My daughter was flooded with emotion of shame, embarrassment, confusion and she grabbed my leg and buried her face on my thigh. After that she was so sad that she buried her face on the floor sobbing. I ended up having to carry her back to the car all the while trying to get the baby in the car too. I carpooled with my friend so after we got in the car, my daughter laid on the floor covering her face being really upset. My friend made her daughter apologize but my friends daughter was confused, she said well she stepped on my foot and it hurts. I explained to her that she didn’t mean to do it, eventually she did try to say sorry… but she also said that my daughter should also apologize for stepping on her foot. I told my friends daughter something along the line of yes, it did hurt, we are sorry that it hurt…

My daughter was so upset that I spend another 10 min in my arm… eventually had to start driving home bc it was getting and mg friends daughter was getting antsy in the car….

I actually have a son who is autistic and he gets into communication trouble with my daughter and his olde brother. So I understand why my friends daughter was getting fed up and my daughter stepping on her accidentally was the last straw for her. How do I handle this situation? And how do I have a good attitude and respond so my daughter can be validated but also empowered?

I’m pouring over the site and still can’t find this answer… I’ve found the answer for if they aren’t that bothered by it, but my son was in tears and lashed out by eventually pinching her and then when it happened again, hitting her (he is 3)

Your rudeness is unwelcome.

I encourage parents to respond immediately and, ideally, preventively, rather than to knee-jerk react. We are powerful. Our emotional reactions are very disturbing and unhelpful for our child and they certainly don’t help another child to do better. I’d consider the end result you are looking for with your reactions.

Thanks, Michelle. Why do you think your child is lashing out like this? Could he be repeating the violent actions of his sibling? I’d start by exploring and understanding where this behavior is coming from, also I would definitely be there when situations are charged, whether it’s between him and his sibling or with other children. Sounds like he needs a lot more help feeling more protected from his sibling and controlling his impulses with other children.

Yes. This.

It’s our job to protect our kids.

How Janet has the audacity to say that using a stern voice is losing one’s temper is beyond me.

Wtf. I don’t blame him. He’s trying to strangle another kid? No. Keep your kid the hell away from other kids if he’s doing that. Yelling and putting in time-out is completely understandable and frankly tame for the severity of how bad your kid messed up. If I were the other parent, I’d never let him over again and would warn others. STRANGLING. Not to mention the biting. Jesus. Yeah, you need FIRM BOUNDARIES AROUND STRANGLING OTHER CHILDREN. and that does NOT include putting down the parents of the other child for stepping in where you’ve clearly failed.

Frankly, this is about the last straw for me. There’s peaceful parenting and there’s doormat parenting and it’s pretty evident which this is. Embarrassing. I don’t want to be associated with this.

It should have read ‘all feelings are acceptable’ not ‘unacceptable’, sorry for the typo.

However, sometimes I get confused about the RIE approach to feelings and emotions: how can we teach our children that all feelings are ok and unacceptable if we are striving to always stay unruffled, ie we are not showing our genuine emotional spectrum to them? Show them that sometimes it can happen to us to lose our patience, to raise our voices out of frustration or exhaustion, but that we can manage those difficult emotions in ourselves, we don’t let them take over and we don’t act on them (ie we don’t become aggressive) and we are able to move on and reflect on what happened in ourselves. Staying calm with our children is very important and it does help diffusing difficult situations and restoring connection. However, always staying unruffled seems very hard to achieve and I’m not fully convinced it is the message we want to give to our children? I’m thinking that modelling a healthy attitude and acceptance for our emotional spectrum too is important. Also, if our child is hit by another one in a playground (I’m thinking pre-school years), stepping in to not only check on our child but also saying to the other child ‘Please don’t do that’ in a firm voice seems a natural response to me.

Thanks again.