To think that parents should face the judge when their child commits a heinous crime?

[TY78910]

Hear me out!!

So many stories in the news of kids murdering other kids.

Southport, knife crime the list goes on.

In many of these cases kids have been expelled from school, behavioural issues for years.

Yes, the system needs to do more and services involved need to be held accountable.

But AIBU to think that if your child has been causing trouble and it leads them to committing awful offences you should stand trial for neglect?

You should be able to demonstrate that you've done everything in your power to get that child help before it led to what it led to?

If you have contacted the right authorities and tried to get that child help but it didn't work or there were obstacles then fine - you've done everything in your power. But if you saw your kid get expelled, get involved with gangs etc and did NOTHING, you should be standing trial for neglect and possibly endangering the public. Your child is ultimately your responsibility.

She believes if she can just flip some parenting switch he will behave, while others believe that she desperately needs help. Would she be prosecuted if he offends?

In fairness, she may well have received that message from professionals, and society as a whole. The first line of "intervention" in just about every issue with children is the suggestion of parenting classes, and professionals are too quick to suggest that if the child had a safe, secure home everything would be fine. I felt like I had argued my Masters thesis all over again trying to get CAMHS support for my very traumatised daughter - the Consultant said that calm, measured parenting would address the impact of significant trauma in her first 6 years of life, flying in the face of all the research around trauma and parenting. My DD does now have a good circle of professional support including specialist schooling and long term work with CAMHS but it's taken every bit of skill, knowledge and experience I have to get her there. Most parents simply don't have the knowledge, or the ability to stand their ground with professionals saying everything is ok or they don't meet the service criteria, they don't have the immense amount of time it takes to wind your way through the maze and are just exhausted themselves.

It's much cheaper to blame parents than provide services and support.

Others can believe she desperately needs help buy unless those "others" are in a position to offer that help, to provide tailored support for her and her child their belief means nothing. Add into that the mum guilt of having a child who is struggling or has behavioural problems, and the hefty dose of judgement from the rest of the world and I can easily believe she wants to keep her head down and try and get on with things.

Until services improve you can't blame the parents. I have a friend who's tried to get help for her son from everywhere you can think of and keeps getting fobbed off and told to phone someone else who in turn try to tell her to phone the previous service and around and around it goes. It's just not that simple for parents to get help for their children and until that improves I believe there'll be more cases of children/young adults committing serious crimes.

My dc committed a vile crime. Neglect? Possibly..
My fault? Possibly.
Guilt? Definitely..
Me guilty? Yes of getting into a terrible relationship with a man who controlled me. Who refused to let me parent MY dc.. Not joint dc..
I fully accept MY choices led to the crime..
Could a judge have made me feel any worse?
Most certainly not...
I carry the guilt of dc's choices every day.
Don't judge me when you aren't me.

I think the distinction needs to be made between neglect and or abuse which lead to behaviour problems. These really are on the parents.

Another number of children will have developmental challenges which are not as connected to upbringing.

Even then it gets murky and you cannot divide these things. However, criminal behaviour in young adults or teens is usually drawn from a dysfunctional home life. The horrid truth is that parents doing their best does not mean it is actually good enough to have a good life or be stable.

I have spent countless hours on the phone. Told by a signposting service to call x number who'll be able to help, only they can't help because they're also a signposting service. Every service I had to tell the whole story to again.

The gatekeeping - no we can't do a CAMHS referral unless you've tried these services, none of which my son was eligible for due to age but I still had to call them all to confirm. We jumped through the hoops, CAMHS refused the referral (and managed to fuck up the letter telling us this by mistakenly telling us he'd been refused assessment for ASD which nearly caused us to have a breakdown at that point, I have never seen DH so angry and despairing), school intervened, CAMHS agreed to the assessment only to refuse any treatment or support because they felt his problems were ND related. A child who at the time was too anxious to even be seen by his peers let alone attend school and constantly talked about wanting to die and wanting to kill himself.

There are so many barriers, so many hoops to jump through, so many things you are asked to do - and I get it, they don't want to disempower you by doing everything for you (plus the more someone does for you the less they can do for someone else in the same situation you're in), but when you're on your knees with stress and exhaustion, just being asked to make another phone call feels huge, especially when experience suggests it's going to be another half an hour or more of going over your depressing situation yet again just to be told they're not the right people to help you, or that you're doing all the right things already so off you go.

