Holy Crap! I thought that neighbor woman was gonna beat the snot out of me!

I was wishing Skittles was here or that I could at least channel her for a while because earlier the neighbor woman was screaming at me and threatening to beat up everyone she looked at.

It all started with a kid drama when my 11 year old came running into the house crying carrying what was left of a teeshirt she had worn over a bathing suit to go play with the neighbor kids in their back yard. It was covered in mud and looks like it is completely ruined. She was freaking out because she thought I was gonna be mad at her.

I got her calmed down enough to tell me what was going on. She had left that shirt there on a patio chair and had come home long enough to eat dinner. When she went back thirty minutes later, the shirt had been stomped in the mud to the point it was saturated.

I threw on some "going out of the house" shorts (as opposed to the "at home tie dye boxers") and sailed off to solve the crime.

I walked into the neighbor's yard and there is this HUGE meltdown happening with two girls accusing this boy from two houses down of ruining that shirt. The boy stood there and claimed it was one of the girls who had done all the dirty work--that he was being framed.

I take the boy home first and his mom meets me in their front yard and she starts screaming at me from across the yard. I told her that i had conflicting witness reports--that I had NO idea who had done the crime--but that I wanted her to know about what had happened. She starts SCREAMING that she is sick and tired of everyone accusing HER kid of anything that goes wrong and she is F***ing tired of the bullshit, and if she gets any more shit from anybody else she is gonna start beating somebody's ass, and she is gonna start with whoever is ragging on her.

THEN she starts screaming at the kid that she is gonna beat his ass as soon as she gets done with me. THREE times she threatens that child while I am there to hear it!

I walked away from there wondering if I should call Child Services. I didn't, but I have to admit she scared the crap outta me.

:scared:

Happy Friday.


Laura

If she is yelling at him, this has probably happened before.

He acts out on a fairly regular basis and is no stranger to conflict either in the neighborhood or at school. The boy (I'll call him L) has never had any major problems with my kid (or with me) but there have been any number of people in the neighborhood that have had several issues with him.

Something you gotta understand about this whole situation is that we live in a small farm town where the kids just pretty much run. It is a slice of life that is rapidly vanishing, but if you think back to the days when kids played in back yards and parks from dawn to dusk you are pretty close to what our kids do here. I never know for sure how many I'll be feeding for any given meal in the summer because that is just how it works.

Over the years, I have applied band aids and hugs to any number of kids that I have no genetic links with--just as those kids' moms have bandaged and fed my kid. I have dispensed back yard discipline on occasion, and that is how it goes at the other houses too. (I am told by a few of the kids that our house is viewed as one of the more laid back ones, but that I am also seen as the one mom you do NOT want to piss off--not a bad rep to have, I think...)

I know it has become cliche to talk about the whole village raising a child, but around here it IS pretty close to a reality. That is why this was so particularly disturbing last night.

I left L standing in his yard with his mother last night after I explained to him that he was square with me as far as I was concerned, but that I figured that it was up to him to stand up and do the right thing next time he saw kids picking on each other. I never once directly accused that kid, but I DID tell his mom what the other kids had said.

I am worried for him, if you want the truth. I am wondering if maybe I need to get more involved with the kid rather than create distance. I know it sounds odd in some ways, but I'm thinking maybe that kid needs an adult. I may have to "hire" him to do some yard work for me so I can get a better read on what is happening here.


Laura

but I hope you can observe her behavior over the weekend. Sounds like the child may have some issues but when you see the mother's example you can get a glimpse into his life.

Hope it all works out okay.

I feel for you and her poor son!

I'd probably stay away from her and just wave at a distance should I see her again.

She must have way too much going on in her life to react like that over this situation.

I would steer clear of her and her house.

it's not my job to figure out if there is abuse going on, they have social workers who are paid and trained well to determine if a child is being abused. It's just the place of the average person to report what seems like a potentially-abusive situation.

Her verbal abuse/threats are indicators enough.

Of course this isn't really about a tee shirt; I get that. But still, you read about these neighbors-go-Rambo stories all the time and then it gets reported in the newspaper as "Woman shoots husband in fight over donut," which is both true and yet the furthest thing from the truth.

Things like that, it's best just to get the hell out of there. Your kid clearly absorbed some of the false psychological trauma these dysfunctional people force-fed into a tee shirt situation. The best thing to do as a parent is just model perspective: shrug it off and say "No biggie. Just learn not to get enmeshed whenever loonies do their craziness." Peace of mind is well worth the cost of not knowing who the real tee shirt stomper is.

Seriously, I had NO idea what a can of worms that was gonna turn out to be. In retrospect, I should have just pulled my kid into the house for the balance of the day and pitched the shirt into the garbage--but I had no way to know that at the time.

I gotta say that her threat against me is less disturbing to me than the threats she made against her child. Had she hit me--that has a pretty clear path for resolution/conclusion. It might have been ugly--but it would ultimately have ended. Violence against that child, however, is just terrible to contemplate because the victimization just keeps on going.

My idea of "backyard justice" is correcting the situation at the time and maybe a lecture on the ethics and expectations involved. By way of example, last summer I found the kids in our backyard having some kind of meltdown involving the tire swing (I never DID figure out exactly what the transgression was that time.) I made them all weed the flower bed (took about five minutes) while we "talked" about getting along with each other and proper conflict resolution.

I might BORE them to death, I might make them do something productive as "punishment," but I simply can't imagine beating on a kid. I explain it to the kids this way: My house, My rules. You can stay here and live with that understanding or you can go home.

So far, that philosophy has worked for me, and the kids really don't seem to mind it because they know the first thing I'm gonna do is ask for ALL the versions of the story--that they WILL be heard. They can live with my justice or they can go play someplace else. They have choices and they have consequences for what they choose to do.

That poor little kid last night, however, I'm not sure he's got too many choices.


Laura

With her threat of physical violence towards you or anyone who is "ragging" on her and her threat/s to her own child, I'd definitely, at the least, make a police report.