My friend and her children. I just don't know what to do next.......

[littlemisstickle]

This may turn into quite a ramble so apologies in advance.
One of my closest friends has got 2 daughters, aged 7 and 4. They have always been very difficult children IMO, naughty, rude and rather spoilt. My friend and her dh have had an odd/difficult relationship for a number of years, something which I don't think has done their children any good as their homelife has been somewhat bizarre.
The past year has been difficult as my friend and her dh split up. She has the children - he is useless and is very much a part-part-part-time father - and they have unfortunately been very unsettled since the split and have had to live in a few different places. The childrens behaviour has obviously not been helped by these changes, but I do not think it is any worse than it has ever been before. I have always found it difficult to know how to treat them as they are not really used to discipline but in my house and/or infront of my children I feel that I ought to discipline them the same as my children and insist that in my home they abide by my set of rules,etc.
Things recently came to a bit of a head from my point of view. I was giving them a lift somewhere when the 7 yo started hitting her mum because she couldn't get her own way on something. I got out, got her (the 7 yo) out and told her in no uncertain terms that hitting was not acceptable. She went to hit me so I grabbed her wrists and planned to hold on to them til she calmed down enough to apologise. However her tantrum continued. I picked her up and moved her out of sight of her mum and sister so that she could not "play to an audience" but the tantrum still continued with her shouting and screaming in the street. When I let go of her she hit me, kicked me, scratched me, etc. This all continued for some time, with lots of looks from passers-by. In the end when she started head butting me I told her that if she hit/kicked/anything again I would smack her bum. Now I have never smacked a child in my life, having felt that my own children are well enough behaved to not necessitate it. I also know that she (the 7yo) has never been smacked before. So, she hit me again so I smacked her bum (not hard at all, I was aiming more for the "shock" factor to try and snap her out of it). She hit me again, I smacked her bum again. And so on. In total, the tantrum continued for just short of an hour until she EVENTUALLY calmed down and EVENTUALLY apologised to both me and her mum. At which point, her mum was happy and went back to normal where as I was left feeling astounded at such disgusting behavious, and her mums reaction (or lack of) to it all.
So now I am left feeling extremely confused. I am not proud of myself for smacking someone elses child and I am sure my friend is not thanking me but what else could I have done? And I feel so cross, no angry, with my friend for raising her children like this. I know things have been tough for her but how can things be so tough that you allow your child to hit anyone? There is just no respect whatsoever. But I no longer know what to do with our friendship. I do not want to have to pretend to like her children anymore when they are, truth be told, actually not nice children. But I do not see how our friendship can survive when I feel like this. I also now realise that I cannot respect my friend when she has allowed her children to be like this.
I am sure there are people out there who will think I am in the wrong for my stepping in. I accept that, but am not on here to ask for opinions on that side of it. What I really want is some advice on how I handle the relationship with my friend and her children from here on in.
As predicted, this is a very long post. Thanks to anyone who makes their way through it!

Sorry but if I were your friend I'd feel mortified and angry that you took it upon yourself to so radically discipline my child. The boundaries are hers to set not yours. spearting her form her mum to avoid the conflict was one thing but taking over another, especially for that length of time. I'm not sure how you can continue to feign a friendship with her if you ahve such a lkow opinion. Have you had any contact since ? If not and you wish to maintain the friendship, call and accept you overstepped the mark and apologise. If you are confused I bet the 7yr old is too, and would possibly be more than a little wary of you in future.

I think your opinion of your friends children is too low for you to be of any practical use to your friend. If you had hit my child, i would have gone ballistic. I dont care that she was behaving badly, if you couldnt handle it then you should't have intervened. You are very lucky that you have well behaved children and maybe you should find a friend with equally behaved children.

Your friends children clearly have alot on their plates and to be fair i find your post a little unsettling. If i were your friend, i would be looking elsewhere for support, rather than judgement of my childs behavioural problems.

