Triplets kicked off at pick up - what’s the punishment for ‘poohead’ these days?

[2freeZin]

Need a quick sanity check before I lose the plot.

Just picked up the triplets from school and full on chaos in the playground AGAIN. DS2 apparently called another child “a poohead” (creative, I know) and then DD waded in shouting “well he is one!!” while DS3 cried and said someone called him a poohead too, so now it’s a full circle of poohead drama.

Teacher gave me the look and said “we might need to have a chat if it keeps happening.”
Honestly, love, join the queue.

What’s the standard these days? A proper telling off? No iPad? Bin the Haribo? I’ve already threatened “no Bluey” and got eye rolls. Feeling like I’m raising a pack of feral meerkats.

DH thinks it’s “just a phase”. I think I’m about two tantrums away from putting wine in my travel mug for school runs.

Hit me with your consequences - or just lie and say yours never do this.

Just say “no rude talking” and the next time it happens make it terribly boring for the culprit.

How
old?

Do what my DF (former teacher) used to do to me in pretty much any disciplinary context.

Bore them silly. Sit them down and calmly ask them what the term means and keep questioning their logic for at least 30 mins or until they are desperate to agree to anything to stop talking about people being poo heads.

Fairly normal for 5-8 year olds I’d say. Let them know calling others and shouting it is unacceptable, if they keep using it in the house try and ignore. Don’t give it the oxygen of attention. It’ll pass.

I'm guessing your children are still quite young. How about you divert them onto other 'insults'? Make up some innocuous ones, like, I dunno, 'sock wearer', 'scarf weaver', 'beaker user'... whatever inoffensive nonsense you fancy. Convince them these are on a par with the worst insults they already know. Remember to be shocked and hand out appropriate consequences when they practice these at home.

Don’t make a massive deal of it - we don’t call people poo heads so I do not want to hear you’ve said that again. Then move on.

Last time my DS did this he was asked to say sorry to the poohead child he'd insulted, which he did.

Sorry but I’m just laughing at feral meerkats, that’s a wonderful expression that I am adopting for my daughter.
To be fair, this morning I swore in the car at some idiot driver and daughter promptly repeated ‘what a stupid twat’ so I desperately spent 10 minutes saying words like poop to her, to convince her that it was worse to say poop than it was to say twat (god knows why I thought that was a bright idea) … she is now happily describing everyone as both a poop and a twat. She’s 2.
You can never win!

My DS8 called Trump an “orange fuckwit” in class, obviously attributing it to me when challenged. I gave him extra Haribo and ruffled his hair.

Meh. Mine once announced to his nursery teacher “sorry we’re late, some silly woman in a bloody great Chelsea tractor was parked across the crossing”. Poohead is no biggie, I’m surprised the teacher was interested!

This reminds me of the huge trouble my ds got into I preschool for laughing at someone else calling someone poopoo 😆 Teacher told me his behaviour was totally inappropriate for his age and I would be very uncomfortable with his behaviour in primary. She later offered him a sticker for not laughing at it and once she put the sticker on he said poopoo and dissolved into laughter... she then took the sticker off. All ridiculous in hindsight.
Someone told me at the time that it was a great way to show them you can decide how much weight to give words and not be overly bothered. Another idea like pp was to make up other funny comments broccolihead etc. But in the end it was a short lived phase that dissolved when not given so much attention. Not easy when all 3 wading in, can't imagine.

I like poohead. I would have giggled and given the teacher side-eye. Mind you, my teenage GC called their (single) mum a fuckin' carrot bag and I had to bite my lip. Oh dear....no advice from me unfortunately (probably a good thing).

This.

My darling 12 year old has taken to calling people penis heads. I'd take pooheads over that I think!

Can I just gently say that while it’s not a big deal and it’s funny, the child they called a poo head might have been very upset by it?

I have an excellent mate who gives the paddington hard stare and asks the kids what they think their punishment should be.
Apparently they always come up with something appropriate and slightly more harsh than she would have done.
My kids would and still do argue bloody murder that what they did was actually completely justified.

This. Children know there’d are limited consequences these days but sadly for them there are no rules preventing me from talking to them at length about their behaviour.

I would say ime multiples are worse than singletons ( twins here) as despite fighting regularly they will chime in and defend each other do you’ve got to cut through all that noise too.

"Beaker user" might not be advisable if the other kid's parent is a Mumsnetter! 😆

I would ignore this, smile brightly at the victim and their mother and say "Sorry, DC left his manners at home today but we'll be having a chat later".

Then I'd have a chat when the kids are in the bath (that usually calms them down a bit) about using kind words and not hurting people's feelings.

What school chooses to do (given it happened in the playground) is up to them. Division of responsibility between school and home. Tbh, I'd welcome the teacher having a "little chat" with my DC as little kids generally pay much more attention to their teachers than their parents.

This is not a biggie. It's mildly humiliating to be the "owner" of the miscreants but not one to stress over.

I am in awe of you managing logistically to corral three out of the playground. My one is often causing chaos.

Consequences can be simple, and I'm a fellow, seasoned, triplet mum. "Next one to say it has to empty all the lunch bags/tidy the book shelf/sort the sock basket" etc. little, irritating age appropriate tasks that they moan about. They soon learn to zip it.

They're lovely adults. 😉

Reading that made me laugh so loud. Pooheads all round 🤣

To be fair, that's just factual.

I like this idea: but I think if I was the child, I would pick something the adults would hesitate to do.

I know someone who made their child write out “I will stop using potty talk” a number of times.

Punishment? Nothing. They called someone a poo head, didn’t stab someone 🤣 don’t overthink it, you’re doing great - triplets! You’re a bloody superhero 💛

I’m ABSOLUTELY not saying this is the case here-but there were triplets in my year-and he found it very difficult to deal with them-I think because they were their own little “tribe”. He once said “they make my head go round and round being the same”. Obviously their fault-but I think if all three of them had called him a poop head it would have had quite an impact!