Disciplining other kids at the park

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Realize that if you put your hands on another kid, you are subjecting yourself to lawsuits and arrest.

Nope. Not when defending another.

+1 OP said she only grabbed his hand to get the little boy to physically let go of her daughter's hair. Contact in that case was unavoidable. OP did the right thing. I would have done the same - I'm not going to stand there and watch some little a-hole hurt my kid.

I'm sorry this mom was nutty. She obviously wasn't paying attention - or worse - even if she did see what happened some people still might react crazily. You did what you had to do OP. Don't feel bad about it.

This. And if the bully kid did not let go of my child's hair I would have quickly squeezed his hand very hard to do so. When another is hurting my child especially a second time I will do whatever is necessary to help her.

Wow, ok. You definitely would deserve to be yelled at in that case.

Np here. Bring on the yelling then.

bring on the assault charges too?

Again, it's not assault when you're defending someone against an aggressor.

She clearly described purposefully using **more force than necessary** to remove the kid's hand,in order to hurt the child.

That's not how I read it.

Are you blind? She said she would squeeze his hand extra hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would've done exactly what you did. If a child is hurting your child, you step in and stop them from causing further harm. They weren't fighting over a toy or who sat in what spot first.

There was a 3 or 4 year old throwing mulch in the face of my 6 year old at the park a few weeks ago. My 6 yo told him to stop, but he kept doing it. So I looked him dead in the eye and said, We don't throw things at people. He backed off, but 2 minutes later had another fistful of mulch and was ready to aim at another kid. I looked at him and said "Don't throw mulch. That's not acceptable."

I was prepared to do battle with the parent if they got ticked off, but luckily when the mom appeared a few minutes later she didn't mind. I was also prepared to tell a parent off for not supervising closely enough, but she was super-duper pregnant, and waddling back up from the port-a-potty, so I gave her a pass

You should have told your kid to move.

The 2nd time the kid was targeting a child who wasn't mine. I wasn't going to sit back and watch a kid get an eye injury. Hell-raisers don't get to get the entire playground to themselves because all the other kids will just clear out to avoid getting hurt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know there are so many different opinions here, but would love to know if others think I was in the wrong.

I was at the park with DD (3.5) for an hour this morning before taking her to a class. She was playing in the sand box with other kids, and a boy came up to her who was around the same age and started pulling her hair. My DD asked him to stop and moved away. She came over to me and was upset because she didn't like it, so I helped her find a new spot to play away from this boy, and then I sat closer by to keep an eye on things. Well, a few minutes later the boy came over again and grabbed DD's hair. She started crying and so I got up and went over to him and asked him to stop. He didn't and was really pulling hard so I grabbed his arm (gently) and opened his fingers so he would stop pulling her hair. Then I said to him sternly - we don't pull other people's hair, it's not nice and it hurts. I guess this caused a commotion, probably because my DD was crying so loudly, and the boy ran over to him mom and said I was being mean to him. So then the mom gets up (she was on her phone the entire time so she didn't see what happened - no judgement since I am often on my phone too but I do try to keep an eye on things too) and starts yelling at me to mind my own business and that I shouldn't intervene because kids need to learn how to work things out on their own. While I agree to a certain extent, I draw the line when someone is physically hurting my child. I calmly explained what was going on - and another mom jumped in to corroborate my story - and the bully's mom just kept giving me attitude and said if my child is so sensitive maybe she shouldn't be playing in the park around other kids who might touch her. I mean, really?

DD and I had to leave anyway so it's over, but curious what would others have done here? Hope we don't see them again anytime soon.

Bully? Really?

That's kind of a reach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Realize that if you put your hands on another kid, you are subjecting yourself to lawsuits and arrest.

Nope. Not when defending another.

+1 OP said she only grabbed his hand to get the little boy to physically let go of her daughter's hair. Contact in that case was unavoidable. OP did the right thing. I would have done the same - I'm not going to stand there and watch some little a-hole hurt my kid.

I'm sorry this mom was nutty. She obviously wasn't paying attention - or worse - even if she did see what happened some people still might react crazily. You did what you had to do OP. Don't feel bad about it.

This. And if the bully kid did not let go of my child's hair I would have quickly squeezed his hand very hard to do so. When another is hurting my child especially a second time I will do whatever is necessary to help her.

Wow, ok. You definitely would deserve to be yelled at in that case.

Np here. Bring on the yelling then.

bring on the assault charges too?

Again, it's not assault when you're defending someone against an aggressor.

