The mothers too ashamed to admit their own children physically attack them
WITH his mop of blond curls and big blue eyes, fiveyear- old Jack Talbot looks for all the world as if butter wouldn’t melt in his little rosebud mouth.
And, most of the time, Jack is indeed a loving, happy, gentle boy who is settling in well in his first year at school. However, on occasions — and there have been many — Jack can become so angry he physically attacks his mother, Kylie: kicking, punching, biting and gouging her face, leaving her with nasty, and embarrassing, scars and bruises she’s too ashamed to show in public.
Last summer, despite the heat, she had to wear leggings to hide teeth marks on her shin from where her son bit her when she asked him to brush his teeth.
Kylie, a purchasing controller for a technology firm, is finding it so hard to rein Jack in that she has now turned to outside organisations for help.
‘I just can’t cope with his outbursts, and it’s so upsetting because I don’t know where this violence is coming from,’ says Kylie, from Leeds. ‘I question whether I’m a bad mother — is it something I’ve done, or something I haven’t done, that is making him lash out at me like this?
‘But I’ve never hit him, and have always been a loving, devoted mother. Plus my daughter, Eliza, who’s three, doesn’t behave this way, and I haven’t raised her any differently. Often Jack’s behaviour is so scary that I’ll have to call my dad, who lives nearby, to come and help me control him. But if Jack carries on like this, how on earth am I going to cope when he’s a teenager?’
It’s a terrifying prospect, bearing in mind Kylie has for the past two years been a single parent, having left the father of her two children in March 2015 after five years of marriage.
Towards the end there were some terrible rows at home, Kylie admits. Although Jack was only a toddler at the time, his mother wonders — and she may well be right — whether what he witnessed is the underlying root of his violent temper.
Certainly, the timings seem to fit: the outbursts started soon after Kylie and the children left the family home.
And, while Jack may be among the youngest perpetrators, he is sadly by no means the only child in Britain guilty of physically attacking a parent.
A UK-wide survey last year by researchers One Pulse revealed that an alarming three in ten mothers claim to have been physically attacked by their children.
Meanwhile, the number of calls about violent children to the charity Family Lives almost doubled to 40,000 last year.
And while it may be easy to leap to the conclusion that the problem of violent children is confined to feckless, single mothers on sink estates, and the proliferation of uncensored violence on TV and video games, professionals say parental abuse — like all domestic violence — crosses all social boundaries.
Joe Lettieri, of the North London-based Parent Abuse and Reconciliation Service (PAARS), says: ‘ We support families where both parents have good jobs — headteachers, consultants, educational psychologists, no group is immune.’
KYLIE, 30, felt she had little choice other than to invite the probing of outside agencies into her family, to try to stop to her son’s behaviour. After speaking to teachers at his school, where he is a model pupil, Kylie got a referral for Jack to their local children’s centre and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
Jack is now being supported by specialist staff, at school and at the children’s centre, who believe there are no signs of underlying learning or neurological difficulties, such as autism and ADHD. But they agree he may be reacting to his parents’ acrimonious divorce, and he is on a waiting list for counselling.
In the meantime, the assaults continue. ‘He’s only average height, 3ft 6in tall, and very skinny, but he has some real strength when he’s angry,’ says Kylie. ‘ And I’m only 5ft 4in tall, so trying to restrain him is tough.
‘When I tell Jack it’s time to go to bed he often refuses, and when I try to steer him upstairs he kicks and lashes out at me. Then he will refuse to clean his teeth, so I’ll try to do it for him, while he keeps his mouth clamped shut and hits out.
‘He also gouges my face, drawing blood and leaving scratch marks, when I try to get him out of the bath. He kicked and punched me last night because he wanted a drink but we had run out of squash, and he refused to have milk or water.’
Kylie has grown used to having to face the world with scratches and bruises. ‘I’m honest with friends and family when they ask how I got my injuries,’ she says.
Both her children spend every other weekend with their dad, but he is largely spared his son’s aggression.
Kylie has been following the guidance of children’s centre staff since October: Praising all good behaviour, staying as calm as possible in the face of Jack’s outbursts and giving him ‘time out’ alone to cool down when his temper flares.
On their advice, she has also enrolled him into Ninja Tots, a martial arts club, to instill discipline and give her son a constructive outlet for his energy.
But it’s early days, and never a week goes by without Jack turning on his mother. ‘ Between these episodes he’s such a lovely little boy. We’ll sit together and watch a film, colour or build Lego — he is very inquisitive,’ she says. ‘But he often reduces me to tears.
‘I try not to cry in front of him when he lashes out, because I don’t want him to see that he’s upset me, but following a bad morning, I will sit in my car after dropping him at school and weep. It’s hard to believe that I could be terrorised in this way by my own child, but I am.’
Kylie is right to worry what will happen when her son grows older — adolescents terrorising and attacking their parents is a recognised problem. The Home Office has a term for it: Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (APVA).
