I am so sick of all the rubber-necking that has been going on with regard to a recent and tragic news topic.

[Bubble99]

And all under the guise of 'concerned fellow-parent/s'

I met a mother at school today (never spoken to her before) who approached me and said ..'Have you heard about? What do you think about?' and the freak was almost smiling. It's as if this nightmare has become entertainment for some people.

There is a voyeuristic, collective sickness going on , safe under the umbrella of 'concerned parents.'

Yuk.

I know I might regret posting this, but does anyone actually believe that this little girl will be found alive and well? We all hope that she will be found and reunited with her parents, but do people really think that it will actually happen? Or is it just that people can't bear to think of the alternative

It's impossible to know. Think of the Austrian girl found after 8 years.

Chocolateface - you expressed very succinctly what I also feel.

I have been reading this thread with great interest for one reason only - I really do not understand the depth of my own emotions over this case. This is not my child and I do not know the family involved but it has affected me enormously. It is the last thing I think of at night and when I wake up, first thing I do is I check developments on the internet. I am not voyeuristic, just desperate for a happy ending for that famiy.

Maybe I feel like this because I have three children of my own, one about to turn four. May be it is because I have been on Mark Warner Holidays. Maybe it is because I have used the childcare facilities at Mark Warner and left my children with 'strangers'. Maybe it is because I have dined at Mark Warner facilties and left my children sleeping in our apartment, being checked on by the nannies. I don't know. Maybe it is because I try to understand what that little girl is going through now (and then I shut it out). Maybe it is because I try to imagine the parents desperation now (and then I shut that out too). Maybe I feel like this because it could so easily have been us. But it wasn't.

I just feel desperate that any child, parent and family should have to go through this ordeal and I pray hard every night that this child is found and reunited with her parents. I don't normally pray.

We had a family member go missing about 17 years ago. He was a adult, was depressed and walked out of his life. He went in September and was his body was found in December. It was a very hard time for my aunts family. They were angry because he didn't ring, worried as they didn't know how he was, for that time, they existed rather than lived. His Grandson (my cousin) is still deeply affected. His inquest had an open verdict.

Not knowing someones fate is a terrible thing, you go from one extreme to another, from the highest of hopes to the darkest of thoughts. Is must be worse for a mother who loves her little girl so much.

This has nothing to do with the OP but needed to say it.

jenny jj

agree with everything you say. your post could have been mine. i pray each day and night and that is so rarely me....

nickytwo times. The email you received about this case, from people you barely know, is similar to my experience in the OP.

I don't understand it.

Jenny JJ. Very good post. Pretty much how I feel.

Margo

I think my interest in these news rather than voyeuristic lies in sincere symphathy. My child is about the same age as Madeleine and my sister went missing during a holiday at that same age. Nothing as bad as this but my father still gets upset when he talks about it, he remembers those hours as the worse and longest in his life. I only remember the anguish and running around the hotels asking their security staff to look for her. I'm touched by this tragedy and really hope they find their girl, my sister turned up unharmed a few hours later, I can not imagine the pain and stress this family may be going through.

I really hope I could do something about it, but I was not there, therefore didn't see anything or can contribute in any way. So.... I'm checking the news, but I'm not talking about this with anyone else in RL for the simple reason that, in my particular case, it doesn't have any point, nothing will be helped by me talking about this.... although I have just "corrected" a misstranslation in favour of the parents here in MN...

I feel the same way Chandra.

And for your father. That experience must have been awful.

I 'lost' DS1 when he was two at an outdoor M&T group. I hadn't, he was inside a crawling tube thing, but I was nearly physically sick after running around shouting for what was only about three minutes, but felt like 30. [

I also check the news regularly. I am a parent and I am empathic..

had to bugger of and see to lo...
i don't for a second doubt people's sincerity when they express concern. however, i do feel we are being swept along in yet another public mourning-type thing, like princess di, holly and jessica, etc. i don't think it benefits anyone. in forwarding e-mails, people make themselves feel a little less helpless, but this is precisely my point - they make themselves feel better. i can think of nothing worse than losing a child in any way and while we can all empathise i feel things quickly get out of control and are just as quickly forgotten. in a matter of weeks, none of us will remember the details of this case.

Aloha, thank goodness for your voice of reason. And Rhubarb, Quietmouse and the poster who posted the 'bell tolls for you' poem. Too bloody right it tolls for all of us. I totally agree. I think of Madeleine in the middle of the night and when I wake up. I don't only feel for people I 'know'. I was beginning to despair of mumsnet and wondering if I could ever bear to read on here again, because some of what's been written on these and other threads has truly sickened me.

Themselves is the word here, I agree.

I was sent flowers a couple of years ago to, I suppose, make me feel better during a tragic event. At the time I could barely see through crying so much.

A month later I received, via the extended family grapeveine, a complaint that I hadn't written/phoned/emailed to say 'thankyou' for those flowers.

Empathy? No.

