…when the idea of being a tolerant and adult human being is stretched too far; and I have to make a conscious decision not to step over the edge. I’m angry, exhausted, and unsettled from having to support my staff as they dealt with a mother slapping her twelve year old daughter around in the library in front of her other two newborns in a pushchair.

We’ve written up incident reports and are reporting under safeguarding, and all the proper people are in the process of being informed and called in – and I know I made the right calls in how to handle it.

But

The look in the daughter’s eyes as she told me she was okay made we want to get violent in turn. But that would just make me the large brute of a man beating her mother up and that’s not right either. Viscerally satisfying as an outlet for my horror, and no doubt momentarily cathartic, but in no way acceptable.

It’s horrible, and frustrating, but there you go. I have a bottle of wine open, and in this instance I think it’s needed.