A mum appealed for advice from other parents after a stranger shouted at her three-year-old son in public.
The Mumsnet user, named FindingEmo, explained that she had taken her son to a theme park to celebrate his birthday. While in a queue for a ride, her toddler went to stand next to a girl who was stood by a barrier.
Minutes later, FindingEmo noticed the girl’s mum shout at her son: “Don’t do that,” and her son started crying.
So FindingEmo asked the woman why she shouted and was told the woman had seen the three-year-old biting her daughter.
“I didn’t see it and I’d been watching them,” the mum wrote on Mumsnet. “Also the girl hasn’t reacted at all, no crying, no saying: ‘Oww’ or even moving away.”
FindingEmo continued: “I told the woman she should have told me if she saw my son doing something she didn’t like and I would have sorted it.
“We both yelled for a bit, until I turned my back on her to end it and she didn’t try and continue it.”
But the mum isn’t sure if who was in the wrong.
“I know my son isn’t an angel and can be naught,y but as far as I’m aware he didn’t bite the girl,” she wrote.
“But even if he did, was I wrong to yell at the woman for shouting in his face? He sobbed for the rest of the queue.”
The thread, posted on Saturday 29 October, has caused a debate online.
Some believed it’s just plain wrong to yell at children.
“Even if he did bite her, you don’t yell inches from a child’s face,” one mum wrote. “I would have intervened and said: ‘No biting’, but I wouldn’t shout at a child and definitely wouldn’t yell in their face.”
Another mum agreed, but felt FindingEmo could have handled the situation better.
“You should have spoken to your son to try and find out what happened and apologised if necessary, rather than getting into a row about it,” she wrote.
“I’m not sure why you would think she was telling him off if nothing happened.”
However, other mums sympathised with FindingEmo and believed she was in the right for standing up for her son.
“Your poor little boy and poor you! You said that the little girl was in no distress whatsoever. You said that you were watching them and did not see him bite her,” she wrote.
“Seems to me that the other mother was mistaken and wrongly screamed at a small boy on his birthday. I’d have been furious and done exactly the same.”
What would you have done in the situation? Comments below, please.