Boots employee smacking customer's toddler

plumpmouse

Regardless of what the girl did or how she was behaving the assistant should not have touched her.

If it had been me I would have sorted it there and then with the manager and expected something to be done.

If an adult had knocked something and been tapped/smacked/hit because of it we would all deem it assault. Why on earth should a 3 year old not been treated with the same respect?


As a flip if this had been a teacher smacking/tapping a misbehaving child in a school everyone would be in uproar. And teachers probably face far worse behaviour than a child knocking something off a shelf accidentally or not.

suki1001

Abbafan1972 wrote: »

Looking at it from the other side, when I'm out shopping, I look at some of the Mom's and hardly any of them are watching what their kids are doing in shops, they are too busy talking on their mobiles and texting!

I don't let my kids wander off in the shops, so I can see what they're doing and they know not to touch anything.

I even seen parents playing with their phones next to a main road and not looking at what the kids are doing. Whatever it is, can't it wait?

I was shopping the one time (it was in Boots actually), I was by the photo department and this little girl was picking up all the photo albums with her mucky hands (stuff people have to buy) and the mother didn't stop her, she just kept on saying "Kira, don't touch that" over and over again, but didn't stop her.

I think if I was the shop assistant, I would approach the parent and ask them to control their child, or get the security guard to do it.

This is a problem we constantly had where I worked. Their mothers would buy the a Greggs to shut them up and come into the clothes shop. Worse - they'd give them Ribena or some other drink and they'd be wondering around the store drink in hand.

The worst thing that happened was when I wasn't in. A child had a can of coke and the mother was asked to take the drink away from the child because of the risk of spilling, which she did. But the child moaned so much, she gave it back to him. He then spilt it all over a whole rail of clothing. I saw the damage, coats (expensive), trousers, it ruined a fair few hundred pounds worth of clothes that couldn't be sold and had to be classed as waste. It went everywhere. She just calmly walked out of the store - as far as I know they didn't do anything, but it was amazing how many parents we had to tell. The thought of clearing up messy sausage rolls and pasties off the floor brings a shudder down my spine - that's also not to mention the contents of picked noses that were wiped down mirrors and the chewing gum stuck in various places.

zaksmum

I would have been furious too. It brings out something primal in me to think of anyone smacking my child or grandchild.

gingin_2

valk_scot wrote: »

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?

A friend had similar. I never pushed to hear the entire story as she was obviously devastated by it but general gist was child got themselves caught up in a rope at a school fete event and she had to rescue him as parent wasn't there and child got mildly injured in doing so. This parent went to the police and an investigation had to be made, school were involved, the whole caboodle.

I am stunned by the daily mail responses, too IF the story is true I am a calm person but if anyone lay their hands on my children I would lose it. I help out in my daughter's class and having known them for a while ( and the over-dramatics of 8-9 year old girls) they often come up to hug me and my immediate response is to put my hands in the air as if to say " I'm not touching them!". You just can't risk it.

bitemebankers

Person_one wrote: »

I'd have called the police if I'd witnessed it. Its bad enough that parents are legally allowed to hit their children, strangers doing it has to be classed as assault.

This, exactly.

LannieDuck

gingin wrote: »

A friend had similar. I never pushed to hear the entire story as she was obviously devastated by it but general gist was child got themselves caught up in a rope at a school fete event and she had to rescue him as parent wasn't there and child got mildly injured in doing so. This parent went to the police and an investigation had to be made, school were involved, the whole caboodle.

I am stunned by the daily mail responses, too IF the story is true I am a calm person but if anyone lay their hands on my children I would lose it. I help out in my daughter's class and having known them for a while ( and the over-dramatics of 8-9 year old girls) they often come up to hug me and my immediate response is to put my hands in the air as if to say " I'm not touching them!". You just can't risk it.

I think that's a very clear exception to the general rule of 'don't touch another person's child' - if my child is in danger, I would absolutely hope that someone would intervene to help her. And I wouldn't dream of going to the police afterwards.

Context is important.

owen_money

When I was a lad the local bobby cuffed you around the ear if you we getting up to mischief, now its all PC, you can't do this you can't to that and look at how the world is, old ladies beaten up and mugged in their own homes. Bring back the birch I say

bitemebankers

owen_money wrote: »

When I was a lad the local bobby cuffed you around the ear if you we getting up to mischief, now its all PC, you can't do this you can't to that and look at how the world is, old ladies beaten up and mugged in their own homes. Bring back the birch I say

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

iwb100

It's clearly not right for an employee of Boots or any other retail outlet to discipline someone elses child. Their only job is to protect their store from damage as they would if anyone was causing damage to it. So she was a bit silly.

However, when shopping I am frequently stunned by the way children behave, and are allowed to, or ignored by their parents. Screaming, running around banging into other shoppers, throwing tantrums, touching things on the shelves, fighting etc etc.

We seem to have a country where bad behaviour is now just accepted by many parents who presumably are either too lazy to do anything or too worried about being "nice" or whatever to actually do something about it. It frustrates me, and I can only imagine it would be worse if I worked in a retail environment and saw it daily.

Parents need to control their children. In fact when you see well behaved kids, they don't need control because they have been properly managed throughout their lives by their parents and thus simply know what is acceptable and what isn't. Far too much is let go nowadays and this isn't a "back in my day" rant. It's just plain common sense.

gingin_2

LannieDuck wrote: »

I think that's a very clear exception to the general rule of 'don't touch another person's child' - if my child is in danger, I would absolutely hope that someone would intervene to help her. And I wouldn't dream of going to the police afterwards.

Context is important.

Yes, but to be fair that was in response to Valk's similar example which I quoted and I made no reference to it being similar to the Boots example - granted it went slightly off subject.