Boots employee smacking customer's toddler

princeofpounds

Who knows what the real story is? Boots is likely to apologise to make the issue die down. The child may be clumsy or may have been a total nightmare. The mother may have been distracted or may not have cared about the disruption. The smack could have been anything from a thump to tapping the child to get its attention and stop it destroying the display.

valk_scot

I have this mental image of the assistant patting the child on the bum as she tried to shuffle her out of the way of the loose bits of bottle, the mum being totally flustered and mortified, the child saying "Lady smacked me" (as in tapped me on the bum unexpectedly) and the mum dumping all her emotions into making it someone elses fault.
That's one explanation, no? I can't quite understand why the mum didn't deal with in on the spot tbh. Rather than going home, talking to her no doubt equally indignant relatives then going back later. There is definately more to the story than meets the eye.

I laid violent hands on a stranger's two year old once btw. He was doing that old cliche of running round out onto the road, I heard his mother shouting and grabbed him by the arm as he was about to get hit. He fell back into me and I hauled him back onto the pavement, scraping him a bit in the process. His mum was so relieved she started yelling at me instead of him. We did get it sorted out in the end but it left a bad taste, what if she'd complained to the police that I'd simply decided to hurt her son because he'd bumped me or something?

My point being, we weren't there, we only have her side of the story via being related through a newspaper article which no doubt has sensationalised it a bit. I've had a look at several different newspaper reports of this incident btw, they do vary a bit. And the police have declined to take the matter further. Why is this, I wonder?

LittleMax

This should act as a warning to all the parents who try to use the threat of store staff to discipline your children. Think twice before saying, "Don't do that or the lady will tell you off," one day we might just act on your instruction and discipline your child for you!

sulkisu

TBH I am really surprised at some of the responses to this story, both on here and on the link provided. They seem so mild and reasonable. Maybe there is something wrong with me but if a total stranger smacked my toddler (I don't care what they had knocked over), God help them.

valk_scot

sulkisu wrote: »

TBH I am really surprised at some of the responses to this story, both on here and on the link provided. They seem so mild and reasonable. Maybe there is something wrong with me but if a total stranger smacked my toddler (I don't care what they had knocked over), God help them.

Exactly, you'd have dealt with it there and then. Why didn't she?

Person_one

valk_scot wrote: »

Exactly, you'd have dealt with it there and then. Why didn't she?

Shock? Surprise? Being a bit flustered by it?

Macca83_2

valk_scot wrote: »

I have this mental image of the assistant patting the child on the bum as she tried to shuffle her out of the way of the loose bits of bottle, the mum being totally flustered and mortified, the child saying "Lady smacked me" (as in tapped me on the bum unexpectedly) and the mum dumping all her emotions into making it someone elses fault.
That's one explanation, no?

That was my initial thought.

suki1001

valk_scot wrote: »

Exactly, you'd have dealt with it there and then. Why didn't she?

I suppose it depends. I've been in situations, where I've been in shock and it's not sunk in at the time. I think if it happened to me, there would be a sort of disbelief at first, possibly. It just seems unreal that someone would do that to someone else's child - it's just not something you expect to happen. The mother might have felt intimidated by the shop assistant.

I remember a long time ago when I was struggling with a tantruming toddler and a 2 day old baby - a woman had such a go at me in the street, told me I was a terrible mother, that I just clammed up, I didn't know what to say. she'd made an assumption and she was wrong. What she did was outragous, but I didn't have the courage or the words to say anything back. It was awful and it still upsets me when I think about it now.

If you think of all the times you hear in the news where a crime has happened, a lot of the time people don't do anything and I think that's because it can seem so unreal. Probably when they think back they would have if they could have that time again.

valk_scot

Person_one wrote: »

Shock? Surprise? Being a bit flustered by it?

I think if I genuinely belived someone was assaulting my toddler I'd get past the flustered stage pretty quickly tbh. Certainly long before I'd got home and taken the time to discuss it with several other people.

Carl31

Depending on the severity of the smack, if my kids were misbehaving in a shop i would expect them to be told off, in fact my son was told off not long ago for being ott in toys r us, quite rightly

How did the little girl come to have a smashable bottle in her hand anyway?

Like many others, i suspect the 'smack' has been totally over exagerrated