Helen Dempster
03-01-2013, 06:56 PM
Hi all. I will try and keep this as brief as poss, but just wondered what you would do in this situation?
At the park with my friend and the little ones today and there was an older lady with 6 or 7 kids, two of these were black (and I hope you don't think I'm being offensive, it's not my intention). Anyway, one girl was in my son's school and she got chatting to me - randomly gave me her full address!!! She was saying that the woman is her nan and told me who all the other children were, then that the two black kids were her foster kids. The kids were all on the roundabout and, yes, going a bit too fast, when one of them fell off and started crying. The nan went running over to console the girl (nothing wrong with that), but then went to the boy (looked about 6 years old) and shouted at him "if you're going to act like an animal, I'll treat you like an animal!", grabbed him very roughly and dragged him to the bench, leaving him sitting there for about 20 mins while he watched the others play. A younger woman joined her and we overheard her say "be careful". The boy didn't appear to be scared of her or anything and didn't once cry. I did ask him if he was ok and he nodded, but didn't smile. I thought the nan was going to come over and give us a mouthful as she kept looking over at us after we'd witnessed it.
Now my friend wants to report her to Social Services, as it didn't feel right, but now we're in a bit of a quandary - the lady could quite possibly be a great foster mum and was just having a bad day/the boy may've been a right handful and that was the last straw? BUT those kids were in foster care for a reason, surely you shouldn't treat them like that? It was very intimidating for the poor little mite.
At the park with my friend and the little ones today and there was an older lady with 6 or 7 kids, two of these were black (and I hope you don't think I'm being offensive, it's not my intention). Anyway, one girl was in my son's school and she got chatting to me - randomly gave me her full address!!! She was saying that the woman is her nan and told me who all the other children were, then that the two black kids were her foster kids. The kids were all on the roundabout and, yes, going a bit too fast, when one of them fell off and started crying. The nan went running over to console the girl (nothing wrong with that), but then went to the boy (looked about 6 years old) and shouted at him "if you're going to act like an animal, I'll treat you like an animal!", grabbed him very roughly and dragged him to the bench, leaving him sitting there for about 20 mins while he watched the others play. A younger woman joined her and we overheard her say "be careful". The boy didn't appear to be scared of her or anything and didn't once cry. I did ask him if he was ok and he nodded, but didn't smile. I thought the nan was going to come over and give us a mouthful as she kept looking over at us after we'd witnessed it.
Now my friend wants to report her to Social Services, as it didn't feel right, but now we're in a bit of a quandary - the lady could quite possibly be a great foster mum and was just having a bad day/the boy may've been a right handful and that was the last straw? BUT those kids were in foster care for a reason, surely you shouldn't treat them like that? It was very intimidating for the poor little mite.