Niamh couldn't go to tumble tots on Monday because she hadn't been 48 hours clear of the d and v bug she had so as mum was off we decided to take her today to a morning class at another venue. She had a good time, although she is currently in the stage where the equipment at gym babes is a bit little for her and the equipment at tumble tots is a bit big for her, it's just about getting used to it (and maybe growing a little bit).
She was playing with some bean bags with some other children and this little boy grabbed her head practically strangling her and then scraped his hands down her face, leaving red marks and scratches. Now although I didn't like seeing Niamh get hurt, kids will be kids and at this young age they are still learning so stuff like that is bound to happen, in fact no doubt Niamh will accidentally hurt someone or pull their hair or something. I would be mortified and feel so, so bad and say sorry more times than you could count. In fact Niamh has accidentally hurt other children and gym babes and other children have accidentally hurt her, I have said sorry to the mum and no to Niamh and vice versa. But the way this boy went for Niamh was REALLY violent, especially for a boy that was 2 or barely older. What pisses me off the most is that his mum didn't even apologise for what he did, nor did she try and tell him it was wrong. IT IS SO RUDE. That really, really annoyed me.
I should have said something, but I didn't want to show Niamh up (sounds silly really doesn't it). Besides "Sorry but your son just tried to pull off my daughters head, think an apology might be in order, if not from him, then from you maybe? You stuck up old bag?" or perhaps "Don't you think that if your son attacks another child with that amount of violence you should maybe tell him that it's not a nice thing to do, if he does that as a teenager or an adult it would probably be assault, suppose you would just tell the police that it's a perfectly fine thing to do, you delusional stuck up cow!" would possibly make the point but not give everyone a good impression of me. I'm not good at controlling my mouth once I open it, so mostly, unless I have a whole hell of a lot of time to think about exactly what I am going to say then I don't bother to confront people. I never word it the way I should, like constructive criticism, more like an endless insulting rant from the part of my brain that never shuts off.
I wasn't really up to taking Niamh round for the whole session so my mum did most of it, which gave me the chance to sit back and watch. This child being violent didn't seem to be a one-off, the other children and parents were defiantly avoiding him and I made sure Niamh did so too (like the plague) for the rest of the session. His mum kept looking at me, honestly all it would have taken was an apology, stupid cow. She had NO control over him, whatsoever. Having watched them for a while it occurred to me (from the way he was acting) that he might be autistic, and this would go someway to explaining what he did (so would his age) and maybe the level of violence he did it with. But it DOES NOT excuse his MOTHER'S complete lack of manners or concern for what her son had just done to my daughter. I also don't think it excuses the fact that she didn't even bother to explain to him that what he had done was wrong, I know that autistic children take longer to teach and learn but that doesn't mean that you should not bother to attempt it! The word no, never even came out of her mouth, not once, ARGH it just annoys me so much! Needless to say that I won't be taking her back to that class, ever. She will be going to her Monday one from now on!
I think that I am pretty lenient with Niamh. I have decided I don't want to smack her because I think it does instil a violent nature to an extent. I was smacked, never hard, and I'm not violent but I will admit that if someone annoys me the first thing I really want to do is slap them and sometimes I do (normally in a jokey fashion) but if I am completely honest I don't want Niamh to have that same instinctual reaction. So I am currently researching other methods of discipline. I have found that at the moment she can't understand that her actions have consequences so punishment is completely ineffective, so you should tell them no, tell them why and distract them with something else. This is what I do with Niamh, for now at least. To be honest it is massively repetitive but eventually she gets the point. So, if the situation was reversed I would have firstly, apologised to the mother and checked the other child was ok, and said sorry to him/her myself. I would then have taken Niamh to one side and (after telling her no when she did it) said something along the lines of "no, we do not hurt (scratch/grab/hit/pull) people, because it is not nice to hurt others you don't like getting hurt do you". This woman did nothing, nothing at all, just glared at me and carried on playing with her violent child.
Right sorry, rant over, but I really do think that there is a severe lack of manners in today's society!
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