Mother suspected of killing her three children

[ElenorRigby]

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hope the witch rots in hell

poor poor children
RIP sweethearts

I cant remember who said it this time but I get fed up with hearing the phrase competitive grieving ...

The only time I was moved to lay flowers for a stranger was at the Dunblane Shooting - those poor kids

Competition is not something I felt, I felt angry, sad and helpless .. but certainly not competitive

Why not lay some flowers to show a family you are thinking of them and the person they have lost..

Only once did a stranger leave flowers on my son's grave... I never knew why. I didnt think it weird of macarbe I thought it was nice of someone to think of us

Agreed Frasersmum.
It was a tiny gesture of humanity, and consoled you in a small way.

What on Earth is wrong with reaching out to somebody with empathy.

"What on Earth is wrong with reaching out to somebody with empathy?"

absolutely nothing to many of us. Why then does it upset some people? I think that is at the core of our differences on this issue. I think the answer is not pleasant.

Sassy I think it was lovely of you to lay flowers for those poor children and if I lived locally I would have done the same.

I remember 10 years ago when Sarah Payne was murdered. I was on the way home from holiday with DC1 and and we passed the place where she was found and as it was on a main road, the police had set up a field next to the road specifically for people to park to pay their respects. My children laid flowers for Sarah, as did many other families.

I have recently driven past that spot several times and even 10 years on there are still flowers there sometimes. I think it is a lovely thing to do to let people know that this child/children will not be forgotten.

You are clearly a lovely person full of empathy so please don't let other peoples comments upset you. We are all different and obviously view things differently. x

i think a lot of people on this thread are misusing the term 'empathy'.

I think having done 3 counselling courses I'm aware of what it means

The work of empathy is precisely trying to imagine a view of the world that one does not share, and in fact may find it quite difficult to share.

Halpern & Weinstein, 2004, p. 581

me too.

I agree. I think perhaps sometimes people confuse sympathy with empathy. You can of course empathise with someone even though you have not been in their exact situation

I'm finding this " I had severe PND/depressions but I never killed MY kids" argument pretty eye rolling emoticon

Perhaps there are different types of mental states that affect various people differently?
You know because of things like individual circumstances and experiences.
I think as it seems like an extremely devastating case and it will go through the due legal process and in the fullness of time perhaps we may find out more.
But this desire to label this woman without knowing pertinent facts is not nice to see.

3 children are dead, that is the only fact we know for sure.

It should be more about them than anything else.

mumoverseas - that is what i meant. i think people are talking about 'sympathy' but using the term 'empathy'.

as i have said earlier in the thread - i do not have an issue with people leaving flowers etc. at the scene of a death, although it is not something i would do myself.

i suppose my issue is that there are people on this thread accusing others of lacking in empathy whilst clearly proving they are not being empathic themselves!

Yes, I do agree with you Ceres. I suppose one of the reasons is that unless you have gone down the counselling route you may not fully understand the difference?

Ref the flower laying, I wouldn't do it at the scene of say a road accident but in the this case, I would probably have done what Sassy did and have done that as I did in the Sarah Payne case. Can't explain why, but I think sometimes it is just something you feel you have to do. I guess we are all different so view things in different ways.

I don't think this was a subtle debate about empathy/sympathy. I sympathise and empathise, but I could do both with or without laying flowers.

However, laying flowers does not make me weird, and I'm struggling to understand why anyone would consider such a gesture macbre or inappropriate. And struggling even harder to imagine why they would want to voice that thought, even if they do think it.

"The work of empathy is precisely trying to imagine a view of the world that one does not share"

Empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes and feeling as they feel. Most of us do it naturally, there is no "trying to imagine", it is a human characteristic that we are blessed with. For most of us sympathy then follows from empathy, we put ourselves in the shoes of the other and we then suffer with the other. From this follows care and affection and compassion and love. That is why laying flowers is a caring empathetic act.

It is possible to have empathy with someone, but not to have sympathy for them. We may be able to put ourselves in the shoes of a robber and understand why they came to pull the trigger in a given situation, but we will not have sympathy for them.

It is possible to understand why people are upset about the laying of flowers (i.e. to empathise with these people, to put onself in their shoes) but not to have sympathy with their views. You can be empathic with someone and realise that they are lacking in empathy.

"However, laying flowers does not make me weird, and I'm struggling to understand why anyone would consider such a gesture macbre or inappropriate. And struggling even harder to imagine why they would want to voice that thought, even if they do think it."

That is the key question and I think there is an answer for it.

"Empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes and feeling as they feel. Most of us do it naturally, there is no "trying to imagine", it is a human characteristic that we are blessed with."

now you are being ridiculous. you cannot 'naturally' put yourself in, for example, my shoes and feel as i feel. you have no idea about how i feel - you would have to make an active effort to find out. empathy has to be worked at.

you can IMAGINE how somebody might feel, and therefore feel sympathy for them. but you cannot possibly presume to magically just KNOW how they feel, especially in the face of tragedy.

Nobody knows how someone else feels, we often don't even understand how we ourselves feel. Some people who are upset by the laying of flowers probably don't really understand why they feel this way.

When an animal is wounded and when we tend and care for that animal we are empathising with the animal, we are naturally (without any effort, without any counselling lessons and without reading tomes of learned theory)putting ourselves in the shoes of the animal. We are imagining what we would feel if we were in the animal's shoes, we are not pretending to know what the animal feels. Those of us who are able to do this naturally have empathy. Psychopaths don't have empathy, which is why they can carry out the acts that they do.

IMO this thread should not be about the rights or wrongs of leaving flowers at a scene where something horrendous has happened. That's why we have AIBU - take that argument there if you wish to carry it on.

This thread should be about the fact that a woman has murdered her three children in such a brutal and horrific way, and the issues surrounding that.

I just felt really sorry for her, she must be in hell anyway now because of having to live with what she has done.

She must have been insane.

I feel really awful for the husband who tried to get Social Services onto her but they didn`t get there in time.

The fact that the kids are dead breaks my heart. The parents must both be in hell...

For anyone wanting to understand what may have gone through her mind, there is a famous (excellent, but very heavy and sad)play written 2000 years ago called "Medea" (by Euripides).She killed her 2 sons in a bitter divorce. yes, 2000 years ago. Sadly it is not a "new" thing...

Thanks for mentioning Medea. I have never read or seen it. These are human tragedies that have been going on since the beginning of time, and some people are driven temporarily insane when marriages and relationships break up, when love ends.

I just cannot understand it. It just seems agaisnt nature. When they release the details of the post mortem it will no doubt become clear whether the children tried to fight her off. I appreciate the mother may be sick - but I just can't find it in my heart to feel sorry for her at the moment.

I agree this woman is already in hell whether she is mad or not. A case of "there but for the grace of God go I."(and i don't even believe in God!) I'm off now to give my kids a kiss and a hug. Cases like this make me realise how lucky I am.

no its not the mum who was missing from aberdeen. i know as im her lawyer. ss had no business reporting her kids missing, their was no care or eop order and they had just gone on holiday with thier dad!
there had been no history of abuse of any kind from mum or dad.so what was their crime? to have a slightly untidy 2 bed house which is understanable as they have 4 small kids! wake up mumsnet. ss are pure evil. blame the other mother till they come for your kids

you're her lawyer and you're on Mumsnet posting facts about hte case? SHIT! she needs to seriously re-think who she's employing then!