Although incident rates are not recorded by the Home Office, at the request of researchers at Oxford University, the Metropolitan Police kept a log of reported cases of APVA for the year to March 2010.
They found 1,892 incidents of adolescents being violent or threatening violence against a parent or carer, or causing criminal damage in the home, in the London area. And as with all domestic violence, these figures undoubtedly represent the tip of the iceberg, with most cases going unreported. A Home Office information guide on the subject states: ‘ Actual levels are likely to be much higher. All forms of domestic violence and abuse are under-reported and parents are, understandably, particularly reluctant to disclose or report violence from their child.
‘Parents report feelings of isolation, guilt and shame surrounding their child’s violence towards them, and fear that their parenting skills may be questioned and that they will be blamed or disbelieved by those to whom they disclose the violence. ‘Many parents worry that their victimisation will not be taken seriously or . . . they will be held to account and that their child may be taken away from them and/or criminalised.’
This sort of violence appears to be largely perpetuated by sons against mothers, The Met police figures show the vast majority of attackers, 87 per cent, were male while their victims were largely female (77.5 per cent).
Lucy Wyke, 38 (we’ve changed the names in this case), is all too familiar with the misery of being physically abused by a son. Although still only nine, James has, in fact, come close to killing his mother, more than once.
Two years ago Lucy, a civil servant from South London, was driving along the M2 with both her sons in the back of the car when James removed his seatbelt. He refused to put it back on and, as there
was no hard shoulder or layby to pull over in, she understandably panicked, shouting at James to do as he was told.
Instead, in a rage, he leaned forward and yanked on his mother’s seatbelt until it was strangling her as she tried to steer the car.
Eventually he let go and, at her wits’ end as this was the culmination of months of her son lashing out when she tried to discipline him, Lucy drove to a police station where an officer had a stern word with a by then tearful James, telling him if they saw him again he would be in big trouble.
But just a few months later, he pushed his mother down their staircase as she tried to steer him towards bed.
‘I fell all the way to the bottom, and was completely black and blue,’ recalls Lucy. ‘I was so shaken manage to stay united in our approach so James knows there are firm boundaries.’
The couple believe James’s violent tendencies stem from him having cancer when he was just six and spending months in hospital. Treatment to remove the Wilms’ tumour in his left kidney was successful, but the stressful experience left him traumatised.
LUCY turned to doctors at the Royal Marsden hospital in London, where James was treated, for help, and after autism and ADHD were ruled out a year ago, the family was referred to their local Early Help Team which drew up a behaviour management plan.
‘ I’d spent every minute with James when he was in hospital and the psychologists think that closeness is perhaps the reason he feels able to direct his anger about all he went through at me,’ says Lucy.
‘I know some people blame this increase in violence on the video games kids play, but my son has never had access to them.
Although James does still lash out occasionally, hitting Lucy with a hockey stick and a pool cue on two separate occasions last year, giving him warnings when he answers back and making him stay in his room until he calms down when aggressive are techniques that help. Lucy dares to think that, finally, James’s violence might be defusing. Sadly, Nadia Simmons can see no light at the end of the tunnel. Aged 46, she has been living ‘in hell’ for the past five years.
She’s been hit, punched, threatened with a knife and throttled by her 17-year-old son. ‘I’ve been left with bruises and cuts so many times I’m sure my colleagues know someone is hurting me, but they probably don’t suspect it’s my son,’ she says.
The university lecturer from Somerset separated from her husband of 16 years when their daughter, Sarah, was 16 and son, Matthew, 12. Her son blamed her for the divorce and, while at first he would just shout when he lost his temper, by the time he turned 13 it had escalated to violence.
The police have been called many times, but Nadia always stops short of pressing charges, worried about the impact on her son’s future.
On one occasion, she was left with deep bruises when Matthew wedged her neck between his bedroom door and his wardrobe door after she told him to return money he had stolen from her purse.
Another time he threw a plate of food at her head, causing a gash on her face, and, when she told him she had called the police, he threatened to kill her with a kitchen knife. He was handcuffed and taken to the police station but released without charge, at Nadia’s request.
Matthew is currently at college and hoping to join the Navy.
Periodically, usually after the police have been called, he will go to live with his father, who always ends up sending him back, unable to cope with him either.
‘I don’t press charges because I don’t want him to end up with a criminal record. I want him to get support, but that only seems to be available if I was hurting him, not the other way around,’ she says.
Nadia is biding her time until her son turns 18 in the summer, when she will tell him to leave, and not allow him back.‘ My daughter thinks I should throw him out now, but once he’s an adult, I’ll feel I’ve done my job and won’t put up with his violence any longer,’ she says.
Hard though their behaviour is to bear, turning their backs on their little boys is unthinkable for both Kylie and Lucy at the moment.
Fingers crossed, with the right support, they will never feel they have to.