Hal, I’m another Dad who also recommends communication to resolve this situation by talking to your wife first to see if she picks up on what this guy is doing just to give your POV some validation. If she concurs, then discuss with her how about going to resolve it, because it’s pissing you off now, and as time goes on, unchecked, it will just get worse and then you might get into a heated argument with this guy, which in turn will mess up your wife’s friendship. But don’t let the wife downplay the situation, but support you when you decide to discuss with the other dad. He may be downright anal retentive with any other guy near his daughter, and if he says so, then at least your not singled out as some pervert and you should feel a little better about the situation - he just an AR kind of dad. If he does single you out (if he says “You just seem too attached or she is too attached to you”), then you know to take the steps to clear his mind that your some sort of pedophile and that he’s misjudged you, and you demand better respect than that. Dammit Hal, get in there a give him a piece of your mind! Otherwise, these get togethers are gonna be more like dentist appointments as time goes on.
Question-does he behave like this when your wife or other women attempt to hold the kid?
This is in line with my thinking. If someone behaved this way with me, I would not really want my daughter around him. Kinda creepy, you know.
That said, I definately think starting some conversations about this behavior is a great idea. And your wife is probably the best place to start.
AuntiePam, thank you sharing on an obviously uncomfortable topic. And yes, that thought had crossed my mind. I’ve seen plenty of cases of “doth protest too much” in a number of different situations, and this did trigger some warning bells to me.
What makes me think his daughter is safe is the fact that she’s never without her mother close by. Not in a suffocating, overprotective mother type of way – she just happens to be a stay-at-home mom, and she handles just about every aspect of child-rearing. The guy in question is in the military, has ever-shifting hours and occasionally has to leave for days at a time, so they find that it just makes sense for mom to handle most everything since babies like routine.
Whether or not that winds up being the case is for them to find out when the kid is a teen. For right now, however, I’m relatively certain the guy is just paranoid, not a molester himself.
As for those asking if he acts that way around others, no – his wife or my wife can hold the baby as much as they like. It’s just when I’m holding her.
I asked my wife about this last night, but she hasn’t picked up on the same vibe I’m getting. She agreed to pay more attention to the situation the next time we all got together, but it may wind up coming to a head earlier than that. Coincidentally, the guy in question is on his way over here. I usually pick up my daughter from their place around 3:30, but he had to run some errands that will take him right by my house, so he’s going to drop my little girl off. If the timing seems not terrible, I may bring it up.
Leave the phone off the hook, so we can all listen in if you do…
Just tell him you keep bacon in your pocket, that’s why she comes to you.
Bah…false alarm. His wife dropped her off, while he stayed home to clean his guns.
Did I mention being mildly reluctant to come right out and confront him?
I’d wait till he finishes cleaning his guns first.
Ya know Hal. Being the father of a daughter, you can sympathize with this man. Especially since he is in the military and away most of the time, his ability to protect his daughter is limited. It is possible that when he is home, he is overprotective to make himself feel better about being away.
I’m kinda new at this stuff, but any time I can’t protect my daughter, is always the worst time. I’ve recently changed my schedule so my daughter doesn’t HAVE to be in anyone else’s care but mine. Those 6 hours a week drove me batty. I can’t imagine what being out of town or out of the country could do to a parents mind.
Because of my experiences, my husband is MORE vigilant. He is more paranoid, he knows it can happen close to home, before me, it was not that tangible. Now he has a daughter, trust me, to him, to even in the mildest sense, everyone is a potential child-fucker. That is his DAUGHTER! It may just be that there are people around him (his wife, sisters) that give him a heightened awareness and his distance brings it out more. Another thing, telling him you won’t touch his daughter won’t mean diddly, however, talking about how weird it is to have a daughter and to be so afraid for her, might.
I guess I can share this story here. I was walking my dog on Monday afternoon through the neighborhood like I usually do. That day Goliath wanted to follow the sidewalk around a cul-de-sac that we usually skip. There was a girl, I’m not a good judge of age but I’d guess she was about 8-10, playing in front of one house. She saw the dog and I and she said hello, and I said hello back. Eventually she came to pet Goliath, he was thrilled because he loves kids. After about 10 seconds of that, her mother comes bursting out the front door looking at me like I had another arm coming out of my forehead. I say hello as we continue on our way and I only get an evil eye glare.
