I know it's only the news but

[paperdoll]

This is maybe a bit trivial or indulgent compared to some of the posts I see in this category but I find I am spending more and more time sneaking off to the loo to cry about it so I just need to post and get it out.

I can't stop myself from dwelling on some of the horrible sh*t, particularly relating to the abuse and murder of children, that I read in the papers and hear on the news. No point trying to avoid it, it is everywhere. Just now (one tiny example of many that have been building up lately) I read a brief article about Neil Entwistle, who is accused of murdering his wife and baby daughter (9 months). The baby died from a gunshot wound to the stomach.

Just typing this is making me cry again, FFS. What kind of world is this? DS is 9 months and although I think of myself as fairly rational, sometimes it scares me so much that he's so innocent and trusting and sweet, and people can be so monstrous in so many ways. I don't want to become overprotective or get things out of proportion, but having DS has just really made me a lot more susceptible to news items along these lines, and a lot more prone to fits of incomprehension and despair. I don't know how to keep him safe and myself sane. Sometimes it seems like an impossible job.

I mean, shooting a baby in the stomach - that's beyond awful. How can something like that even be possible? aargh -- tears, snot, blah. I am blowing my nose on a dishtowel I feel ridiculous but also as if it is legitimate to be upset about this, does anyone else get in moods like this ever? Or is it just me?

Not as if there aren't real problems in our lives to worry about, without all this too.

[LyraSilvertongue]

I know how you feel, I've been the same in the past. Having children makes these news stories all the more real. It's the stories of babies and toddlers being sexually abused that make me want to weep. I just can't imagine how anyone can do something so evil.
I've just tried to put it out of my mind as I can't do anything about it and concentrate on making sure my own little boys are safe and happy.

[areyouthereMNtismeMargaret]

I know what you mean it happens to me all the time I can remember sobbing over the Beslan school whilst wrapping my DD's bday presents a few years ago .

I can also remember hearing about a baby who was killed in the Madrid bombings and I sobbed and sobbed and dp couldn't get why it affected me so much.

I think it hits you more when you are a parent as you associate it with your dc .
Like Lyra said all you can do is make sure your DC are safe happy and healthy and sometimes switch off the news .

Take care x

[paperdoll]

thanks, it helps to know I am not the only one who finds it hard to brush these things off sometimes. DP came in just now and gave me a hug but I am fairly sure he doesn't "get" how upset I am either. I don't blame him really, suppose it is good that we are not both prostrate with misery in response to various random news stories.

I think it was just a run of them, starting a while back with the Amstetten case and then two horrible murders of kids here in Scotland on the same day, and then loads more stuff basically every couple of days since then.

Sometimes I find the only way to snap myself out of it is to think "I mustn't waste time now, while DS is happy and safe, crying about this, because if anything horrible happens in the future I will not want to think back on hours wasted moping when I could have been happy ... if only I had known ... etc" iyswim. This tends to work but it is basically rather a morbid, negative way of trying to be positive, and not terribly healthy I fear.

Bleugh. Not crying now, anyway. Thanks.

[LyraSilvertongue]

I remember crying all the way home on the way home from work after one particularly upsetting news story concerning a five-month-old baby. I told DP why I was so upset when I got home and he just didn't get it. i think he prefers not to believe the really horrible stuff.
I was pg at the time so that didn't help...

[FairyMum]

Don't read the tabloids and daily mail/express-type papers. Go for the times/guardian. They don't do the same amount of coverage and don't seem to go into as much details as the other papers.

[dizzydixies]

I have to say this and it may sound silly but I work in an env where we have to deal with some pretty horrific things BUT for every one evil person out there, there are 100,000 very good honest decent ones who are as horrified as you are about it all

please please please remember that

[paperdoll]

LS, being pg was what kicked it all off for me too - thought it would perhaps stop when DS was born but not yet ... oh well.

FairyMum, that is good advice but actually the Guardian is what I do mainly read, and it was on their site that I saw the Neil Entwistle article that made me go weepy tonight. The thing is, even though they are good at not sensationalizing the stories too much, sometimes the facts alone are terrible enough to push me over the edge even without tabloid-style rubbernecking grimness. People are so, so shockingly awful to one another.

It always takes me by surprise too, it's not like I go looking for bleakness when I read/listen to the news, it just creeps in.

Ah well. Wish there was a quick way to just tidy up the world, wipe out all the creeps, defeat evil and feed the starving. I think the obvious solution to my problem is to become a superhero. Who's with me? Lycra tights not obligatory.