She clearly described purposefully using **more force than necessary** to remove the kid's hand,in order to hurt the child.

That's not how I read it.

Are you blind? She said she would squeeze his hand extra hard.

No she didn't. You're making things up.

[Anonymous]

Amusement park pp-are you talking about those old-fashioned cars at kings dominion that go about 5 mph? You way overreacted.

[Anonymous]

Not really possible for a 3 yo to be a bully.

[Anonymous]

OP, you did the right thing. That kid is a brat, as is his mom.

[JackieTreehorn]

Anonymous wrote:Not really possible for a 3 yo to be a bully.

Sure it is.

3 yr olds can be mean just for the sake of it.

[Anonymous]

I'm disturbed by the number of people responding who think a parent doesn't have a right to physically intervene when another child is physically harming their kid. Absurd.

OP I don't think you did anything wrong. I hope if my kid ever acts like an a-hole at the park and I'm not watching that another parent will intervene and tell her to stop. And if I hear about it, I will be horrified and apologize because I don't raise my kids to behave that way.

[Anonymous]

Wow. What a nightmare her kid is! You did the right thing. That mom is crazy.

[Anonymous]

JackieTreehorn wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really possible for a 3 yo to be a bully.

Sure it is.

3 yr olds can be mean just for the sake of it.

that's not the definition of bullying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm disturbed by the number of people responding who think a parent doesn't have a right to physically intervene when another child is physically harming their kid. Absurd.

OP I don't think you did anything wrong. I hope if my kid ever acts like an a-hole at the park and I'm not watching that another parent will intervene and tell her to stop. And if I hear about it, I will be horrified and apologize because I don't raise my kids to behave that way.

Nobody is saying she can't physically intervene. It's the additional lecturing/yelling/"disciplining" that crosses the line. As would "squeezing the child's hand very very hard" as one poster suggested.

[Anonymous]

It is fascinating to me that there is one person on here who thinks a kid should be able to keep pulling a girls hair as long as he wants and that that the girl's mother shouldn't be able to pry his hands off of her. And yes that might involve squeezing his hand to get him off of her so he might find that uncomfortable - um....he is pulling her hair knowing he shouldn't, right?
What is the alternative? Should she allow the hair pulling to get worse, witness her daughter in pain, and go running to look for the other mom so she can pry the boys hands off her herself? Unbelievable to me.
Bring on the yelling and the lawyers I suppose if that is where it goes. But I am not going to allow someone to continuously hurt my child because I am restricted to words only with a stranger's kid who wont listen to me. I would speak sternly twice and then remove his hand. Sometimes you do have to touch another person's kid. Just sometimes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm disturbed by the number of people responding who think a parent doesn't have a right to physically intervene when another child is physically harming their kid. Absurd.

OP I don't think you did anything wrong. I hope if my kid ever acts like an a-hole at the park and I'm not watching that another parent will intervene and tell her to stop. And if I hear about it, I will be horrified and apologize because I don't raise my kids to behave that way.

THIS. I totally agree. God forbid one of my three children decides to test boundaries at the park when my head is turned in this way....I would never want another child getting hurt at the hands of my children so I would be fine with someone stepping in and stopping it and would be so embarrassed. I would NOT be defiant, defensive, and telling the other parent to MYOB. WTH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amusement park pp-are you talking about those old-fashioned cars at kings dominion that go about 5 mph? You way overreacted.

It was 6 Flags, but I assume they're the same thing, unless the KD ones have better back support. Have you ever been rammed by one? It does hurt, although obviously it's not like you're going to end up an invalid or something. It only turned into a big thing because this woman kept yelling at me about how there was no way to stop the car. Clearly there is a way to stop the car, and her rabid insistence that there was no way to stop the car was really weird. If there was an easy way to stop the car so that you would not ram into someone, wouldn't you want to know it? Because she said there wasn't a way to stop the car, I told her that the car would stop if you pulled up on the brake. She just kept yelling that there's no way to stop or slow down the car. (She plainly thought it was funny to ram into our car, because she was laughing really loudly about it until I said "No bumping!" She was so loud and belligerent that if it hadn't been 10:30 on a Sunday morning, I would have thought she was drunk.). They do have bumper cars in another area of the park, so if you want to bump and be bumped, there is a venue for that.

If we really live in a world where you can't tell someone that they should follow posted rules and not run into you and your kid, then that's just depressing. Can't people just respect each other? Would it have been so hard for her to say "Whoops! Sorry!" (like her husband did)? Or even "Oh, thanks for showing me! I didn't know how to stop it!"