A mum explained why she felt the need to tell off kids that weren’t her own, when she was at a playcentre with her two children.
Laura Mazza, from Melbourne, Australia, admitted that when she’s at play areas, she’s a little “hellicopterish”, to ensure she knows what her kids are doing.
“Not full helicopter, but one eye is on my mum friend and my latte and the other is on my child,” she wrote on Facebook in October 2017.
“I like to make sure they’re safe, that they play nice, that they don’t snatch, or sock a child in the face. Because that shit isn’t cool.
“I’ve never told another child off in my life. I don’t like it. It’s not my responsibility. However, today I found myself saying the words: ‘Hey, that’s not nice... please stop’ to two little kids. Kids that weren’t mine.”
Mazza explained that she was at the play centre that day with her kids when she watched two five-year-old children “ram a mini drivable car into my daughter”.
She said the two children laughed while her daughter fell over.
The mum continued: “I also watched a little boy climb on top of a jungle gym where his mum had no idea that he was about to come falling down, and I caught him,” she wrote. “She came over when she saw a stranger carrying her kid and gave me a dirty look while she snatched him off me.
“I watched two kids push and smack my son while he was trying to go down a slide... and I actually found myself saying: ‘That’s not nice, stop!’
“I’ve never liked to tell a stranger’s kid off, but if you’re gonna pretend you can’t see it because you wanna sit and chat, then I’m gonna tell your child off.
“I’m not perfect, not even in the slightest. But I’m polite. I’ve been up all night too, I am desperate for social time too. I’m lonely, I’m tired, my neck hurts and everything else... but I also don’t believe that my kid is entitled to pull your kid’s hair because I want a hot coffee.
“And if you see my kid being a jerk, you tell him off too, or tell me and I’ll correct him asap.
“This is the sense of a community.”
Mazza said mums should have each others’ backs to make the village of motherhood work both ways.
She ended the post: “Watch ya damn kid.”
The post, which has been liked more than 4,000 times in three days, received praise from other parents who had been in similar situations.
“I find myself wanting to give you a standing ovation,” one person wrote. “Well said.”
Another wrote: “Completely acceptable. I would never discipline another child, or yell, but I’ve never hesitated in mentioning to an unsupervised child that what they’ve done isn’t nice.”
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Mazza wanted to reiterate that when she spoke to the child, her tone was “firm but soft, and non-threatening.”
“I didn’t yell at the child and would never yell or smack a child,” she said. “I don’t even smack my own.
“I wanted parents to see it’s frustrating seeing your child being attacked and not being blue [a party pooper] to do anything to help them.”
What do you think? Is it acceptable to tell another child off for their actions?