How would you feel about this?

This is behavior I witnessed while at a friend's house:

The kid wouldnt share with his baby sister and the father asked the kid to give the toy back. The kid didnt do it "fast enough" so the father placed him into time out. The kid tested his father and ran away from time out. The father tried to stop him and snatched him up from the back of his shirt. In the process the kid got "choked" by the collar of his shirt. The father then placed him back into time out and started the time over.

The mother got rather upset and so was the kid that the father acted this impulsively. The kid kept saying "my daddy pulled me by my shirt and hurt my neck". His neck was a little red too.

My question is, how would you feel about this scenario? Would you chock it up to being accidental? Over kill? What are your thoughts?

The question from my friend is: do your husbands get tougher and more physical with your kids than you do? Is this authoritative/physical behavior normal among fathers when dealing with their sons?

Not sure what to think and neither does the mother.

He must have done it super hard because i.have grabbed LO by bis sbirt before and it never leaves marks

Then it sounds like this is the first time it has happened, so he was just instinctively reaching out to grab what he could and it was an accident. I'd suggest she sit down with him and just talk about it, explain he needs to be careful when grabbing at them because they can get easily hurt sometimes. Doesn't sound like he meant to do it or anything   I've totally accidentally scratched or poked my kids trying to grab them because they were sprinting away or falling off of something lol

I think men forget their own strength more than women do. My hubby sometimes accidentally grabs my son too hard when playing, etc too.

And my husband is a little less patient, so he's more likely to punish him for taking longer to obey, but he would ALWAYS apologize for being rough if it hurt our son and tell him he didn't mean to grab him and hurt him but he just wanted him to finish time out because he wasn't sharing (then explain why we share), etc

Quoting Jude the Super Kinkster:" He must have done it super hard because i.have grabbed LO by bis sbirt before and it never leaves marks"

  And that would not be okay with me at all. I woulda flipped out.

Sounds like he was disciplining in anger and got very impulsive with his actions, but who knows, it very well could have been an accident. Things happen.


DH can get like that if he doesn't watch himself, but honestly, he rarely disciplines them and we have a pretty "strict" routine when we do, to try to avoid from something like that happening.

It seems like it was an accident.

That sounds accidental to me. I have grabbed LO by his shirt before and he has never gotten a red mark like that but when kids get up enough momentum I wouldn't be shocked if that happened.

If it's the first time it has happened, I would brush it off as accidental. I wouldn't get concerned unless such "accidents" were occuring on a regular basis. I would ask him to apologize to LO, however. Even if it's an accident, it can still be traumatizing to a child.

Quoting P Pickle Pants:" I think men forget their own strength more than women do. My hubby sometimes accidentally grabs my son ... [snip!] ... to grab him and hurt him but he just wanted him to finish time out because he wasn't sharing (then explain why we share), etc"

  my hubby all over.

Quoting Jude the Super Kinkster:" He must have done it super hard because i.have grabbed LO by bis sbirt before and it never leaves marks"

Yeah it was hard.. the kid fell backward. The look on the kid's face was terrifying (like he couldnt breath or something). Maybe I am over reacting but this is what I saw. The father comes from an abusive childhood as far as what my friend is telling me and he is struggling with not spanking and stuff. He hasnt hit him as far as she knows recently. He is trying not to spank him at all. He has had outbursts that were pretty intense in the past but she said he is really trying to make an effort to change his ways.

He should have given the kid a chance to share before putting him in time out. I don't think it's abuse or whatever, just smurffy impulsive, authoritarian, mean parenting

It sounds too rough to me...if its the first time I would talk with my so and see if he realized it was too much..talk about better ways to deal with kid in the future..if he acts like there was nothing wrong with how he handled it and planned to continue that way then id have a major issue. It does seem to me that guys are more aggressive with punnishment (that's just my experience not 100% true for every man ) but you have to decide what you find acceptable for your child as punnishment and whats not and only allow what your comfortable with...I wouldn't allow my so to do this, I would tell him to find a different way to handle it.

It sounds too rough to me...if its the first time I would talk with my so and see if he realized it was too much..talk about better ways to deal with kid in the future..if he acts like there was nothing wrong with how he handled it and planned to continue that way then id have a major issue. It does seem to me that guys are more aggressive with punnishment (that's just my experience not 100% true for every man ) but you have to decide what you find acceptable for your child as punnishment and whats not and only allow what your comfortable with...I wouldn't allow my so to do this, I would tell him to find a different way to handle it.

<blockquote><b>Quoting Conservative MAMA:</b>" Yeah it was hard.. the kid fell backward. The look on the kid's face was terrifying (like he couldnt ... [snip!] ... has had outbursts that were pretty intense in the past but she said he is really trying to make an effort to change his ways. "</blockquote>




That would worry me too. Like i said, i grab LO all the time and he never has marks or has seemed scared but he is not in triuble when i do it. I think they need to have a serious talk about boundaries