H headbutted ds......advice please

[thelineiswhere]

H (definitely not 'd'h) had been drinking bottled beers at home on Sunday afternoon.

He then decided to go to the supermarket as he often does on a Sunday afternoon to buy more bottled beers and some food items for his own personal consumption. (Money is not the issue here, so the shopping thing is a red herring but bear with me).

He was gone for several hours and I suspect he went to the pub for a couple of hours as when he came back he smelt of beer.

I was giving the kids some tea at this point and he dumped his shopping in the kitchen and hung round the table in the dining area adjacent to the kitchen winding the kids up ended up annoying ds in some way and ds told him to go away. H can be very annoying under the influence as he pushes the kids until they snap, I usually walk away but the kids were at the table eating. Anyway he wouldn't go away and was leaning in to them invading their personal space so to speak and ds pushed him away but it was like a hit on h's chest rather than a push and with that h had him pinned up against the wall with a chair and said "d you know what I do to people that hit me..... I headbutt them" and proceeded to bash his head against ds's which bashed back against the wall. Younger child was yelling at h to get off ds and leave him alone.

Ds was shocked and we all kind of yelled at h to stop. He started to tell me it was my fault and if I didn't start to... but never finished his sentence.

I reassured the kids later that h was very wrong to do this and checked ds wasn't injured.

h didn't speak to any of us for the rest of the evening as kids went to bed after a bath/shower.

Has he crossed a line here ? Things have been bad between us, he barely speaks to me at all but I assumed he'd snap out of it eventually like he always does.

She, at least, is trying to do what's best, in her eyes, for her son.

That IMO is a cope out. Anyone could say that about anything.

I've felt absolutely sick and in tears reading this thread. It brought so much back to me I thought I had dealt with in relation to my fathers abuse of my brother, in particular. I'm so sorry for the ops kids. Op if you are still reading you must be dealing with such a lot at the moment. Please please formally report this assault on your child and do what's necessary to remove this man from your home.

We'll clearly the OP has no intention of protecting her dc. I really hope that poor little boy tells someone, it's his only hope.
Bullied at home, bullied at school-many children in this situation become suicidal. I hope he gets outside help before it comes to that.

I think that this is a woman who needs support in a very difficult situation. I would definitely phone the police if someone head butted my child. I would phone the police if someone strangled me.

Except when the latter happened I didn't. I froze. I didn't call them. I managed the situation.

A few years later I did phone them.

You know which situation traumatised my children most? The second one.

I think OP has frozen. She is quite correct in saying that there has been a leap from 'I must do RL things for my kids' to I can't be arsed to read the replies and have better things to do' I also think you have been goading AF. It's not an game on the internet to see who can score more followers. We are not politicians trying to win people around by tripping up other posters or deliberately setting them up with lines to make them sound bad. This is a real life situation the OP is living. Clever posts to try and portray her badly might get other posters on board but how are they helping her.

I understand why that tipped her over.

FWIW my advice despite what I have said about the police above, is I would in future involve police if someone head butted my child or me. It doesn't stop me understanding the position the OP is in. She cannot win here.

Front whilst I understand what you are saying there is nothing that they OP has said in which they themselves are a victim of DV.

I myself am a victim of very severe DV and no matter what happened to me there is no way on this earth I would allow anything like the OP has said has happened happen to a child without reporting it straight away.

I really don't see the OP as 'freezing' at all. I honestly don't think that she sees the severity of he inaction, where there is a real risk that if she continues to do nothing that the children could be removed or that agencies would become involved without her knowing about it if the DS discloses for example to school.

*her inaction

FF you think my posts on here have been designed to "score more followers" ? That is a disgusting thing to say.

I don't care what the OP says she is going to do she has failed to do the right thing by not calling the police.

Front Having read this thread I do not see AF's posts any different from many others. For some reason you have singled out AF and made a very disgusting comment. Bad form.

i agree with front forward,
crazy mumsnet at its absolute worse.
goading bullying. the op hasnt even come back. nor does she have to.

the rest of you should perhaps Get a Life

That poor boy. He will always have burned in his memory the day he attempted to protect himself from his drunk father, and how it ended up with him being pinned against the wall and head butted.

Being head butted is not just extremely painful, it is someone else's head used as a weapon against your own. And that person's head was the adult who should have supporting eyes and an open face towards his son, a child trying to a survive and make sense of the big bad world.

I hope he can find a way to deal with such internal damage much sooner than we could all hope for.

And I hope you can stay strong in your resolve to protect your children, as well as yourself of course, but especially the children.

