Am I a rotten parent?? Tough day

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Yesterday while I was in the shower my 4YO with PDD_NOS managed to find a tube of superglue and glue his eye shut. It was up high and not in plain sight. I didn't even know it was there. He climbed up on a chair and went searching for stuff to mess with.

I washed his eye for a few seconds with much thrashing and screaming, then gave him a wet washcloth to hold over it and eventually his eye came unstuck and he seems to have suffered no ill effects.

Later that day we went to the park and he had his first (that I know of) encounter with a mean older kid. I saw the kid take a stick and hit my son in the face with it--made him cry . There was a large group of moms standing talking together but I didn't know any of them. I was afraid to ask themn whose kid the mean kid was. All I did was tell off the mean kid (without cursing, amazingly enough, since my first thought was, "What the He!! do you think you're doing, you little %^#$?! !!") and told my son, "Let's go. This kid doesn't know how to play right."

I would have said something to the mom's about the kids bad behavior.

No, it can be hard to baby proof, when they can climb on things and reach higher. Stuff happens.

I hate mean kids. You were more polite then I would have been.

You aren't bad. I could see either of my kids doing that. My littlest has twice gotten bottles of shampoo, dumped them on the floor, stripped naked, and had fun with her home made slip n slide, all while I was busy folding laundry.

As for the mean kid, you were too nice. I once climbed into a mcdonalds play area and threatened to call the cops on an 8 year old and an 9 year old (siblings) who were harassing littler kids and making them cry and hitting them as they went down the slide. I made them both go down the slide, had them take me to their parents and told them if I saw the kids go back on the play area, I'd talk to the manager and have them kicked out.

Don't beat yourself up about the glue. I came out of the shower one time to find my then 4 yo standing on a chair by the kitchen counter doing shots of children's benadryl . Thank god for the nice calm nurses on the other end of the poison control phone line!

I have also told off mean kids on the playground and not felt bad at all about it.

If you're a bad parent, I must be the worst one alive based on that. I would have gone nuts if anyone did that to my child. The parents really would have known about it .

OMG, I think you did great! What an awful day!

It is too hard to sort out the stuff with parents, and in a way it isn't important. You did the right thing - you rescued your kid and you framed the situation for him correctly. It doesn't matter that the other kid was an incredible jerk unless you're going to be seeing that kid regularly (and if you are, other situations are for another day.) You just need to make sure your kid understands.

I've got a "superglue" story, too - DS was about three or four, and he was playing with a friend's child. While I was upstairs and they were in what I thought was a baby-proofed room, he and his buddy pushed the couch away from the wall and started playing with the two plugs in the electrical socket (I think they were playing cars or something.) Fortunately, our old house has electrical outlets tied to light switches, and the light switch was off - but the "could have been" was really scary. All our other outlets had baby-safe plug covers, even the ones with plugs in them, but it never occurred to me that two determined three year olds could move a couch so easily and quietly.

...just realised that you mean about the superglue, when you ask about being a bad parent! You put it out of reach, how does that make you a bad parent? Don't worry, you did what you could to keep your child safe.

Today I left my 4 yr old with ASD sitting on the toilet a few moments too long and came in to find him using his poo as paint. He had smeared his legs, the toilet and so on. Because of communication difficulties, it's not possible to explain much about why it's a bad idea to do so, unfortunately. The glue story makes me feel a lot better about leaving him too long without supervision! I think I'll go check where the glue is...

That seems far from being a rotten parent. Perhaps the parent of the douchenozzle kid needs to learn how to be a decent parent. I must admit, if it were me, I probably would be led away in the back of a cruiser...

I'm so glad you were able to solve the glue situation yourself, and it didn't require a trip to the ER! I've had my kids injure each other badly enough to go to the hospital in a fully baby-proofed room while I was standing right next to them on more than one occasion, it's impossible to prevent everything. A couple of months ago my possibly ASD 4 year old stuck a rock in his ear, and it had to be surgically removed (too round to pull out). You did nothing wrong. The problem with kids that still need high levels of supervision despite getting older, is that they become bigger, and faster, and more cunning before we have a chance to realize it. Babyproofing becomes like a type of arms race.

Whenever some kid (or adult) does something mean like that, I just assume they have some type of behavioral issue or disability. It's got to be abnormal for an older kid to do something like randomly whack a four year old in the face. I think you handled it in a very dignified, mature way. It's so hard not to yell at people when they hurt someone we love, even if they are only a kid. I hope your son was able to forget about it and have fun again. Hopefully the other kid will get what ever intervention/teaching he needs to not do thinks like that again.

My sister super glued her lip to a sweatshirt when she was three. She climbed for it. Kids do that kind of thing.

I love this!

You are a very good parent! I don't know any parent who hasn't had something happen when they weren't looking. That can happen to anybody. Don't be kicking yourself about this, because no matter how much you babyproof and kidproof, you just wont be able to get everything, all the time. It's not possible.



((((hugs))))

You are a good parent, not a rotten one.

As for the mean kid I learned from another mom to ask the kid where his mommy is, or where is parents are. Then you take it from there. The kid may be sincerely apologetic, in which case you can just drop it. The parent may see you talk with the child, in which case you can wait there for them to come ask what is going on and you tell them. If you get a fiesty parent, you can say you simply ask the child who his parents are, and leave it like that.

I hate doing it because I expect parents to be defensive, but instead they always ask what their child may have done wrong. Your experience will vary.

I am terribly terrified of conflict so I was afraid to approach the group/clique. But then again, if my son was behaving like that I'd rather someone tell me sooner rather than him grow into a bully later.