Many people have slated you on here for smacking the child, i agree with them i am afraid because i do not think this was the actions of a well meaning friend at the end of her tether trying to help the child.

You spent your whole OP basically saying how horrid her children were so i put it to you that you were being somewhat of a bully and trying to show your friend how to put her child in her place.

You would not be my friend any more to be honest and there would be no need then for you to question whether you felt your friend deserved your continued support.

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doodledootoo - i think if the OP hadn't including an introduction based on how badly behaved and frankly awful her friends children were compared to her own perfect children she would have receieved more support. She made it blatantly clear she disliked her friends children.quote _ "One of my closest friends has got 2 daughters, aged 7 and 4. They have always been very difficult children IMO, naughty, rude and rather spoilt. + This leads me to believe she behaved in an inappropriate way and not in the best interests of the child. As for what she should have done and how she should proceed. She should have kept her bloody nose out of it and let the mother deal with it at that moment in time. She could have at a later date, had a chat to the little girl, asking her why she was hitting her mummy and what is bothering her. She could have offered to baby sit to take some of the pressure off (not that id leave my children with her!). I have just re read the original post and i am even more angry to be honest and thinks she can best help her friend by keeping away.

I can't believe this thread has made me cry.

I'm so worked up because I remember being 7yo. I remember wondering why all my friends had Dads to play with them and take them fun places and I didn't. I remember wondering why my dad didn't want to see me. I remember wondering how my mother could hit me and say she loved me in the same 5 minutes. I remember crying in my bed at night worrying why my mother stayed in bed most of the day and why she was crying when I was taken out of the house by a neighbour. Was she scared? Did I make her cry? Would she be ok? I remember no matter how many times she hurt me that I still loved her. I remember not being able to talk about why I was sad because I didn't now how to say it and because I didn't want people to think my mother was a bad Mammy.

I'm 29 years old and I'm crying typing this. I just want you to realise that it doesn't go away when you grow up. I've been off work for 4 months and only went back last week. I see a therapist every week.

The pain and hurt of being hit lasts longer then the sting of the slap.

This little girl has a lot on her plate at a very young age. Help her, don't hit her is all I'm saying.

I agree with lucyellensmum.
some situations are just too difficult to deal with, they need sensitive and careful handling.
otherwise we can just make things worse. whatever our good intentions

typical mn, the op knows she was wrong to hit the child. abroller i dont thnk are helping at all, the op obviously feels awful about this already and you are making it worse. making her feel bad for what shes done isnt going to help as she feels bad enough already. she needs to be helping her troubled friend.

littlemisstickle seriusly it sounds like your friend has issues and could do with a friend like you to sort it out.

ABRoller, i am sorry to read about your situation for you.

I am sorry but i just dont feel that someone who so obviously dislikes the child has any right to discipline her. She clearly thinks very highly of her own parenting skills as she is keen to point out how wonderful her children are. But she didnt handle this so well did she? If i have hurt her feelings then i am sorry, but she asked for my advice, she got it, she needs to take a step back for the sake of her friends children as her dislike of them is clouding her judgement.

I am not saying i would have handled the situation any better but its clear that removing a frightened and angry little girl from her mother just exacerbated the situation.

PP, the OP said..."I do not want to have to pretend to like her children anymore when they are, truth be told, actually not nice children. But I do not see how our friendship can survive when I feel like this. I also now realise that I cannot respect my friend when she has allowed her children to be like this."

The point of my post was not to berate the OP again for hitting but to try and understand that maybe the child is not just a bold brat but a hurt little girl and in understanding and realising that, she may find a way to help her friend and her children.

But, yes maybe you're right. Lets label the child a naughty child and suggest Supernanny tactics to 'deal' with her. Lets not try to understand her at all!

Lets try and help her mother by babysitting for a while

FFS!

Abroller , no wonder you are upset at this thread.

