Other people’s puss: How do you correct them?

“Maybe you need to pee?” I ask expectantly the kid playing with my son. Or well, with my son… the kid is actually mostly playing with himself. With his own toy. Of course, a little picking and grabbing is part of it when you’re seven, I know that. But the extent to which this friend hangs his hand in his pants non-stop, Al Bundy can suck at that. “No, don’t pee”, he answers annoyed, after which his claw comes out of his pants for a while to dig extensively in the communal bowl of popcorn. yum.

A little later I throw it another bow, the bow with the wink. “Hey sir, won’t you turn it off?” I say as lightly as possible. Or: “Oh oh, watch out it doesn’t fly away!” My ‘funny’ comments don’t impress either. I myself more and more often look with a raised nose at how the gripping hands are on our food or on my son’s face. Do I have to explain to him that his scribbling, besides undoubtedly blissful, is also a bit private and not so publicly appropriate? Is it just me, or am I crossing a meddling line by correcting someone else’s child? I find it a difficult one.

say something about it

This dilemma is a hot topic, it turns out when I ask around. One that almost everyone burns their fingers on. Like Annette. “Once when I picked up my daughter from the out-of-school care, I got into an altercation between the out-of-school care teacher and a girl of about nine years old. The teacher had tears in her eyes and clearly had no control over the situation. The girl showed no respect and even kicked a skateboard as the teacher bent to pick it up.

I stood next to it, looked at it, couldn’t keep my mouth shut and scolded the girl not to be so brazen. Long story short: The girl’s mother arrived and did not accept that I had interfered with the situation. “Who do you think you are?” she sneered. Since then, I have doubted when and whether it is permissible to say something as an outsider.”

Correcting children

Whether or not you say something, it seems, first and foremost depends on the situation, or the location. For example, I usually have little trouble correcting children who say things under my roof that I can’t find, except for the dick grabbing. “My mother is a big pussy!” I heard the other day repeatedly blurt from the mouth of a five-year-old guy. Yes, so I’ll say something about that. And I sincerely hope that others do the same with my children, if something is not acceptable. But yes, what can or cannot be tolerated remains quite subjective of course.

I remember a situation in the subtropical swimming pool at Center Parcs where a mother with a baby and a toddler became angry at my toddler for splashing too much water. To be fair, I initially gave her the ‘look’ of: what is that person getting involved in? But in a fit of humanity, my irritation soon turned to mild pity. I saw a pretty young girl struggling with her new identity; in her mind she still roamed all the festivals, but in reality she found herself in a wet paddling pool in Center Parcs with two crying kids.

“When my toddler was unfairly reprimanded, all I thought was: fuck off.”

tough. Anyway, I’m not always that mild, when my toddler was wrongly reprimanded in the playground yesterday in my opinion by someone I already moderately draw, I just thought: fuck off. By the way, I didn’t say it – does that matter? It is therefore certainly relevant who corrects your child. And the way. The same is true the other way around, I think. Because at the risk of having to immediately hand in my mother certificates: you can have slightly less or more from one child than from another. At least I do. Slippery ice? Okay. I love all children. We go on.

My house, my rules

Also, it just depends on what you hit. If my toddler and his friends are throwing dicks and poop all day long – figuratively, preferably – I can tolerate it, it’s part of it. But if they use ‘cancer’ as a swear word, I’m on edge. Cancer has been a loaded, almost forbidden word since my mother died of it when I was ten. I correct that immediately, unless the parent is present, then I keep aloof. Often with some effort. For example, I recently heard myself muttering “Well, well…” when next to me a five-year-old girl shouted ‘cancer’, put on with a ‘funny’ Hague accent, and cheered by her father. Side note: I’m not necessarily proud of the fact that I have a sour ‘well well’ type.

Most mothers I speak to use the same technique: their rules apply under their roof and corrections can be made if necessary, unless the parents are also on site, then it is no longer their business. Or if the parents don’t see it, a friend laughs, referring to ‘telephone parents’ in the playground who don’t pay attention or take responsibility but do pull their plug if you interfere. Perhaps the worst kind, she sighs after.

Read also
‘You don’t correct other people’s children’: that’s how you think about it >

Differ

Then you also have the subcategory of awkward moments where the parents are present, but see the situation completely differently. Merel experienced that. “Tijn, the son of good friends, and our son Joep were both five years old, but their characters were quite different. When Joep was playing quietly, Tijn often danced around him looking for attention, he could really taunt Joep and sometimes even push. I would regularly bite my tongue off, wondering why our friends didn’t intervene, they saw this too, didn’t they?

