Tb I also sympathise. DS1 was a very 'difficult' child for me to cope with. He constantly ran away in shops, hit me, spat at me, run away from home, destroyed everything he had, cut his clothes up, broke things around the house. It started when he was about 5, I understand why he started, my DVEx was still living with us, and he saw this kind of stuff every day and DS2 was born around this time. I quite literally begged SS for help for him, someone to talk to to help him with his feelings, they weren't interested, I was 'coping' so they walked away. Even when he tried to kill his brother, I coped, they walked away. I can remember literally having to sit on him to stop him lashing out at people, it was horrible, I read about people having experienced PA as children and wonder if that's what I did to him. I have no child rearing map to read from at all, I was ignored or ridiculed, punched or locked out, I had no idea what a 'normal' parent did in these situations, and SS just didn't want to know.
Fast forward to me having a breakdown, DS1 (also my mother's golden child) is so angry about everything that he just screams and shouts at me all the time. My CPN decides that I need to go into hospital for a while in order to get myself sorted. Mother refuses to look after both boys because DS2 is 'too much trouble' so they both ended up in foster care. They were there a couple of months, while a SW decided what she wanted to do about it all, as DS1 was just as violent at the placement. In the end, she promised me that a care package would be in place and they came home. No care package was offered, she closed the case without informing me, I called her when he attacked me again and she told me that unless I called the Police she would do nothing to help. The next time he attacked me, I called the Police and he was arrested. She called me an hour later and told me she was bringing him home, I refused to have him home without a care package in place, she called me a bitch and a bloody awful mother! He was assaulted by one of his foster carers and his SW told me it was my fault as I wouldn't have him back without a care package in place, so she went behind my back and arranged for him to live with his DV father!
It turned out that the SW had been talking to my mother the whole time, and my mother had a willing listener to her litany of 'why Chaos is a bitch'. From the day that DS1 started living with his father, my mother had NOTHING to do with DS2. She tells everyone that I was never there for DS1, that I abandoned him. This has hurt every time she says it. She has grudgingly admitted that I was right in what I did after she called the Police about him screaming at her and punching her, but now that episode is forgotten, it doesn't fit in with her golden child image of him at all.
DS1 and I have a good relationship now, he calls me and includes me in his life, much to the chagrin of his father, who did everything he could to cut me out of it. He has grown into a lovely young man, which of course is all because of his father and my mother, nothing to do with me.
Maybe I am the crap parent I am painted as being, I know I doubt every single decision I make as a parent now, the same way as I doubt almost every decision I make anyway. I went to parenting classes, the facilitator asked what our parents would have done in a given situation, so I answered honestly, she never asked me again, I felt like a pariah.
Sorry, rambling again.