And you have to carry on working around all this, and all the meetings and appointments that get you nothing and nowhere, so you can still put food on the table.

The cynical part of me says it's set up in such a way as to put off as many people as possible. Thankfully we had some excellent help and support from a handful of people - mainly at the school.

I watched a program probably 15 years ago that really stuck with me, about the effects of benign neglect, lack of interaction with in this case, on cognitive development in toddlers. The intervention needed to come within the first couple years of life to help these kids and we can't even manage proper funding for reactive care for children who are struggling let alone proper funding for preventative care and education. Some kids don't stand a chance. There's some great points here, I'm also all for much harsher punishments of paedophiles and murderers, they're shouldn't be any second chances or any release ever for some crimes. At the least life lime chemical castration if they won't lock paedophiles away for good and keep our kids safe. There's far to many unknown monsters free to roam the world and harm our children without us letting the ones we know out to join them.

@EliflurtleAndTheInfiniteMadness yrs you’re right about very young children. Neglect from birth leads to attachment disorders and an enormous amount of therapy and nurture might not be enough which is so so sad. We can see a neglected little one and feel sorry for them, when they’re big and strong and shouty it’s much harder to be compassionate but they are the same person, just bigger stronger and full of hormones, despair and anger.

The issue is that the neglectful and abusive parent lacks boundaries. They may actively abuse their children sexually.

It would preferable to imagine that there are a defined set of paedophiles who are actively only interested in children. However, that is not the reality. There are a set of mostly men who because of highly dysfunctional upbringings can abuse children and also maintain an adult sexual relationship. This is more common than people want to acknowledge. These behaviours are not in neat little boxes.

It really makes you wonder—how does someone even end up in a situation like this? Should parents be more strict from the start, setting firmer boundaries early on? Would limiting internet and social media make a difference? Or are these kids simply a product of their environment, shaped by circumstances beyond their control? So many questions, yet no easy answers.

You assume they have moral insight. Many serious offenders have abusive Or neglectful parents with no insight at all as to what they did or any culpability.

A lot of male offenders have brutal bullies for fathers.

Sorry everyone, I got busy!

I don't think I can respond to everybody individually, but just to clarify some of the points:

If a parent had actively made an attempt to address the behavioural issues that arise - eg has contacted the police, has raised an issue in school, GP, has communicated to some kind of authority that they recognise their child has issues then of course that would not go down as neglect. I see a lot of posters here sharing their own stories of asking for help and not getting any - that is a failure of a system, not you as a parent.

As to the punishment, I'm not necessarily talking about throwing into prisons... there could be other kinds of punishment, ways to make parents accountable for their children and their behaviour.

Yes, there will be instances where children might go completely under the radar but that needs to be explored. I really can't see how there would be no signs whatsoever.

To address the comments around how, and resource. I realise this is blue sky thinking, but resources would need to be re-allocated etc - the 'systems' and organisations that are supposed to be in place are a separate issue completely.

This won't work. Many more children would end up in care. Why would a parent, often single take the risk of their dodge kid committing a crime and them being blamed. No child would ever be adopted as they always come complete with issues. Society doesn't want to fund this.

While there are undoubtedly awful parents about, they are not the only influence on their child's development. Also, you cannot expect parents to do the job of parenting effectively (which in itself is incredibly complex and demanding) without providing environments that support this process. Too many adults look the other way when children communicate their distress through their behaviour; too easy to label them as 'bad' kids when often the parent/s are desperately seeking support.
@bombastix How does one identify emotional abuse? A parent may feed, dress and house their child, lavish them with stuff, hobbies and holidays but what if they are cold, critical, rejecting or emotionally unavailable? They will be doing as much damage as parents who 'actively abuse' their children. Plenty of red flags here too but again, they get ignored if all the window dressing is in place.
If we are going to criminalise parents for abuse then we are going to need a lot more jails.

But do you think it’s common that parents stand aside and do absolutely nothing whilst their children are expelled, arrested and violent/ impossible to live with…. And the children go onto murder having had NO requests for support from the parents?

im sure these parents exist. I know they may well do in regards to groomed gang members because gangs target vulnerable young people. So is it the parents, or the groomers who should “face a judge”

However, in the case that promoted your post, the Southport killings, the parents appear to have done more than enough to demonstrate they tried.

so they wouldn’t be before a judge.

