Unfiltered Story #28243

I invited a friend over to my place for an outing, we’d only known each other for a short time,this was our second or third face to face meeting. I had met her toddler but she had never met my kids. It didn’t take long before she started telling my kids off for doing things she didn’t like, such as my 4 year old getting excited at seeing farm animals and running up to her daughter to show her, she thought he was going to be rough. I let that go because an excited 4 year old can become over exuberant .

Later we go back to my place, it’s winter and I have our heater on. Her toddler walks up to it and tries to touch it.

Me “(Name) honey don’t touch the heater, you might get hurt”

*Immediately the toddler starts screaming, but as far as I can see that she wasn’t close enough to actually touch it. My friend rushes over and snatches her up.

Me “What’s wrong? Did she get hurt”

Friend *staring daggers at me “You said the worst thing you could ever say to her”

Me “What did I say that was so wrong?”

Friend “You told her not touch something, to her it’s like you spanked her. You can’t tell my child not to touch something, it upsets her”

Me “I was trying to stop her from getting burned”

Friend “Don’t tell her not to touch something”

*later we hear the toddler scream with pain, she had touched the heater while we weren’t looking. Friend snatches her up to look for a burn but the heater was only hot enough to shock not actually burn.

Friend *to my four and seven year olds, “Why didn’t you stop her from doing that?”

Seven year old “You said that no one could tell her not to touch the heater”.