A mum’s parenting dilemma has sparked debate online.
“Today I learned some parents think you should never speak to another child at the playground. I’m curious whether I’ve completely missed a shift in playground etiquette,” the mum shared to Reddit on Monday.
She then went on to explain that she had “calmly” reprimanded another child after she accidentally knocked her two-year-old daughter down, leaving her in tears.
“My two-year-old was standing in one of the splash pad circles playing with the fountains when an older, much larger girl came running around a corner without looking and ploughed into her.
“My daughter briefly went airborne before hitting the concrete and ended up with abrasions and a very frightened cry.
“As I picked her up, I calmly said to the other child, ‘You hurt a child who is smaller than you. Please be careful and play safer’.
“That was the entirety of my interaction, and I scooped my girl up and went to sit with and soothe her.”
She then said the parent of the other child confronted her while she was holding her crying toddler, saying she “should never have spoken to her daughter”.
The parent argued she should have told her first and let her handle it, with two other mums in the playground agreeing.
“To me, there’s a difference between disciplining someone else’s child and briefly addressing an immediate safety issue in a shared public space.
“I wasn’t assigning consequences or trying to parent her. I was simply naming what had happened and asking her to play more carefully.”
The mum then shared her dilemma saying that she wanted her daughter to know she will be “protected if someone hurts her” and asked whether she was in the wrong.
“Is it really expected now that adults never speak directly to another child, even after they’ve just hurt yours, and even if only to reflect impact and ask them to stop? Have I completely missed a social norm here?” she asked.
Many people backed the mum’s actions saying she “did the right thing”.
“If you don’t want other parents correcting your kid when they’re a risk to the safety of others, teach your kid to behave appropriately, and supervise closely enough to intervene,” one person commented.
Others said she overreacted, with one saying: “Just because a kid wasn’t looking and accidentally bumped your kid? Accidents happen. I don’t get why you are acting like this was some malicious attack.”
Another said her approach may have been “too heavy-handed” and felt like “scolding and shaming”.
“I would’ve just said, ‘Oh no, let’s be careful because she is only two’… The other child is literally a child, of course she came running around the corner without looking,” they wrote.
“Frankly, you are in charge of supervising your child. If there are older kids around, that includes making sure they are able to play safely.”
Image: Shutterstock
