What do you mean you’re scared of your own child? Don’t be silly, they are your child, if you are feeling scared of them then perhaps you need to work on why you feel scared, its not their actions, its how you are perceiving them, all kids say things they don’t mean, don’t pay any attention to it…… I looked at the professional, had this really just been said to me after I had told someone who should have been helping us, how bad things were and how scared we all were of my beautiful, incredible child.. a child of 14 , but my child, a sibling too .. someone I was and am proud of, a child who I would do anything for, a child who deserved to be supported, encouraged a child who I love unconditionally even though they had tried to kill me and their sibling… yes you did read that right .. and yes I I did ask for help long before it got to this stage. But I was simply ignored, told the situation was not severe enough, that I was not their concern, mind neither were my other children as according to the professionals it was solely my responsibility to not let harm come to anyone. Let me take you back to the beginning, before I knew this was a ‘thing’ that it had a name and before I found support. 

Domestic abuse is still seen as only something that happens between partners, married, living together or not. Yet this is not the case at all. 

The paragraph above may shock you, but it was our family’s reality. I had reached out continuously to professionals such as early help, the police, doctors, social care  for a few years prior to the major incident but was told it was typical behaviours, or we don’t meet criteria, that my child did not want to access support or even consent to a referral, that we are over reacting, you name it, it was said to me over and over again, but all the time I was told this, living at home was not living it was surviving and I’m not entirely sure we managed that fully. Door after door, day after day everything was closed in our faces, what remained was hopelessness, fear and worry, yet not one person saw, heard or believed us and this gave unbelievable power to the one person we were all in fear of. 

Before I continue, I need to be very very clear, I adore and love my child, every bit of them , I did then and I do now and I will always have their back and advocate for them. I don’t blame them for what happened but I do blame the system for allowing it to happen. I will not share who I am or who they are, they are my world and protecting them is my priority. They are not a monster, they don’t need to be villainised, they are no longer behaving that way towards us but I still refuse to out them – they matter to me, so does our journey and so does highlighting this but nothing comes before them. 

At first when we started to notice things, we put it down to typical behaviours that children can show, we found different ways to communicate, changed boundaries and consequences, picked our battles and reached out for help – you know to the services that say get in touch we won’t judge or shame you, we want to help? yes to them, who did exactly that. We went on this cycle for years, we completely got rid of consequences in the typical sense as that just caused so many incidents and harm to us, plus the house was being destroyed, doors and cupboards broken, windows, verbal abuse, coercion and control, manipulation, gaslighting, threats, physical assaults with and without weapons, you name it, it happened. During this time the behaviour became abusive directly towards me and also a sibling, now I’m not talking the odd swear word , I am talking extreme abusive behaviours that also caused multiple injuries and seen us in A & E on more than one occasion, all of this was reported by me to those who should have helped. I begged, pleaded, cried, you name it we did it, but we were met with you need to do more, they don’t mean it, they wont go through with it… then one day my child tried to poison me, they told me how and they also told someone who had finally come out to see what the fuss was about…. You are probably thinking we would have support at this point, nope what I was met with was ‘your child is upset you wouldn’t drink what they made’ I looked at the professional and said you did just hear what they said and the professional said yes but they have said they feel they are trying to make amends but you wouldn’t drink it. I told the professional to drink it if they were so sure there was no risk ‘no I can’t do that especially as they have said they will poison it’ Laughable in one way seriously concerning in another. Nothing was consumed by anyone, professional left never to be seen again.  Things from this point ramped up at great speed, daily incidents of physical harm, intimidation to all in the house, destroying of property, nonattendance to school, me leaving my job, threats of extreme violence if anyone was asleep so this saw me not sleeping as much as possible, spending my days trying to avoid an incident and my nights worrying about tomorrow, hoping we would all be here. We installed cameras as the behaviours became so abusive. Even when the police came, my child would present calm, in control and as though we had made it up against them, time after time, and then when they left further incidents occurred. We met everyone we could think of, challenged professionals’ decisions to not support us, but we were always met with the same, they don’t mean it, it can’t be that bad, you are responsible for keeping everyone safe, we won’t parent for you, that’s your role. it went on and on. 

Finally someone decided to come and see us all, well that caused more harm at that point – the professional walked in sat down and then proceeded to tell my child what we had told them, in front of us, my child erupted , the professional however couldn’t wait to leave the house, back to safety in their car. Us? well we were left in the house alone with my child who had reacted to what had been said and a massive incident occurred and went on for hours . Still no help from anyone though as the professional decided it was too unsafe for them to continue to visit but from what they saw we have safety plan in place and are managing. 

We couldn’t continue anymore, I made the heartbreaking decision to ask for my child to be accommodated elsewhere as the risk to my other children and myself was so high, we had physical and emotional wounds yet as this was my child and not a partner, nobody appeared to care, nobody appeared to understand the seriousness of this nobody had heard of child to parent abuse and nobody wanted to help. In response to my desperation of this is not what we want but without help I fear they will kill me or their sibling, I was threatened with abandonment prosecution instead…. I couldn’t believe that nobody was taking this seriously not even for the others in the home or even my child who was doing this. 

This continued for a further 8 months until one day things escalated again and my child had to be removed from our home. It broke me, it broke them and it broke our family, we will one day recover from this level of trauma, but this should never have got to this point, the system did not just fail but encouraged the abuse to continue. If you re read back part of our life and change my child to my partner – we would have been seen, heard and supported years earlier and perhaps the things which happened would never had done. 

Things are so much more settled and happier for us all now, our family works in a way that is safest for us all, we have moved on and I found PEGS. If someone tells you they are scared of their child, please please listen to them and believe them. Child to parent abuse happens, I never knew it was possible until it happened to me, it could happen to you or someone you know. Learn from the failings we had, so that others have a different outcome to ours.