The little girls across the road from us are somewhere between 6-9 (I’m no good judging kid’s ages). I’ve never had a problem with them. Sometimes you hear them shrieking, like little girls do, but they never trespass or vandalise or even shout or swear.
But their mother is on them like a drill sergeant with a bug up his ass…
“Teagan! YOU LITTLE FUCKING FERAL. YOU’RE A FERAL LITTLE SHIT. GET YOUR FUCKING ARSE BACK HERE. YOU’RE FUCKING GROUNDED! YOU’RE GONNA GET A FUCKING BELTING!”
Hubby swears he heard the mother calling one of them a cunt yesterday. I don’t doubt it. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard similar in the past.
She stands in their driveway and hollers this crap down the street at both her little girls. It makes me sad, but there’s nothing much that I can do about it. I’ve seen/heard no evidence of physical abuse and if you call the cops to say that someone’s swearing at their kid they pretty much ask “Are they hitting them? No? Sorry, not much we can do about it”
I am deeply suspicious of parents who claim or try to demonstrate that they have never, not once, raised their voice and/or a hand to their children or otherwise “gone over the top”, ever.
I have, on more than one occaision, and not proud of it, but it has happened.
Never as horribly as this woman apparently did, and yes, that tirade is deeply disturbing to me, as I’m sure it was to the poor child! I think the level of personal attack and profanity and fury and the age of the child puts this WAY over the top.
But I think whether this was an isolated incident or an ongoing thing is an important consideration. Parents are not, as a rule, Zen masters, and we can lose it. And we weren’t privy to exactly what set this off…there have been times I came upon some scene of wanton, intentional destruction and shrieked like a Banshee and wondered aloud (loudly!) WTH is WRONG with you? What were you THINKING??? :smack:
FTR, I have a degree in Child Development and spent about 20 years working with young children. IME, other peoples’ kids were never capable of making me as crazy as my own can.
But overall, yeah, makes me so sad to hear some kid getting treated like that, and some of the thoughtless things adults say that kids take literally.
Not for so long at such a volume that it makes someone wonder about it. And swearing? Sure, you might slip up with a damn or a hell, but I just cannot imagine yelling fuck or worse at a kid. Accidentally saying it front of kid…yeah, it could happen. Directed AT a kid? No way.
Um, yes, even otherwise “good” parents DO sometimes yell at their kids long and loud enough for someone to hear it and wonder about it. (or maybe it’s just my Irish blood, but I tend to be a yeller when I’m angry…ya know that mom on Malcome in the Middle? yeah, about like that:o)
I generally agree about the cursing…in front of, more times than I care to admit. AT? Maybe once or twice at most in 16 yrs.
But then, when they were younger (they’re 16 and 9 now) I didn’t yell at them at all (unless they like, head-banged me or something on accident). They tend to give me lots more cause to yell now:)
Really? I grew up with a dad who could blister paint off the walls with both volume and profanity. I heard worse at a younger age than the example in the OP. Everybody in my household growing up cursed like sailors. It was just normal. My wife is always bitching at me now about swearing in front of our kids. I try not to, but it’s hard not to. My kids don’t seem the worse for wear for it, though. They join mommy in admonishing daddy for his potty mouth.
Anyway, profanity, in and of itself, is not a big deal. You can do plenty of emotional damage witout profanity, and you can have a house with a lot of profanity that does no damage at all.
I don’t think she yells at the kid on a regular basis - at least not with the level of venom that I heard this morning.
However, she and her boyfriend/husband (who may or may not be the kid’s father) scream at each other all the freaking time. Like, four or five nights a week.
While I like WhyNot’s suggestion, as a 30-year-old, single guy, I have to be careful about befriending any little kids in situations where the parents may not appreciate it.
You could try befriending the mom and steering her towards some help.
I have a friend who was flirting with beating her 3 year old with a belt, and had on two occasions put her out of the car and pretended to drive away and leave her. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I want to call her a “friend,” knowing these things. Anyway, I was able to get her to go to a county support program for preschoolers/kindgergarteners and their parents.
Instead of saying, “Jesus Christ, that is some fucked up shit you’re doing to your kid! I think you’re an awful mother and need to be retrained,” I said, when she was talking about how difficult the kid is, “Wow, it seems like you’re really overwhelmed, and you don’t have a lot of help. Jane is really a tough kid, isn’t she - she just pushes and pushes, it must be really stressful. Hey, these people came to talk at the kindergarten when my kid started, they seem to have a lot of resources, here’s their number. Oh and THEY’RE FREE.”
Instead of getting defensive, cursing my name, and continuing to be awful to her kid, she went, got help, and actually thanked me, never knowing I was a hair’s breadth from calling social services on her.
Thank you. Thank you for saying that. You are a voice of love and sanity and the Better Way Out.
Bullying makes me frightened and angry, and I was this close to posting something nasty… but then I stopped. I wondered, did I really want to add another layer to a blind emotion-driven hate-fest? I imagined hatred spewing out from my keyboard to match the hatred in the tirades described in these posts, and adding to the foul stew, and I realized that I did not truly want to go there.
One of the most difficult things I have ever learned is to separate the emotion from the words, especially in cases like this. I tend to take the words literally, and as a result, I believed for many years that all heated emotional argument was nothing less that the literal meaning of the words, and that those literal meanings were what was intended after the emotions cooled.
I agree with this, somewhat. But there is a line that one feels when dealing with a child. One doesn’t cross it. It is just a line that feels *wrong *to cross. Yelling over and over at my daughter that she *ruins everything *would definitely have me feeling the roughness of a very abrasive line rubbing against my foot.
But I have definitely gone off on my daughter before, including using the word ‘fuck’ at her. (Hetep, that was crazy to do, you must have lost your* fucking *mind). Not defending saying that. Just admitting I did it at times that she really did something big. I am thrilled that she hardly ever pulls big stunts. Yet. She is only 9.
The upstairs neighbor doesn’t sound like a terrific parent. She should have felt that line being crossed, and it should have made her to uncomfortable to keep crossing it.
What about a non-parental custodian? A couple of years ago, I witnessed a special ed teacher’s aide throw an apoplectic fit because one of the kids pooped in his pants. The child, who has Down syndrome, was five at the time. She never used any obscene words, but she berated him in a genuinely hysterical manner—screaming, red-faced, with veins sticking out in her neck. It’s bothered me ever since—I’ve often wondered if I should have interceded or reported her behavior to the child’s parents.
I think that I am more bothered by the “always” and the “everything” than by the “fucking” in the OP’s example.
Kids will learn all the swear words by age 6, from you or from someone else. It won’t damage them. It is the “you ruin everything” bit that will damage them and make them believe they are no good. This is the kind of kids who try to kill themselves at some point.
I think the level of personal attack and profanity and fury and the age of the child puts this WAY over the top.