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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

A parenting question - what would you do?

90 replies

Pages · 26/09/2007 01:17

You are the single mother of 3 dc ages 6, 5 and 4. You need to get away for a few hours and ask a neighbour to watch your DC. You go to a friend's house. The neighbour doesn't actually come into your house.

It is dark. Your 3 dc are on their own in the house. Your DS1 (age 6) hits DD (age 5) with a screwdriver. DD runs out crying and makes her way along the road in the dark to try and find her mummy. She falls over and grazes her knee. The police come by in a patrol car and pick DD up and DD tells the police where mummy's friend lives. The police arrive at your friend's house with DD in the back of the car and take you and DD home.

Who should be punished, DD or DS1?

OP posts:
bamamama · 28/09/2007 12:06

Pages - I started reading your other thread but found it too upsetting to finish. Having read this thread I really think you should stop all contact with your mother and concentrate on the wonderful family you have. Perhaps your mother could have sorted out her own issues - and it is obvious that there is much to work through -but it has been her choice not to. What I found upsetting from your previous thread was that any woman, regardless of circumstance would not be able to love and care for their child. This could well be the root of her issues. However, as many have said, for your own piece of mind please cut contact with her, you need to be able to move on, not have further crap heaped on you. Your dc will thank you for it in the long run. x

Original poster
Pages · 28/09/2007 21:29

Thank you Bamamama. I feel so much better today, and saw my counsellor who says she not only abandoned me that day but that it has been ongoing abandonment and emotional abuse all my life.

As Alice Miller says, memory may not always be reliable but the feelings stored in the body usually are, and my biggest and most overwhelming feeling from my childhood is one of abandonment by her, both physical and emotional. Her needs always came first.

Well, now I choose me, and my own little family. I am going to forget her and move on. DH has been so sweet, keeps saying it's me him and the little boys forever and that's all that matters.

OP posts:
chipmonkey · 28/09/2007 21:44

Pages, your dh sounds lovely!

WinkyWinkola · 28/09/2007 21:55

Is she loving towards your DCs though, Pages? Obviously I don't know how hard it is for you to see her/talk to her etc.

My mum is remarkably loving and interested in everything my children do. I get her involved in their lives as much as I can because I seriously think she realises how much she missed out on through her complete lack of interest throughout my childhood.

But my circumstances are probably completely different to yours.

chipmonkey · 28/09/2007 23:09

OMG Pages, just read your other thread! There really is no salvaging that relationship, she is as far removed from reality as a person could be!
reminds me of MIL.

Original poster
Pages · 29/09/2007 22:31

Chipmonkey, you are right, that is the main problem - it is not even about forgiveness or accepting our differences. She has weaved a web of deceipt and a lifetime of lies - she is lying to herself as much as anyone else - and my siblings are all caught up in it, and I don't want to be any more.

Winky, I can't fault her with my dc, she has always been sweet to them but they are still only little and haven't crossed her yet. Also, we live a long way away from her so any meet-up is quite a big deal.

She really doesn't add anything to my life and my dc don't even know who she is. They are attached to my friends but not to her. I really don't think grandparents matter that much. I don't believe children understand blood ties, they just love and miss the people that love them and are in their lives. She hasn't earned their love any more than she has earned mine.

OP posts:
WinkyWinkola · 29/09/2007 22:34

Yeah, I kind of agree with you Pages - do grandparents really matter that much? I mean, what kid got messed up by not seeing their grandparents?

That's not to say that children don't have great and valuable relationships with the grandparents but this cannot be at the expense or despite the relationship with the child's parent(s).

twospecialgirls · 29/09/2007 22:48

your mum is def at fault you lot were kids i would never leave mine on their own and if i asked someone to babysit i would def expect them to be in the house with the kids
you or your brother are not to blame
i totally understand why you started this thread i had sim experiences of being blamed for stuff when i was younger only now im older i can see i was not to blame and it was parent fault as i was a child !!!!
adn so were you and sibs your mum isnt worth your thoughts if she has cut you out of her life as she is the one losing aout on a relation ship with a lovely daughter as im sure you are x

handlemecarefully · 29/09/2007 22:52

Controversially perhaps but I am being honest here - the mother for not making sufficiently robust babysitting arrangements

tiredemma · 29/09/2007 22:52

in answer to the op.
neither- the mother is to blame imo.

handlemecarefully · 29/09/2007 22:55

Lol, just read thread. I see most people have reached same conclusion. So not controversial at all

Original poster
Pages · 30/09/2007 08:24

Lol handlemecarefully, I deliberately tried to write it from my mother's perspective to see if you would all see her persepctive at all or whether, like me, it was immediately transparent to you that it was the mother at fault. Because as I child I always believed it was my fault. It is only since all this happened last year that I have actually entered the real world and started to realise how many things she had blamed me for (like this) and that I was living in this world of skewed logic.

For instance she has always told me and the family how many times I "got lost" as a child, as if it was some quirky character trait of mine. I really believed it was something that was my doing until a year ago. Numerous times as a child I ended up being separated from my family. My mother even laughs at me being found at the police station at the age of 3. It happened throughout my childhood - and I remember being petrified every time, panicking and crying and thinking I would never see my family again. I was a curious child and probably stopped to look at things and then realised I wasn't with the rest of the family any more, but it wasn't ME who got lost, it was my MOTHER who lost me!!!! It was her job to make sure all her children were with her at all times when out in public.

I know how quickly children can wander of btw and I am not criticising anyone who has had it happen to them. My point is that if one of my children "got lost" I would see it absolutely and completely as MY responsibility, not something the child had done.

OP posts:
3sEnough · 30/09/2007 08:41

Bizarre - the mother - entirely at fault. How on earth she can have expected the neighbour to be in charge from another house (can't believe the neighbour agreed!) Then how she can expect the children to be at fault at their ages, on their own. Utterly random thinking - twilight zone stuff.

Original poster
Pages · 30/09/2007 08:54

Yes, that's how it feels - a twilight zone I've lived in all my life!

OP posts:
Original poster
Pages · 03/10/2007 20:37

PS Thank you twospecialgirls and sorry you had a similar experience...

OP posts:
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