The truth hurts.

The OP is out of order with her comments about AF implying she is the same as the OP's husband who is a bully and a violent thug.

I haven't read AF's comments here but whenever I've seen her advice it's been excellent. In fact, this past week I've seen two different threads specifically asking FOR AF's input!

"They also stand up for themselves around him if required"

They should not be required to, and they should not have to.

Well, it seems that's a double edged sword, if it means my posts are devalued elsewhere

the rest of you should perhaps Get a life

Right ok then! What a ridiculous thing to say... A child is being abused FFS!

Much as every single one of us on here are/were in agreement about the 'line having been crossed', I do think that the measured responses were in a minority and I think there was a degree of frothing and shouting going on (and I am not talking about deleted posts).
We don't know anything at all.
We have an OP and a couple of posts thereafter. That's it.
It is never going to be the full picture.
This is not a competition in 'who is talking the more sense' and sadly there are absolutely no winners. Least of all the OP's son and the whole family.
I'm out.

Many of us have posted much the same as AF, and yet OP has singled her out and cited her as the reason she's left the thread . Obviously most of us aren't as legendary as AF but still..

And OP has been given the right advice. Report your husband. And yet she refuses to inform police that her son has been physically assaulted by his dad. Disgusting. And I stand by that.

R4 Really how old are you? Get a life

AF

My only other concern about not calling the police is what message this gives to your DS? Will he think he's not worth enough to qualify for the same level of protection that the rest of the world expects for themselves? Will he feel unable to protect himself against a different bully because "if Dad can head butt me and get away with it, then of course anyone else can"?

I don't know the answer but I know I wasn't protected as a child and it left me believing I wasn't worth protecting. I thought I had to out up with anything that anyone wanted to do to me.

I had to teach myself that was not true or right a great many years later. You don't unlearn those sorts of lessons in just a few years fortunately, it takes a lot of years, at least it did in my case.

The trouble as well with failing to report it officially is that the offender can promise the world afterwards. Of course they never deliver, but people often get sucked in for a while longer in the hope that it might be true.

And once a person has crossed the line like that, it is so much easier to cross it again the next time. Especially if they got away with it the first time.

I think it makes it harder for you to report a second time as well. You're almost imprisoned in your own head by the fact that you didn't report the first one, and you wouldn't want that coming out if you reported the second incident. It just gets messier

OP, notwithstanding your recent comments, you still seem to think that the headbutt isn't that big a deal. It is a massive deal - and not remotely comparable to a child hitting their younger sibling.

In law, a headbutt is considered one of the more serious forms of assault. It is a formal aggravating factor in an assault - it is considered, along with kicking with a shod foot, to be a 'weapon equivalent' due to the fact that it can cause devastating damage from a single blow.

If the police became involved, they would be taking this spectacularly seriously, and you would inevitably have social services involvement. You are one disclosure from your son away from the police knocking on your door, and social services investigating you and your ability to protect your children. As a criminal lawyer, who has dealt with many, many cases of abuse of children, please, please report this to the police as soon as you can. You may still be investigated, but you are likely to be treated with considerably more sympathy than if you wait for it to come out some other way.

OP if a teacher, a shop keeper or a stranger head butted your son would you report? It really should not be any different when it is a relative or parent!

Sorry Pacific but I disagree. Yes on some threads it is difficult when the information is limited and is only a 'snap shot' however there is a 12 yo child that has been head butted and verbally threatened by his father while his mother has done nothing to protect him or the other DC. That is fact as far as this thread is concerned so I cannot really see what else there is to know.

I am pleased there has been shouting, frothing and demands that the police are called. This is the attitude that stops child abuse being kept behind closed doors and swept under the carpet.

I have taken a different route to AF through this thread, yet I still respect and have considered and in part sympathised with her analysis.I certainly think we all want the same outcome.

But I agree, the op comparing AF to her stbxh is out of order and crosses a different sort of line.

Op, this doesn't mean I don't feel for you.

But, please, see when people are trying to help, and please accept some help -in rl even if you don't come back on here.

Flossy, we know what the OP has written down. That's it. I too entirely agree that this assault must be reported to the police and I've stated that more than once.
I still don't think that the OP deserved the names she's been called.

Like I said, respect to everybody on here who has survived absuse, but we have no idea how many other people may be lurking and reading who are living with similar situations and don't know what to turn and have lost knowing what is 'normal' and 'acceptable behaviour' (see 'roughhousing until they cry').
There is not need for crying 'unfit mother' IMO.