Three children found dead

[RedandChecker]

m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-27122410

Very, very sad

[AvoidingEasterDIY]

:( I wonder if she was 'one of ours' (an Mner)?

So very sad for all of them - the ones who have gone and the ones who are left behind, especially the DD.

I can, very easily, understood how someone can end up feeling like this is the best option for their life limited ill children.

Big hugs for all of you who have posted your experiences. Shakin - it's beyond comprehension that you and your DD had to go through that, there just has to be a better way :( x

[Icimoi]

I saw something to the effect that the children had to be fed and/or given medication every hour. If that's correct, I suspect this mother was coping not just with the fact of the children's illnesses but major exhaustion.

[UnderthePalms]

Oh God yes. I can't imagine how exhausting that would be

[PeachyTheSanctiMoanyArse]

People go on and on about help... invasion-
yes I've felt that too, when a charity put someone in and we had to spend days trying to keep things from being broken or whatever because we worried someone visiting for one hour a fortnight might judge us. And the effort of entertaining them when DS1 would wander off and lock his door.

And the youth clubs etc that become available but are an hour's drive away and then you have to sit in your car for another hour on a school night with all of them if DH is working, but if they don't like it and you call it a day people say you are denying your child an opportunity. Who in their right mind would choose that option for an NT child?

That's why the system needs to understand far more and plan better, so that services are targeted. We asked for one night's respite a year, so we could just do something together. My Mum takes them for a few hours when we can afford the petrol to get there, but that's rarer and rarer. We did have a hobby of carnival for social purposes but the boys struggled and in the end we had to set up as a family club which is really nice but does reinforce that isolation even more, we had to leave all of our friends behind. That 2 hours a fortnight to chat and just be was like manna for the soul.

But all that sounds negative; in truth, I don't think we have a bad life. In the moment we have a lot of love and fun. What really gets to us is the worries for the future, the battles- we managed to get ds3 the school place he needed for comp only on the say of one person, the LEA were willing to send him to DS1's school knowing he would be in danger and that school desperately did not want the risk. The worries about whether DH's business venture can sustain the rules of universal credit. What we do when Ds1 turns 14 and still needs lots of help but slips through the PIP criteria which dropped aggression and supervision as criteria.

And that's all man made crap isn't it? Systems that see families as the enemy and resource suckers. Budget-huggers we call them. people who can't see the effects of their bad decisions on other budgets (MH, for example).

[PeachyTheSanctiMoanyArse]

Icimoi :(

I doubt the word exhaustion even touches it, and sleep deprivation does so much harm.

[UnderthePalms]

I too read that she had to give them food and medication every hour. It makes no sense to talk about what she did as if it was a cool, calm, cold blooded decision as some on the thread who have judged her have done.

[NurseyWursey]

I too read the needed medication every hour. How on earth did she cope for so long. Dear god.

[Joules68]

under you have no way of knowing that, none at all. Those judging her are just as likely to be correct

It may have been done for a different reason.... The children's Disibility may be a red herring here and have little to do with it. Life throws us all sorts of curveballs. Look at other parents who have done this kind of thing. Quite a few have been at the time of a marital breakdown

[NurseyWursey]

I really don't see how the children's disability can be a red herring. It would have had a MASSIVE impact on the woman's psychological well being.

And it was actually her friend who spoke out about the medication hourly.

[Joules68]

What are her 'friend' doing speaking to journalists?

Truth is nursey you are just guessing. We all are

[NurseyWursey]

Her friend probably wanted to explain how damn hard the woman's life was to prevent people from vilifying her like they have been doing.

We are not just guessing though are we? When you get bits of the bigger picture you can put together an idea of what the woman's life was actually like. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise it was very very hard to live as she has.

