Wow. Sounds like someone was sippin’ too much of the cuckoo juice. You did the right thing. Now that the cops know who he is, I doubt he’ll bother you again. His call to the the authorities pretty much guarantees he won’t step out of line because he blew his anonymity.
I miss the days when kids played too rough, cried, and then made up. It’s a sad reality that some parents just don’t have a clue.
I also wonder, if the kid is a scumy little lier, that tried to provoke the rage response in his father, knowing what he was like.
How old are these kids?
My son is 8; the other kid looked to be of similar age, but was apparently described to the police as 5, which I find quite hard to believe.
When my sister taught primary school at a town near Windsor, she got pretty much exactly the same treatment you describe, not from one but several families of the children she taught, at Parents’ Evenings. Usually in response to some perceived negativity in her reporting of the kids’ performance. She had to run away on one occasion where a similar-sounding meathead was going to punch her in the face - my 20-something sister, in a classroom, on her own with these thugs.
IMO it’s part of the cult-of-the-child that is perhaps the flipside of neglect: the child, though neglected, can do no wrong. It’s the same mentality that means parents will do anything to help an accused delinquent, including lying to the police about their illegal activities, and in another manifestation has created anti-paedophile vigilante mobs. Thank God we don’t have guns.
A thoroughly nasty situation, and you have my many sympathies. Let’s hope the relatives are too ashamed to allow their visitors to return.
Damn, what a nutjob. It’s pretty astonishing that given what precipitated the incident happened among kids he wouldn’t want to first clarify the details with another adult and then handle the resolution as such. To say that the father sounds emotionally stunted is an understatement of almost egregious proportions. Furthermore, his eye for an eye crap is just so disturbing after you clearly demonstrated that there wasn’t any harmful intent involved. It was an accident among kids, nothing more, and his response was so disproportionate. I don’t blame you one bit for being disturbed by his reaction.
Smart of you to let him know the police are invloved. For whatever it’s worth, his anger has probably already been directed at a subsequent incident, given the shortness of his fuse. Sadly though, what’s his kid to become someday? The thought makes me shudder.
Thing is, although I don’t really condone it, I can understand and sympathise with the school of thought that says “look kid, you have to stand up for yourself - if someone hits you, hit them back, harder” - if that had happened, and my son had come home with a bruise, I’d have just shrugged it off - it’s the fact that, after the heat of the moment, they wanted to apply some bizarre mechanical and inevitable form of physical justice that completely creeps me out.
Yeah, it’s the asking for permission to hit back that’s screwy. Almost like Dad knew you’d say no, and that would give him an excuse to pick a fight with you.
How hurt can anyone get from a twig, anyway?
Apparently he had a bit of a red mark on his back. <shrug> whatever happened to ‘boys will be boys’
Heh-heh…my kid came home crying once when his year-older best friend (a girl) who was much bigger than him threatened to club him with a baseball bat (I knew she wouldn’t). I just told him he had a right to protect himself and let it go. They remained friends. Shit happens…parents need to chill the fuck out and let their kids work through their differences.
bMangetout, you did the only smart thing you can do when dealing with people who are irrational and potentially violent; you disengaged and looked after the safety of your family. I know from experience that it is very distressing on a personal level to be screamed at, physically threatened, and to wonder if you are in danger. What helped me get past a similar incident was to tell myself that if I spent any more time dwelling on it or thinking about it, I was allowing the guy to continue to upset me and I didn’t want him to have that power over me. So if you can, take the steps you think are necessary with regard to the authorities (which it sounds like you have done) and then let it go. That was an unpleasant manifestation of his problems, not yours.
I hope you’re doing better today.
However, in the matter of “boys being boys,” I would be quite upset if I found my child had been hit with a stick, let alone hard enough to leave a red mark. And eight-year-old is old enough to understand that you don’t hit other people at all, much less with sticks. There’s a reason “sword fighting with sticks” is an extremely bad idea, for the same reason that “playing karate” is a very bad idea – it always ends in tears. But it sounds like you would have been willing to address the problem appropriately had you been given the chance.
You’re lucky you got off with a mere tongue-lashing. If this is the same guy I’m thinking of, he’s been known to light pinecones on fire and hurl them at his enemies!
Probably not his kid anyway. I’m sure he suspects this.
Sure. If I’d seen them swinging sticks at each other, I’d have tried to stop it, because it’s inevitable that someone will end up hurt. If it had been my son hurt, I’d be just as upset with him for willingly entering into a dangerous game, as I would with the other boy for happening to get the upper hand.
I’m disappointed that things got out of hand and I didn’t want it to happen, but you can’t watch them all the time and still let them have a life, which means sometimes you have to be there to pick up the pieces as best you can.
I don’t disagree with any of this, but it is not necessarily consistent with “boys will be boys” as I generally hear the term used, which is as an excuse. Something bad happened but – boys will be boys. To the contrary, you seem to be saying, something bad happened, and if I had known I would have prevented it and even after the fact I would have tried to fix it, given the chance. I actually think your reaction is the correct one, it’s just that my response to “what ever happened to boys will be boys?” is that it went the way of the dodo when parents started taking responsibility for their sons – just like you yourself have done. 
OK, but there has to be a margin of tolerance; ideally, boys won’t hit each other with sticks, however, in the real world, it’s fun to play at being Darth Vader and Obi Wan; fun right up to the point where someone gets hurt. Adventure sometimes leads to misadventure; innocent play sometimes leads to minor injury - that’s a fact of life no matter how hard we try to protect them.
Boys will indeed be boys; if we wrap them in cotton wool, they won’t be boys at all; they’ll be dolls. Accepting that sometimes these things happen doesn’t mean I must discard specific concern or downplay injury when unfortunately, they do.
Hope your family is safe from now on.
I think you handled the situation properly and I hope that this meat-head doesn’t try to get back at you for calling the cops. Pricks can be mean sons of bitches, if you know what I mean. For starters, make sure your boy never plays with this kid again.
**You must tell your child to stay away from this boy. **
Our 5 year old boy likes to play with sticks and such. He has a hard time reeling in his strength and swing speed. Because of that he is banned from ever picking up sticks, swords, bats (unless for the express purpose of sport) or any otherwise sword shaped objects.
I have seen too many near misses.
Indeed - he is instructed to come inside if he so much as sees the other boy - who may have been primed to attack next time he sees him.