WE live in a street of about 20 houses of which 5 are occupied by friends of ours all with children. Consequently the children all play together ( and squabble together !) quite a lot. In one of the houses is another family who are related to our friends ( their brother and his wife and family) but with whom we are not particularly friendly, just polite and neighbourly.
today all the children from the street were playing in the snow.
My ds aged 9 and my friend's ds aged 6 ( I'll call him A) offended this other family's children ( the family we are not so friendly with). Let's call the children ( they are 4 of them X).
They offended them because X apparantly spent a long time building a snowman and then went inside. Ds and A , looking for more snow apparantly decided to use the snow from the snowman and proceeded to demolish it. the mother of X waved from her window with a disapproving shout and according to her shouted to stop it. Ds said she didn't actually say anything . Unsurprisingly her children were devastated when teh snowman was destryoed and she told Ds and A off and telephoned me ( I was inside at the time - this house is two doors from my house and the snowman was on the street outside it). She was very irate and I said I would speka to ds and of course understood and expressed my apologies.
When i spoke to ds I first asked him why he had demolished teh snowman and spoke to him about hurting chidlren's feelings and destruction for no reason as well as disrespecting an adult who ahd asked ( or gestured for him ) to stop.
Ds said that many snowman had been built that morning ( which was true) and he didn't realise this one was so cherished and was sorry. I told him to go and apologise to X which he did.
The mother of A then walked up teh street and announced that A, for his part in it had been not only to apologise but also had to rebuild teh snowman and then spend teh rest of the day in his room ( this was 10.00am). I told ds a good thing to do would be to help rebuild the snowman outside X front door whihc he did with relish. Afterwarsdd I told him he was free to play but to take care not to hurt anyone's feelings etc./
the motehr of A launched into a literal attack saying that this was poor parenting and that I shodl take this more serioulsy and punish ds more. She said I should follow her esxample and send ds to his room for the day. We debated this for half an hour with her insinuating that my parenting was lax and me tryign to be tactful telling her that the most important thing in my eyes was my son's education. He had learned a lesson , he had repented ( and he had genuinely realised what he'd done wrong and why) and he'd put it to rights by apologinsing and helping to rebuild the snowman . I felt that was more than sufficeint.
A's mother was not satisfied and said teh boys' actions ( A's as well as ds' ) were "cruel", "heartless" and " disgraceful " and akin to bullying.
I feel this is a total overaction to a small incident which had been put to rights. it has left a sour taste in my mouth and no doubt A's mothers ( not least as A had to watch ds playing for the rest of the day and apparatnly became hysterical eventually caged in his room) and has caused friction between A's mother, myself and X's mother ( who also wanted ds " off the streets" . In fact this mother came out later to "suggest" that my ds plays elesewhere and not otuside her front garden.
Please let me know what you all think of this?