To be really upset and guilt-ridden by the new NSPCC ad?

[Stressingismyhobby]

Please don't read if you're easily upset by this sort of thing.

It shows a real life call handler explaining a call where a woman called in because she could hear her neighbour shouting at her child "which bit of your teddy bear shall I cut off? This bit?" And the child was crying "no mummy!" Turned out to be an awful case of neglect of a 3 year old. Totally understand the ads need to be hard hitting but I'm scarred by it and holding in sobs.

What makes it worse - and it's so hard to admit this - is the first thing i thought is, "Oh, God, did i ever do something like that??!". It horrifies me that my brain went there and that I'm questioning myself like that. When mine were babies I struggled a lot in the very early days and I was just a massive ball of rage. I shouted at them a lot especially when they were babies (who shouts at a baby???) - I've never felt rage towards an adult the way I did towards them. Which is just awful. I never and would never hurt or abuse them but my God, I can't forgive the way I sometimes shouted at them and I never will. I remember once taking my littlest's favourite teddy away because he was naughty one night and he really cried and I felt like a fucking monster afterwards. Another time, I was shouting at the baby who I couldn't get to nap and found my other child hid in the corner in the other room because she was scared of my shouting.

I adore them completely and absolutely hate myself when I look back. The ad has stirred up all that guilt.

Honestly OP, I can only reiterate what others have said here. My mum didn’t love me. She said and did some awful things. I used to read in kids magazines in the problem pages when I was age 9 or 10. The advice was always to write a letter to your mum and explain how they made you feel and why you felt that way. I wrote letter after letter. I told her I loved her but her shouting scared me and I just wanted to make her happy. She didn’t care about the letters. She never changed. Everything was my fault.

OP, you have maybe made some mistakes, but you clearly care about your children and their happiness. I would have loved to have had that from my mum. Don’t underestimate that. Even in the hardest of moments, when you’ve lost it with them for a moment, you’ve never stopped loving them and that counts for more than you know

You are all saving my sanity, thank you so much.

@creation that is absolutely bloody heartbreaking. I'm so sorry you went through that.

@stressing, it is a really hard advert to watch isn’t it. The way I can rationalise and feel better after watching it is that we’re listening to someone report it - someone that cares, and is helping, and that the little child (and mother) got the help they needed.

Yes, I hope so @BeamerTown

Oh god just reading that made me go cold.

Awful, awful people out there, but Stressing you're not one.

Thank you @strangeLookingParasite

I’ve said some really shitty things to my kids! They don’t seem to have held it against me!

Sleep deprivation is very very real and very very fucking hard. I remember when my youngest was only a few weeks old and she was screaming relentlessly, I’d had about an hour of broken sleep, a stotting headache and was still recovering from giving birth to a baby with a giant head. I yelled at her, told her to shut up and was so angry I was shaking. I put her down in her cot and left her, for 40 minutes while she screamed and I sat in another room and sobbed. That little girl is adored and she knows she’s adored. But I was genuinely terrified how close I came to losing all control.
My oldest is 5, at the beginning of this week I told her several times that she needed to move some little figures from the floor (they are tiny and a choking hazard for the baby- which was gently explained and then firmly explained) she ignored me. I warned her if she didn’t move them I would throw them in the bin. She ignored me and was rude so they went in the bin. She cried a lot. Now I’m thinking I went overboard and feel bad, but at the time it was a “teachable moment”. Afterwards we did hug and I told her I was sorry that she was sad but she needs to be careful with her baby sister and we talked it through. But absolutely not one of my best moments.
You are a good mum, if you weren’t you wouldn’t feel bad for the times when it does go wrong.

oh gosh, i haven't seen the advert but just reading that has made me feel sick, how awful :(

I've never seen the as before recently, so on surprised its been on before.

It's quite hard hitting isn't it. The NSPCC is one of the charities I support.

OP... be the best parent you can be now and cement happy memories for them. You may not have been great when you lost it, but you can make changes.

Parents who shout a lot can become nervous and fretful...scared to approach their parents and panic easily..... watch out for these things.

@Creation I remember doing something similar - only one letter, though, because my mother's response was to tell me that writing it was very unkind and had upset her. This from the woman who liked to pretend to phone Social Services to give her children away 'to an orphanage' because we were so bad, and then laugh at the sobbing and pleading of those still young enough to believe it.

I think that the mothers on this thread worried about the effects their words and actions have on their children, by that very fact, aren't doing badly. Anyone can have a bad day and lose their temper. Recognising that, apologising if you've done wrong, and not sticking to unreasonable threats you've made just because you said them is modelling how to deal with those situations.

