Did I do the right or wrong thing by stopping another parent from talking to my kid at the park?
Today I took my 6 year old son to a local park. He had brought a small ball to play with, that he and another kid were rolling to eachother down a spiral slide. At some point the ball shot off the end of the slide and my kid lost track of it.
When we found it another little boy (younger, probably about 2 or 3 years old) had it and didn’t initially want to give it back. My son started to tear up and get upset, but didn’t yell or say anything mean, and the other kid’s dad intervened and made his kid give back the ball.
I thought the situation was done, so I called my kid over to me. As he turned, still visibly unhappy from the altercation he said “mum that kid tried to steal my ball.” I went to respond to calm him down but before I could talk the other kid’s dad stopped my son and began to lecture him about how his son wasn’t stealing, he was just little and didn’t understand.
I made my way over trying to interrupt the guy and diffuse the situation calmly, but he continued to talk over the top of me and told my kid that he “thought it was time that he (my son) went home”. It was then that I got louder and in between this guy and my son and told him that he needed to leave my kid alone and that it was inappropriate for him to chastise someone else’s kid like that.
He started to argue with me and say that “it wasn’t inappropriate to talk to a kid ‘politely’ at the park” after a few more short words which admittedly got a little heated I told him to leave us alone and that I was done talking to him. He continued to let his kid follow mine around the park until he was so uncomfortable he asked if we could leave.
As we left the guy made loud snide comments about how rude I had been to what I assume was his wife who had stayed silent throughout the exchange.
Should I have left sooner? Should I have said more to the man, I’m still shaking im that angry and upset
Source
Wrong group who in the wrong here
I hope you and your child are ok?You wasn’t in the wrong,his a coward,what man approaches a woman n child when his wife is there,your better than me I would of gone bat s##t crazy then walked over to the mom n gave her a piece of my mind, I wouldnt of left either,what an absolute coward of a boy stuck in a man’s body x
Yeah you’ve blown it all out of proportion. It was OK for him to just say his kid wasn’t stealing it…your kid probably thought he was trying to so the dad simply said he wasn’t to reassure your kid & remind him he’s only little…then you go over acting on defence & raising your voice so hence the dads reply. 🙄
If that was me, I would have left or moved elsewhere … no point stressing over something like that
Think the both of you were to be honest, your child obviously didn’t understand that he wasn’t stealing the ball, what would you have said to your child? If it was the same thing he’s only little he doesn’t understand then fine, if not …. he shouldn’t have told your child to go home but he had every right to say he wasn’t stealing the ball and reassuring him, sounded like you’ve got your back up then so did he
Wouldn’t have allowed him myself to lecture my son, on other hand at 6 he maybe should be old enough to not call a toddler out on stealing a ball, situation maybe would have had been different as the father was taking the ball from the toddler so wasnt being unreasonable.
But was he lecturing your son or just trying to explain his little boy didn’t understand I mean it really depends the guy might have been trying to make your son not so upset because if something like this happened I would probably say the same and say sorry they don’t understand some things yet so I think it depends on how it was said so in this case the wrong could be either hand here