Within 2 minutes and within eyesight of my house a SUV pulls up along side of me and the guy driving it asks me if I live in area. I say yes I do and wait, since I assume he is going ask about the area as there is still plenty of new home constuction going on. He asks where I live, again. Again I said here. He asked me to show him where, so give a vague point in the direction of my house. He goes on to tell me that I shouldn’t walk my dog in cul-de-sacs and I shouldn;'t talk to children. And said it twice. He was all but accusing me of being a child rapist. I’ll be damned if I am going to let the overly paranoid parents (who have already nerfed just about everything fun) try and intimidate me. If I had special powers, I’d make these people live in the world they seem hell bent on creating.
That’s some seriously scary shit there, adam. (And Hal).
adam yax- jeepers, I’d have taken down his plate number and called the cops. That ain’t ok.
Yeah, I’d have walked towards the front of his car and made it obvious I was memorizing his plates and immediately start demanding where he lives and what he’s doing cruising around in his child-abduction-wagon.
Sympathize with him?
Bullshit.
There’s protective; there’s overprotective; and there’s stark raving fucking paranoid. Hal’s acquaintance sounds like number 3.
People like him are the reason things like this happen.
“Hey, Bob, thanks for dropping off my daughter. Oh, wait, hang on a second, don’t leave yet. I have to check to make sure her hymen is intact.”
Holy crap, Adam. I wonder if this sort of paranoia is the inevitable result of CNN and Fox News’ 24/7 coverage of sordid crimes…
Hal, I’m afraid I don’t have any advice here. One relative of mine wouldn’t let other people hold her baby, including her aunts and uncles who had raised a family. We were never sure if she was afraid of our germs or that we just weren’t up to her standard of care. Either way, it was slightly offensive but what can you do?
I don’t know, I don’t get all of the hypersensitivity that surrounds child molestation.
To begin with people freak the fuck out and act as if it’s a fate worse than death, but when people take any step to lower their child’s risk of molestation, people freak the fuck out and clamor on about overprotectiveness on the part of parents.
Constantly taking away a kid when the father is in the same room is silly, but I think it’s equally likely that he was just being overprotective, perhaps just wanting to keep her on a short leash rather than actually being afraid that you would molest her then and there.
But given the fact that a very large portion of people report being molested, and that we can all pretty much agree that it’s a, “bad thing,” it seems reasonable and prudent to me that a parent would limit the interactions that a child has with grown men. I only say men because, facts being what they are, male sexual predators on young children far outnumber female sexual predators.
To be frank, I never plan to have children, but if I did, I wouldn’t really, “trust” them with anyone more than was strictly necessary. The only person that I might feel comfortable leaving them with was either of my own parents because I guess both had ample opportunity to abuse me as a kid and neither did. Furthermore, if my kid ever developed an intense emotional dislike of anyone I would be okay with not making my kid see that person regardless of the context. I’ve seen too many personal stories relayed upon The Dope of parents that didn’t rescue their kids from molestation, not because the child came out and directly said, “I’m being sexually abused by this person,” but by trying to avoid those people and the parents just telling the kid to suck it up.
If I were to discover that my child was being molested by someone, I don’t think I’d be the type of parent to break into their house and stab them, but then again I don’t see what’s wrong with trying to reduce the risk that your child will encounter both a sexual predator and a situation that predator can exploit. It seems kind of like making them wear bike helmets and their seat belts to me.
Oh, approaching someone in their SUV and demanding to know where they live is completely inappropriate.
I was once treated as a potential molestor for daring to use the men’s room in a restaurant. A boy (aged 7 or so) had entered just a bit earlier and what obviously was his mom was pacing outside the door. She gave me the evil eye when I approached the men’s room and looked like she was about to say something, but didn’t. As I went in, she yelled out “Mommie’s waiting right here for you, Bobby!”.*
Mrs. J. thought this was funny until she had a similar experience recently in a ladies’ room.
If parents paid as much attention to each other and to relatives as they do to the Evil Stranger, actual incidents would be even more uncommon.
*Daddy was apparently too busy slurping down tacos to bother escorting little Bobby.
Man, I can imagine how dealing with this on a regular would suck.
I vote for confronting the guy the next time he pulls this, but do it in a non-confrontational manner (if that makes sense). A simple “Dude, she’s okay. I’m not going to bite her head off or anything. You can relax.” I don’t know what personality type this guy is, so this might not work. But I think it’s better to be upfront with him about it.
It doesn’t seem “reasonable and prudent” to me. It seems bigoted and hysterical.
Would it be reasonable to avoid interaction with black people because a lot of people are crime victims, and black people might be gang-bangers? Would it be reasonable to limit interaction with Moslems, since terror attacks are a bad thing and Moslems might be terrorists? I don’t see any difference between these positions and automatic suspicion of adult males.