When we visited them once, it happened again: while Joep was playing with a car, Tijn jumped furiously around him. As a final attempt to get his attention, Tijn hit the back of the head with a robot out of nowhere with a robot. ‘Hey!’ exclaimed my husband, ‘we don’t do that!’ Logical, I think. Not everyone thought so: Tijn’s mother threw herself on her son like a she-wolf and rocked him protectively like a baby while she screamed: ‘Nobody has ever yelled at my child like this, I won’t let it happen!’

I did not know what I saw. It was her son who attacked mine – not for the first time – and now we were the bogeyman because we
said? Her husband stood there in despair; he understood the situation but was unable to lose weight to his wife. Although my friend apologized for raising his voice, we were shown the door. We’ll never see them again, I said in the car.” And it was. Although Merel and her friend contacted several times in the days after ‘the incident’ to talk things out, their ‘friends’ no longer gave home. That was seven years ago now.

The bear completely loose

Fortunately, you don’t hear it that extreme very often. But Samira also experiences that a difference in upbringing or approach can put pressure on a friendship. “With three sons aged 8, 10 and 12, about six boys regularly roam through my house. ‘No guys, don’t climb into the umbrella’, sometimes I laugh out loud at what I hear myself say. A lot is allowed by me, but with so many boys you have to set limits, otherwise your house will turn into a kind Lord of the flies with mud on the walls and food scraps between the sofa. When nine-year-old Jorn comes to play, the bear is completely loose and everyone happily joins in; Suddenly, water pistols are fired inside, for example.

“When they come, I see father and son both thinking: brrr, that scary mother.”

What annoys me is that Jorn’s father, who I get on well with, never says anything about it. He often continues to talk for a while when he comes to fetch Jorn, but although Jorn breaks down the tent in the meantime, he looks, does nothing, says nothing, and continues talking undisturbed. When Jorn recently thundered past us, throwing popcorn, I was done with it, I turned around and snarled: ‘And now it’s done, you clean up, you too Jorn!’ His father looked at me startled, almost frightened. Since then, the initiative to meet has declined. And when they do come, I see father and son both thinking: brrr, that scary mother. Well, that’s just how it is. After all, I think he’s a weak ass too.”

Don’t interfere

Correcting each other’s children is clearly not without its risks – everyone just meddles nicely with their own pack. I wonder how things used to be, when society was less individualistic: perhaps it was perfectly normal at the time to adjust each other’s children. No, my eighty-year-old aunt says without further ado. Her children are now over fifty, but the same principle applied when they were young: you do not interfere with other people’s children or upbringing. Point. Finished.

“Unless the parents weren’t there or the child stayed with you so regularly that you felt a certain responsibility,” my aunt explains. “Or if they didn’t respect my rules. For example, a child took cookies out of the tin every hour. Then I would tell her that that way there would be nothing left for the others. The girl then complained to her mother, which immediately put our relationship on edge. So not much has changed in that regard.”

A big difference, she says, is that children are allowed much more today than they were fifty years ago. “The boundaries were clearer. I look with amazement at the freedom that children nowadays get from their parents. When my own grandchildren were young, I regularly had to control myself not to act more harshly than their parents. They often say that everything is allowed with grandma, but given the freedom that children get these days, they probably experience it differently.”

Tapped on the fingers

I think back to those two times in my own childhood when I was reprimanded by someone other than my own parents. Both times I was about ten years old. One time it was Master Berntssen who asked me to ‘give him a normal answer’ from now on. He had a point, because every time he asked me something or gave me a turn, I made a kind of grimace out of sheer discomfort, grinning my teeth. Indeed, I didn’t realize it myself, until the master pointed it out to me. The other time it was my friend’s mother who spoke sternly about not eating her daughter’s ten o’clock.

“Now, thirty years later, I’m still getting a red buoy as I write this.”

Haha, embarrassing. Now, thirty years later, I am still getting a red buoy as I write this. It didn’t matter that Claire always gave me her ten o’clock herself. I understand that now that I am a mother myself. Although I felt utterly rejected and embarrassed by both corrections, they had an acute impact. I stopped grinning—preventing a lasting tic—and ignored Claire’s leagues. Would I have preferred these people signaled to my parents so that I would have felt less mugged and unsafe? At that point, probably. But still, it got through.

I’m thinking about casually informing the cock-turner’s mother over a glass of wine about her son’s frantic fidgeting soon. Just, lightheartedly, that I notice that… Or would she get mad? Or just feel embarrassed? hmm. Is an anonymous letter still possible today?

This article appears in Kek Mama 13-2021.

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more parenting and parenting stories.