My PFB is 20 now and as a baby was a terrible sleeper .
Many many times I put him in his pram (so he was safe) ran upstairs for a pee and shouted (in the locked bathroom) "For Gods Sake DS Shut Up. What do you want from me ?"

Then wobble downstairs and take him out for a walk.
He was knackered and kranky
I was knackered and kranky
He slept being pushed along so at least one of us was happy .

We laugh about it now . He says "Why did I do that" >
You tell me young man , you tell me .

Op that ad sounds heartbreaking. I can relate to your feelings of guilt. I had pnd when dd2 was born and changed from a loving mum who never yelled, to yelling daily at 3year old dd. It was mostly the terrible sleep deprivation and no support. As a previous poster said, full on guilt forever. I will never forgive myself. Sometimes the yelling was really gutteral at times and I am so ashamed even now 10 years later. I have talked to dd about it and she doesn’t remember it but I will never forget 😶

You seem to be conflating dismembering teddies with child neglect. I think the point of that campaign is just to show people that seemingly small things can be signs that something worse is happening. It doesn’t mean that being mean to your child once is an act of bad neglect.

@reginabambina

You seem to be conflating dismembering teddies with child neglect

It is, abuse & neglect. A mother that can do that will be neglecting/abusing that child in other ways too.

@vampirethriller @Creation @Miriel. (And anyone I missed -sorry) I am so sorry you went through those things as children (and the impact on you as adults). It's heart breaking 🌷

@Stressingismyhobby. Feeling guilty is a pointless stress on your body, let it go. Concentrate on your relationships & reactions with your kids now.

My mum was great when I was little, she'd make things with me, let me have tea parties with milk/water/juice/whatever in my tea pot, let me paint, have half the street in the garden to play, even made me a little sister 🤣. (This was the 70's). One day I did something very uncharactaristicly naughty when my sister was about 6 months old & I was 4) & she smacked my leg ...40+ years later she still feels massively guilty. I've told her several times 'I don't even remember it', but I do remember xyz (the good/fun things). ‍🤷🏻‍♀️

Babies/children are incredibly exhausting/frustrating & probably the cause of 'not our finest moment' for most of us.

Concentrate on the 'now' because the things you say now have far more potential to do harm than shouting when they were babies (which most people have, if they're being honest).

I haven't seen the advert & hope not to.

@70isaLimitNotaTarget

He slept being pushed along so at least one of us was happy.

That made me laugh more than it should have! the familiarity of that feeling!

Thank you all. Yes, I try very much to focus on the now and being a good mum. I still have moments where I'm not perfect obviously, but not like when they were babies.

The advert is upsetting but reminds me of a time when my ds was being really rude and cheeky to me...I didn't raise my voice or do anything I am ashamed of...I said in a calm voice "if you continue being rude, I will cancel football on the weekend". He went berserk as he was football obsessed...he started screaming "please mummy no, don't do it mummy, please mummy, nooooo". I remember thinking the neighbours must think I'm torturing him...I was mortified.

Haven’t seen the advert, but I really can’t imagine there is a single person on the planet who, at 3am after no sleep and hours of screaming, hasn’t raised their voice in frustration/anger/exhaustion/guilt and said some derivative of “BLOODY WELL GO TO SLEEP”!!!!!

We're all pretty much doing our best that we can in the moment. I doubt you intentionally shouted or upset your children, it's just it was all too much. Forgiving yourself will let you focus on the present not dwell on the past.

I haven't seen the advert but would find it upsetting. At the same time I'm sure most if us have been pushed to the edge of our patience. Parenting is hard, add in sleep deprivation or a baby who is difficult to settle and the pressure ramps up.

I threatened to smack my 2yo old the other day when she eas being really badly behaved ( throwing things, trying to scribble on walls with pens, biting) The words came out of my mouth before I knew it. She immediately started crying and so did I at the thought she was scared I might hit her. We spent a long time cuddling and I apologised and explained sometimes when we are stressed we say things we don't mean. Then I felt awful as she was clearly tired when behaving as she was but I was distracted by doing housework etc.

It's known as rupture and repair. You will make mistakes along the way. The way you deal with them makes a difference.

@LatteLoverLovesLattes it’s abuse but it’s not neglect. There is a distinction between neglect and other types of abuse. It’s also silly to say that someone who does this (or something similar once) is 100% going to perpetrate further abuse or neglect their child (just look at the number of people on this thread who’ve done similar but don’t seem to have perpetrated any neglect or may have only done this kind of thing once). It’s easy to brush off something like this as a once off loss of temper or as a form of discipline but it often indicates deeper problems going on out of sight. That’s the point, that you shouldn’t wait for an unequivocal sign of serious abuse before making a report.