Abso-bloody-lutely - could not agree more with that.

i'd have been well peed off bubble!
the thing is droile, we all care but the way we express our concern for others bothers me. awful things happen to kids every day under our noses yet we choose to ignore this and focus all our energies on 1 case for a limited amount of time till the media moves on to the next thing. i am not exempt from this! the concern itself is a good thing but is it really benefiting the people directly involved in the case? or is it yet another "hijacking" of someone else's tragedy?

Before I had DD and an awful story like this happened, I found it awful and sympathised with the family concerned, but I couldn't really empathise in the same way. Now I just imagine how the parents must be desperate to make everything alright for Madeleine. That is what we do isn't it? When our kids are scared or hurt or upset, Mummy and Daddy make everything safe and ok. And to not be able to do that, and not knowing what has happened, it doesn't bear thinking about. When Mrs McCann said 'Don't hurt her, don't scare her', my heart went out to her. Poor little girl and poor family. It breaks my heart that tomorrow is her birthday.

I don't understand the 'hi-jacking' thing. You'd have to have a very low opinion of someone to accuse them of that. Were the people who knitted ds's blanket hi-jacking? They didn't know me, or him, but, thank goodness, they didn't let that stand in their way.

The way other people express their concern doesn't bother me at all. There's no right or wrong way to do or not do it. And as for it benefitting the people caught up in each tradgedy - there's a huge amount of strength to be drawn from other people's concern about your child. Believe me.

droile, i don't have a low opinion of anyone. sorry, i have not read all this very long thread and i don't know your story. yes, others can be a great strength but it is when they all forget about it and move on that it can be very hard for the family. i don't doubt people's good intentions but i wonder about the long term benefits/otherwise of this.

Fear of people thinking that a good deed is only done to make the self feel better has stopped many a good deed from actually being done. Bollox to motivation, getting the bloody stuff done in the first place is all that matters. Good thing Bob Geldof didn't stop and think 'oh dear, perhaps someone wil think I'm only doing it to make myself feel better'.... And yes, I know that forwarding an email for Madeleine is small beer compared to what Geldof did, but for heaven's sake,doing a small thing for someone else, thinking about someone else for even a second... it's the only thing that makes the world bearable.

That last post wasn't directed at you nickitwotimes.

The McCann's have a website . I think they just want their daughter found no matter what it takes. They want the case to stay in the media until their daughter is found. And that includes people talking about it.

I posted this on another thread.... for anyone who is distressed about the media coverage.

I'm probably going to be terribly unpopular for posting this, but it's what I believe so here goes...

I've been reading lots of the posts on here for the past few days and it's a terrible story, but I do feel I've got to stand up for the media a bit. As someone who's worked in television news for 15 years I am sorry that people are so distressed about the news coverage.

This type of media blitz on these terrible stories is usually driven by the police, rather than a ghoulish media. It's a well recognised police tactic in this country to flood all media outlets with information as soon as possible in these situations. It's a sad truth that most of these types of abductions end in tragedy within the first few hours, and the police recognise the importance of the involvement of the public in working as their eyes and ears in these crucial hours.

Another distressing thing for us to watch is frantic terrified parents at a press conference begging for the return of their child. This isn't done for the benefit of the media, it's usually set up by the police as psychologists recognise the importance of humanising the missing child in the eyes of the abductor. It's terribly important to appeal to the tiny remaining bit of humanity in these bastards who do this sort of thing, and so as distressing as it may seem to us, the spectacle of weeping parents begging for their child back is an important part of the investigation.

This case of course is slightly different in that it's taking place in a different country, however I think the media coverage is justified as much of the information police have received has come from British expats in the area who have been watching British news and reading British papers.

As someone who's been involved in unfortunately far too many of these kinds of story, I can tell you, no one in the media relishes these stories. I felt as uncomfortable as anyone at the media storm surrounding for example the abduction and murder of Holly and Jessica in 2002, but it was a crucial part of the police investigation, and although in that case it did end in tragedy, the coverage may have speeded up the discovery of the children's bodies and the arrest of Ian Huntley. Obviously for the parents, nothing can ever make up for a lost child, but in the midst of such tragedy, anything that can help put away the evil people that do these kinds of things has be considered, as distressing as it may be for those of us watching.

I sincerely hope this case ends well, but I am sure the police liaison officers working with the family will have explained the importance of their participation in the media coverage, and they will feel as I'm sure most of us would in the same situation, that anything to speed the happy resolution of this terrible story must be considered.

ps, sorry if I've repeated anything that's already been said, I haven't had time to read the whole thread.

xx

I agree with the OP. The threads concerning this issue are unedifying and don't reflect well on Mumsnet. You would have to be a sociopath to disagree that this is a woeful situation ... it's taken as read. We all have children. We all know the love involved. You don't have to say anything.

But this is an outpouring of 'public grief' that is essentially a mile wide, an inch deep, and totally unhelpful to the family. Put yourself in their shoes. Would it make you feel better to know that thousands of bored women were discussing the abduction of your child?

I think not.

Now we have posters trying to solve the case. Jeeeeze.