[LyraSilvertongue]

I work in the news industry so have to read some pretty horrifying stuff as part of my job. I doesn't get any easier. I avoid if I can, but it's not always possible.

[paperdoll]

just read the two posts before my last one. Yes I am otherwise fine, not really depressed, just a bit overwhelmed by life at the mo, but handling it. And yes I will try to focus on the positive and good people out there.

Really glad I posted as all the replies have helped me feel normal again. many thanks.

[paperdoll]

goodnight all - got to go replace DS's dummy and give him a kiss

[LyraSilvertongue]

I'm with ypu paperdoll. If I had one wish it would be to end child cruelty in all its forms, but sadly that ain't gonna happen.
You do have to try to push it out of your mind and not dwell on it. It's the only way to stay sane.

[paperdoll]

OK, so was feeling a bit better this morning thanks to everyone's genuinely helpful replies, but then just had a quick look at the paper and saw this story about three tiny kids being stabbed in Surrey.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/31/2

See? FFS. Never stops. Why, why, why? What can we, as non-child-stabbing individuals, do? I realize this may sound a bit flippant but I am serious, I'm wrestling with this. It can't be that everyone is just powerless but I don't know where to begin. Give more to charity? Volunteer ... somewhere? Write articles? Go from door to door in the suburbs, telling people not to stab children?

Blah, am crying again now.

[goes off to do something else and not dwell on it]

[LyraSilvertongue]

There's nothing we can do, especially when it's the parents (allegedly) who did it.
I'm not sure volunteering would be helpful, it's probably too upsetting. maybe giving more to charity is the only thing we can do.

[allgonebellyup]

yes its all the child sexual abuse that gets me so upset.
Hearing how the most hardened police officers are weeping when they come across the most sordid/revolting images of child porn etc. i dont know why this gets to me so much.
It always did before i had kids too

[slayerette]

I once read a newspaper article about that, allgone, and one of the images they described in the article has been indelibly etched on my mind ever since. I wish I could turn back time and not read the article, not know that somewhere there is a person in the world who could do to a child what was briefly described in that article but I can't. I never tell anyone what the image is because I don't want to inflict it on others but the thought of it broke my heart. So much horror and suffering in the world, sometimes I don't know how it can be borne

[LyraSilvertongue]

Slayerette. I try not to read those stories anymore. I can't bear it.
There's one indelibly etched on my mind too (the one I cried all the way home about). I wonder if it's the same one.

[Shitemum]

My mum told me about a baby whose mother died in childbirth at the hospital where she worked in the mid-60's.
I was in tears.
It's the hormones and the innocence.

You can avoid the news if you want to, I do.

No telly, don't listen to the radio and don't read the papers. Stay off the 'in the news' threads on here.
I look at the headlines on the news-stands every few days just in case I've missed something big.

The world has always been full of horror, it's just that we hear about it now.

[mankymummy]

does anyone else cry at the RSPCC adverts? EVERY time it makes me cry.

[allgonebellyup]

it just makes you feel so helpless.

i feel bad skipping those articles in the paper cos it is still happening and i am still doing nothing to help those children.

Glad i am not alone - my sister has always told me im a weirdo for worrying/dwelling so much on other childrens' lives.

[allgonebellyup]

did you mean NSPCC adverts?

if yes, then they do get me upset.

But at least they are getting their point accross.

[mankymummy]

sorry yes the NSPCC...

[LyraSilvertongue]

Shitemum, I can't avoid the news unfortunately. Not unless I go for a complete career change.

[paperdoll]

And the thing is, I don't really want to have to turn away from the news and avoid it; I mean I can see the wisdom in that, but it's just not the solution for me personally. Reading papers etc is part of how I stay feeling in touch with things, and there is a lot of interesting and worthwhile stuff I'd miss if I just stopped. I've always been a bit of Guardian addict and it is like part of me now (bit pathetic maybe but true). And actually, although I am still on mat leave, I will be back at work soon, in a job that means I have to follow what is going on in the world and try to seem reasonably well-informed.

I feel a bit bad for raising this obviously un-solvable issue again, but it does help to have a bit of a rant about it. If nothing else, it helps to get it into perspective and stops one (well, me anyway) feeling so isolated and preoccupied by dark thoughts about horrible incidents.

[NotABanana]

I am much worse since I had my children too and despair of the kind of world I have brought them in too.

Somethings in the paper I just can't read anymore and I find myself running to turn the radio off at some news items when the children are there.

The 6 month old who was stabbed seems to have improved a little.