My background is one of abuse and anger, and as an adult child of an abusive alcoholic, I'm hyper aware of people's moods and am fairly sensitive to people acting out in anger. I am quick to anger, myself, and can be prone to fits of rage if I'm not careful. Through therapy and being very honest with myself and my partners about my patience capacity, I've been able to be super awesome with my almost-3 year old and 5 month old.Anyway, on to the issue that inspired the title of this post - this past Saturday I took my oldest child with me to a family event a couple hours away from my house, leaving the baby with my wife and husband (polyam triad, we've all been together since well before the children, so on and so forth). The spouses invited some people over to the house to help pass some time while we were gone - I didn't know that was their plan, but whatever.So when I get home, they fill me in on who came over and how the baby acted - a couple friends and a new person my husband has run into a few times while out with our older child (he's a SAHP). This woman, Y, brought her 3yo and 20-month old twins over with her.My wife admitted that she wasn't too keen on how Y acted toward her children, and told me that one of the twins tried to (or succeeded in?) biting the older child, and in retaliation, the mother flicked the younger child's head. This was after letting all of the children have multiple sips off her Monster energy drink, which, okay, I let my older kid try weird drinks too sometimes (he notably enjoys a sip of my coffee from time to time).My wife didn't get into how the kid handled being flicked, but said that it seemed like such a casual thing on the mom's part. I made her stop telling me about it, because 1) nothing I can do about it, 2) just hearing that much caused me anxiety.It's been a couple days from just hearing about the flicking, not even being there for it, and I'm still thinking about it in an off-handed "what would my reaction be" kind of way. I've also flashbacked on my dad flicking me and my siblings - almost always in public or at another person's house, since it's "less than" a spanking, and easier to do "secretly."I understand that I'm blatantly judging this woman and her parenting decisions, but I genuinely don't know what to do in future scenarios in which another parent does something similar or worse while in my house. I feel that I must do something, because the alternative may be me getting pretty rude or angry toward the offending party.My "probably going too far" scenario is asking them straight-up to leave, that I'm unapologetic in my desire to not be party to physical punishment in any of its forms. I don't know what's less than that, though, that's still effective. I could leave the room for an period of time and try to cool down, but if I see it again or the kid is crying, that's probably not going to help. I guess that's why I'm here talking it out. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2fg4lB3
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