[TheApprentice]

Emtee's post has really resonated with me. I taught a little girl with SMA (think it was type 2) some years ago - she's in her late 20s now. There's no doubt that her life was hard in many ways - sometimes she was in pain and her Mum spent lots of time doing physio exercises with her etc - I can imagine that if you had to do that times three it would be exhausting. But, despite her disabilities, she had a fulfilling and interesting life as a child. I have thought about her lots since this tragic case - about what the experience of teaching her brought to me, and about the quality of life she was able to have (and hopefully still has). I can only have sympathy for the mother of these 3 children whose circumstances I know very little of and who must, I imagine, have been in a terrible place; however, its so upsetting to think of those three little people denied their chance to live and grow.

[UnderthePalms]

Agreed Nursey

[MmeMorrible]

Some posters seem to have had an empathy bypass. Can you really not try to imagine that life for some people is not as easy and rose tinted as yours?

[rosielea]

I feel so much sadness for this family. My own DD1 has profound physical disabilities (cerebral palsy), i cannot imagine giving the level of care that we do for her x 3. Most of the time we are mentally and physically exhausted. We love her so much and would do anything for her but this is a very hard life.
My thoughts are with every member of the family.x

[frumpet]

If you kill someone , unless it is obvious that you were doing so out of self defence (unlikely in this instance ) then i imagine you would be arrested for murder , regardless of the circumstances . It is up to the court and a jury to decide whether it was in fact murder as opposed to manslaughter . This is in my opinion the right way to go about things .

I do feel immense sympathy for all the family , the mother included at this point , simply because i cannot imagine the dark place you must be in to commit such an act .

As a nurse however , i do think that some people on this thread have a rose tinted view of death . Whilst it is absolutely our aim to ensure everyone has a 'good' death , sometimes this is virtually impossible and whilst i have no sick childrens nursing experience , i am fairly sure they have no magic drugs available to them that are not available to adult nurses .

handcream i dont think your education choices for your own children have any relevance on this thread , i imagine that you didn't send them to boarding school from birth ?

[frumpet]

Actually the bit about not imagining the dark place isnt entirely true , for a few long months i was convinced that the world would be a better place without me , but that i would have to take my youngest child with me as there was no-one else who could care for him . I sought help and got it thank God .

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

TheApprentice - if I have understood correctly, there are different degrees of this condition, and the three children in this case had the most severe form, where there was no chance of them surviving early childhood. I can't imagine a mother doing what she did, if there was a chance of her children living into adulthood, with reasonable quality of life.

[JessicaMary]

I am sure most parents feel lots of sympathy for her, to be driven to that. It can't have been premeditated either otherwise presumably she could have flown them to South Africa, gone into a neighbouring African state, staged some kind of car crash and no one would have been any the wiser and then she carries on life with the one older child and has new babies who are subject to genetic testing before birth. She didn't do any of that. instead she was driven to desperation.

I understand the children were likely to die by age 5 anyway getting in more and more pain. She probably also did it out of love for them.

However the law is the law.
It must be terrible what the family is going through.

[cestlavielife]

the most severe form of SMA they don't survive beyond one year usually. this was not the most severe form by definition - unless a variant of SMA 1 .

she now been detained under Mental health act - which indicates I think that however much one can empathise and understand how hard it is, you have to be out of your mind/of unsound mind/going thru some kind of MH episode to go ahead and kill children....

there are always other options: eg walk away and call 999 for them to be taken to hospital/hospice/foster care etc.

[TheApprentice]

SDTG - I apologise - thought they had type 2. I feel real sadness for this family anyhow - what a terrible story.

[emtee88]

No, the children had Type 2. Type 1 would mean they'd die around 18 months and the kids were aged 3 and 4. Unfortunately the press surrounding this case has focused on Type 1 meaning Type 2 cases are ignored, and it's quite a different condition to the terminal Type 1.

[emtee88]

For anyone thinking a SMA Type 2 or 3 diagnosis means early death, suffering and misery for all(this is the way recent press reports have said) then this gallery here might correct those misconceptions. :)

[AmenGirl]

Is this the official update then?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-28194876

[duchesse]

This is a dreadful tragedy for everyone involved. My heart goes out to everyone including the mother. I would not to walk a mile in the shoes of anyone in this event.