My mother let someone take my son to the toilet.

[Duiwjankdjen16382]

Please can i have your opinions. Recently myself and my son went to a large family meal for my Grandads birthday. I went to order food and left my 3 year old son with my mum (his nan) when I came back to the table I asked my mum where my son was. She said he needed the toilet so her male cousin took him. This is the first time that my son has met him as he lives quite far away. I was upset as to my son it was a stranger and wasn't asked my permission. My mums cousin I know, I've been to his family Get together with his wife, children and grand children over the years. But it just didn't sit right with me. My son was gone 2 mins and didny seem phased by it. My husband when I told him was also not happy. We spoke to my mum but she didn't see a problem. Am i over reacting?

That’s the lesser of two evils for sure.

Of course they do. And YES, it is hidden in plain sight.
That doesn't alter the fact that more than 99% of people are not a danger to kids. We need to be (a) more trusting and (b) more wary. Encouraging kids to shout out about their danger; not teaching paedophiles to be ever more crafty in hiding stuff.

When I was a kid (back in the 60s, when we were more or less feral), I kept quiet about 'dangerous' and 'red flag' behaviour from men - for 2 reasons. First I was unlikely to be believed and second, because MY freedom would have been curtailed if I was believed. We need to stop making 'all men' scary and encouraging men to distance themselves from and out the bad ones - rather than putting them all on the 'other' side and becoming defensive.

Unfortunately her mother is minimising the ridiculously stupid and unsafe decision she made leading to a circumstance that was very easily avoidable.

So it seems her mother cannot be left in charge of a child without her mother being supervised by a rational adult.

Nope. If the risk of a child being r@ped can be almost wholly eradicated by avoiding strange men when they are 3 years old, then of course it can, must and should be.

In safeguarding, risk decisions consider both likelihood and severity of harm. Low impact risks with minor consequences may be reasonably tolerated, eg gran is likely to feed the child sugar so it is ok to leave the child with gran even though that is not a desirable oucome.

But where the potential outcome involves serious or irreversible harm to a child, such as being r@ped in a tolet, even a low statistical probability wholly justifies the precautionary approach.

For intimate tasks such as toileting or bathing, it is therefore appropriate to limit care to trusted, and KNOWN and appropriately authorised adults whenever possible.

The mother gets to decide who is a trusted known and appropriately authorised adult when the possible risk to a 3 year old, however tiny, is to be r@ped, sexually assaulted or otherwise abused in a toilet.

Gran is wrong, gran is arguing despite being wrong, and as she made a pointlessly stupid and easily avoidable decision gran no longer gets unsupervised authority over the child. That's the only logical and safe outcome.

None of this is relatively to a three year old being taken to the toilet by a man her doesn’t know.

Obviously safeguarding children is important, but tbh I do think it is sad if society has really reached a point where someone can't ask their cousin to see a child in the family to the loo and back safely.

Ok to be on high alert if there are abuse issues in the family, but surely that isn't the automatic assumption? And it was a public loo I am guessing, and he was gone for two minutes.

In your situation I might have said do you mind letting me know next time if he needs the loo and I will take him myself, but , having already raised it with her, I think you are going on about it a bit much.

No you are right to be concerned.

The fact your DS was fine is a good sign, but your DM was thinking like mothers of her generation and despite this, she will have meant no harm by it because she will see her cousin obviously as her family member and at the end of the day, your child was fine.

Mums nowadays are right to be protective, they are more aware of the dangers and you are being more than reasonable.

It's one thing to do something incredibly stupid - it's another to refuse to listen to the mother of the child and say she doesn't see the problem.

Gran did something incredibly stupid, and it would have been so very easy for her to just - not - do that stupid thing.

What she did is worrying, butt refusing to learn from her stupidity and acting like she doesn't get it is unacceptable.

And I can 100 percent assure you my mother, who was born in the 50s, would absolutely NOT have sent any of her little kids to a toilet with some bloke, cousin or otherwise. Stupidity and a refusal to learn is not generational, there are people like the gran in every generation.

Do you honestly not see that the safeguarding risk is not simply about this individual and whether or not he's a potential sexual abuser?

Toileting is an intimate personal care activity. What the grandmother did was communicate to her 3 year old dgc that it's ok for any adult to engage in an intimate activity with him!

It's not a case of thinking every man's a paedophile. It's the case that it's impossible to know which ones are! So, you minimise risk and teach your child what's ok and what's not. And one very simple and massively important one, is that anything involving his "private parts" is private and should only ever involve a very few, specific people.

You can't remove risk entirely but the bar needs to be set a great deal higher than encouraging the child to accept exposing his genitals in the presence of a strange man!

I think we might be on a different page here. At 3 my dc only needed escorting to the cubicle. Sorry if I have missed that this child was different.

I was not envisaging the cousin went into the loo with the child, but stood at the door.

Yes you are over reacting.

Your mum's wrong and you are not over reacting-why didn't she take him into the ladies?

The safeguarding risk remains whether the child goes into a cubicle with the door closed or not.

I don't know anyone that would not go into the toilet with a 3 year old even if the child is able to independently wee in the toilet in tbe cubicle.

They would wait outside the cubicle in the toilet.

Why would you teach your dc it was ok for a stranger to take on that role?

Yes but you are talking about the child exposing his genitals to someone. That doesn't happen outside the cubicle. There will be lots of strangers in the toilet - that's why the GM sent someone she trusted and who wasn't a stranger to her.

I mean she ought to have just gone herself ...

ETA I am not saying it ideal but the question now is what is the op actually going to do beyond what she has done - and I personally would be leaving him with the GM less. But I don't think the GM is going to see it as unreasonable as her perspective is different. To her it was a trusted relative who brought him back two minutes later.

It would never even occur to me to worry about this. There are some very strange opinions on mumsnet these days.

not an overreaction. i'd be quite upset.

🤦‍♀️

Yes but you are talking about the child exposing his genitals to someone. That doesn't happen outside the cubicle

Just to clarify @Calliopespa, the activity of going to the toilet is one that requires exposing genitals. It's a private activity. Dc need to learn which activities are private /personal and which ones are general/social. 3 year olds are not of an age to fully understand that or self detirmine.

Many, if not most, 3 year olds will also still need help of some sort, at times. By trusting someone to even just wait outside the cubicle you are implicitly trusting them to help if the child requires it. That possibility alone means that the job of toilet supervision of a 3 year old is one that should only be undertaken by a trusted caregiver.

It probably would if you had been a victim of CSA at the hands of a relative or friend of the family, where most CSAs happen

Bluntly, it should.

Signed, someone who was raped aged ten.

Let's hope you don't have children, since you openly admit you are oblivious to risk and safeguarding.

Id be angry too.

Exactly. What the hell was she thinking? A 3 year old boy is fine to be taken to the Ladies by his grandmother.