This is one of those posts that seem to have come from a simplistic “something must be done” with no real thinking behind it.

@UriahHeepsWriggleRoom - actually it does seem that services can identify emotional abuse and seem to be getting better at it. This was a surprise to me, but I think it is the awareness of domestic abuse which has started the process.

Emotional abuse via bullying your children, hitting them, neglect of their emotional safety can cause significant behavioral problems.

The issue is that richer bullies will tend to send their children off to be diagnosed with a behavioral disorder. But the root of it is in the family.

I always pause a bit on meeting a child with behavioral problems where they have wealthy parents. Because they overtly have their material needs met, it suggests something else is going on. I think a lot of people and parents find it convenient to pathologise their children.

There is of course nothing wrong with them...

What the hell OP?

Do you have kids? Teens and older? Some people do bad things and you can't just blame someone else. Most tragic cases of adults doing awful things are a huge and complex mix of factors and some people are just do things we cannot understand.

Life as a parent of a kid who does something awful must be horrendous enough without being prosecuted for it.

@@bombastix I'm glad you raised this point as more and more I see posts about adhd/asd where the underlying issue is family dysfuntcion and attachment trauma. There was a thread about a lady who felt her husband's neurodiversity had 'brought her to her knees' when it was obviously to do with his extreme avoidant attachment style. Another lady was distressed about her 5 year old son being abusive and wanted to leave. Five year olds who abuse and hold power over a parent have developed this behaviour due to problematic boundaries or maybe even no boundaries at all. Should we hold the parents accountable? I would say definitely not through the criminal justice system but via education and support and a deeper understanding of complex trauma and how to address it.

It’s starting to be a thing in the USA. After a recent school shooting both parents have been arrested and charged. Accused of not seeking help for his mental health issues, etc. They said they didn’t know how bad he was but I think there was text evidence to the contrary. Him telling his parents he was struggling and they didn’t seem to care……but no evidence that they had any idea he’d shoot his classmates. they got 10 years each after being convicted of manslaughter. Have to say I was surprised but I’m sure the judge/jury heard more evidence than the snippets I read.

other cases where the parents have been blamed for the fact the kid got access to a gun.

100 per cent.

@UriahHeepsWriggleRoom - agree! In fact there is a degree of overlap which is convenient.

Trauma to a child to mean a display of symptoms that may look like autism, for example. But the child may not be autistic at all, but encountering an emotionally abusive home life.

We need to be careful about diagnosing autism or ADHD as a result. This is why it usually takes a long time on the NHS.

The number of clinics that will make a diagnosis privately are legion. They then get money to manage ND. This may be very convenient to the parents, and can continue serious trauma to the child.

Children are not immune from society saying they are "disordered" and then no further exploration. This is all rather too similar to women being told they were mad or mentally ill. More often, they had been abused.

This is not to say there are not cases of ND. But the explosion of diagnosis is a concern

There are many many threads on here begging for help with children. With anti social behaviour, violence, drugs etc. There is no help.

Unfortunately some people are the way they are no matter who they are brought up by. I have two family members, a brother and sister, the sister has a job, husband, kids and doing well. The brother has been in prison multiple times. They have anazing parents, so no I don’t think the parents should be too harshly judged.

YABU - my DD went through an awful mental health crisis when she was 13/14 and her behaviour became more and more unpredictable.

I tried everything I could to get help for her and so did her school and our GP but it's nigh on impossible to get mental help support for teens unless you have lots of money. We ended up paying for private treatment when she became a danger to herself ( we still are paying for it three years later to keep her stable)

She once punched me when I tried to stop her leaving the house ( for her own safety ) when she was having a meltdown.

Thankfully she didn't do anything illegal during that time but I think that's more through luck than anything else. Why should I be arrested if she had done something illegal when I had tried and tried to get help for her?

100%. Ops plan simply targets poor people, and women disproportionately

a rich person will pay for all the support you describe. Waving money that you can easily afford at the problem doesn’t make it a worthwhile or thoughtful/ effective action

That's true, but actually. It's pretty damning when you look at who ends up in prison. I think something like 75 percent of male offenders for serious crime (above five years) state they had an abusive father or stepfather.

It's not much talked about for men, but they aren't different to women. The majority of women in prison have been abused by men.