I do think that the OP was trying to help and matters escalated outside of her control and experience, and the Mother sounds like she is depressed and has given up. Given that the Op IS a friend and has helped in the past, I think the best way forward would be for her to try and build bridges with both the Mother and daughter, so that the little girl (understandably upset after a traumatic few years) can move on and perhaps realise that smacking/hitting etc is wrong.

abroller im trying to reccomend that she helps haer friend and the child by understanding but you making her feel worse isnt gooing to help. I suggested supperanny as she has some good discipline techniques that the ops friend may find useful. Yes they all need to be understood, especially the child and I dont think the op should loose her friend as this might be the last thing she needs.

I apologise for not reading your post correctly as I think we are pretty much on the same wavelength in trying to help both the op, her friend and the child who is the innocent in all this (without wanting to sound like jeremy kyle)

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Oh Abs

OP was dumped unexpectedly in a blardy awful situation, violent out-of-control child and OP only adult available to try to bring things under control. Unless you had specialist training in dealing with disturbed children, don't think anybody could have dealt with that well.

My hat would be off to anybody who could, anyway.

More I think about it, I think I'd be furious with the friend (girl's mother) who let this situation arise.

I have only read the first post - but I think it was wrong of the mother to leave you to deal with it.

I would have taken her round to her mum - taken the sister off round the corner and left her to deal with it.

Especially if the first smack didn't work - not much point in continuing down that route if the shock value of it did not help in the first place.

I would be unhappy with how I dealt with it - but more unhappy with the mother of the child.

It depends how much I value their friendship as to what I did next - either tell her how I felt about the whole thing and hope you could sort something about between you, or just steer clear of them in future.

Well I'm just going to add my 2 pence worth and agree with the other posters who have said that the only way forward, if you want to heal this relationship, is to apologise to your friend and apologise to the little girl you hit.

Then take a good long look at yourself as to why you think hitting people smaller than you is OK.

I'd also add that it's probably very unlikely that as this little girl is acting violently that she has never been hit. Children act out their experiences. She has either seen violence or been treated violently herself. You just added to that, I hope your conscience pricks you enough now to do the right thing.

I was disappointed by negative response to OP who requested help on moving forward.....

FWIW I would suggest that the most obvious option is to sit down with the friend and discuss how she is feeling with regard to the behaviour of her children (tactfully of course) and apologise for the incident escalating to the point that it did (of which she obviously has regrets).

Asking the friend if she needs help to cope with the children and supporting her through any course or meetings with proffesionals may go some way remedying the situation.

It would be a shame and probably not helpful for the op to distance herself from the family as if the children are that badly behaved her circle of friends is potentially quite small already

I would be happy for my close friends to discipline my dc as I feel that if they felt this was necessary the dc were likely to warrant such intervention ( but then my friends and I have similar perspectives on acceptable behaviour), although obviously there are numerous views on taking it to the extreme of smacking.

Aw ladies, such a shit day! I had to go out for a while so have only just seen these lastest posts. I'm sorry for the way I reacted and I know it may not have appeared to be helping but I can wholeheartedly say that that was my only intention.

I shouldn't have gotton so worked up by letting personal experience come into it. It really did make me sad and my own pain dictated what I said. I should have used it to be more constructive or at least in a way that would have been obviously constructive.

There have been a lot of good advice posts from others. I hope the OP finds the answers she's looking for amongst them.

No need to apologize, Abs. Yours was the best post on this thread.

You'll get through your childhood experience, but at 29, you're probably right at the peak of the trough. Keep doing what you're doing; at times you'll go backwards, at times you'll surge forwards. In my experience, it'll be your mid-thirties before some perspective and distance can be put between the child you once were and the adult you have become.

You'll get there, and you'll be wise. Wiser than you already are.

Desi I couldn't possibly articulate what your words and honesty mean to me. Thank you sincerely.

Then enough said, my dear friend.

Troll.

Er ... why?