When Another Parent Physically Disciplines Your Child

Something unthinkable happened this week…

Grace took Bryan to hang out with a couple of other mothers and their children earlier this week. Kids being kids (god, especially boys), they are bound to get rough with each other from time to time. And when they are as young as two, their lack of impulsive control simply overwhelms their feeble minds and their bodies sometimes muscle over their intentions.

So what happened? While having fun with a younger girl at the play date, Bryan bit her. When the girl screamed and started her flood of tears, Grace took her time and tried to find out what happened and attempted to pull Bryan aside to talk to him about this mischievous behavior. This was when the little girl’s mom swooped by Bryan’s side, yelled at him for being such a bully and heavily smacked Bryan by the arm — all without even finding out what happened or giving Grace a chance to take control of the situation.

Needless to say, Grace was really pissed. But she chose to hold back on the anger and came back to discuss the issue with me. And quite frankly, I was dumbfounded and shocked to hear that someone would go as far as overstepping another parent’s authority and spank someone else’s child like that.

We are very disappointed and frustrated with this individual and her lack of understanding of early childhood development (though she claims she knows a thing or two and brags about it [ahem, see my previous entry]). Does she have an EQ of a toddler or something? Brian offered the explanation that maybe she was overstressed and that was the tipping point for her. Brian argued that maybe she felt remorseful about what she’d done.

But later we found out that this woman has been announcing to everyone we know, well, basically about how Bryan, a two year-old child, is a prick and bullied her sweetest, most lovely, wonderful and adorable, sugar pie angel. Now, to be fair and to put things in perspective, with Bryan’s other regular play dates/play groups, Bryan’s considered the “calm” one — the one who gets picked on all the time. But let’s suppose Bryan was the “excitable” one, what gives the right to one parent spanking someone else’s child?

I wish her good luck with her own child with her involuntary spanking and frequent threats to spanking her (at barely one year old). And one can only hope that her daughter will never ever bite, scratch, kick or hit another child, EVER. And of course, constant threats to spanking and physical discipline always improves moral, self-confidence and repress violence. That’s why death penalties work so freaking well against crime, eh?