

Hi OP. I work with young children and in my experience when they don't want to talk about it, it's because they have a guilty conscience. It's possible your DS did push the child, especially if he's modelling what's being done to him, which is very sad, and also if he didn't think the mother could see (if she was out of his eyesight).

Her overreaction was totally unwarranted though. I recognise your description of this type of person and she doesn't sound nice, not someone to get into confrontation with. If I were you, I would just talk about her reaction to your friends, not try and defend your son. Word will get around that she's shouty and mean to small children, and that won't do her any favours despite her clique.

Small boys playing rough and tumble and getting a bit over excited is not bullying. The word bullying is thrown around far too often and has been devalued.

If it’s not my child I am not interested in modelling behaviour. Their own parents obviously aren’t doing a great job if they are raising little bullies. I also don’t agree that shouting always entails a loss of control. I don’t mean screaming but I do mean a very stern talking to, telling them they are out of line. I am sure that some kids brought up with no boundaries would be terrified and shaking at that as they don’t like being called out.

To clarify I am not talking about toddlers here. I am talking about children old enough to know right from wrong who bully and assault other children, often younger than them. It is absolutely okay to tell them off.

Yes he probably did do something wrong. I wasn't denying it. I don't know what it was but my children have often been on the receiving end of rough behaviour too....usually everyone just gets up says sorry and moves on. I don't freak out at the child who did it though. Unfortunately he is very uncommunicative in general and never tells me anything about school etc. His teacher tells me he is one of the quieter and better behaved children in the class...as far as I am aware he has only been in trouble with the teacher once in two years and he came out of school crying and cried for over an hour that time. He doesn't like getting in trouble and it scares him.

Yet you described other children as “terrorising and teasing” your son…
I don’t class violence between 7 year olds as just rough and tumble as they are old enough to know not to go and push one another.

Your 7 year old will encounter angry adults and those who don't believe him through his childhood. He's done so once, survived, and gone back to the playground. Well done for persuading him to do that. Next time this happens he'll know it's not a catastrophe.
Tell him you believe him and move on.

Here we go again bandying the word bullying around. Small boys playing in a boisterous way is not bullying and you are devaluing the word by using it in this way. In my opinion we might as well give up on the word bullying altogether because these days every single tactless comment, shove, thump playing tag etc is regarded as bullying. Bullying is something very different and I really don't think a lot of parents even know what it means.