Children...

Children are the greatest gift of all...

But they can also be the destruction of us.

They are precious and we should love them and nuture them and we do.

But we also sometimes don't see the monsters they can be until it's too late.

There is a very fine line between being naughty and down right vindictive...

Every so often one of them crosses that line and the repercussions are devastating.

It can start over things as simple as they don't want to go to school , they don't wan to wash and they wont do as they're told...

Mix that with some major family problems such as death and illness and things can quickly spiral out of control.

The simple thing you may think is for the parent to ask for help from the relevant organisations, but this is not so easy to get.

Add to the mix again a parent suffering with severe depression and anxiety and what you get is beyond your worst nightmare.

The parent is struggling through it all hoping that when certain things are sorted other things will calm down. Struggling alone to salvage what they can of their lives and sanity.

The child doesn't see this and continues with the destructive behaviour even though she is being told that things will get better soon but that she must do as she's told or it just makes things harder for the parent.

The child refuses to go to school and adds to the stress of the parent because this illegal.

The child begins to use more and more aggressive behaviour, but wont accept that this is wrong either.

The parent stops functioning properly and withdraws into herself as a deffence to what's happening and becomes affraid of the child's aggressive behaviour.

At this point it's a very hard up-hill struggle.

But the struggle is worth it because there is hope. A new home, a new start.

But what does the child do when this goal is in sight? She starts being physically abusive to her mother. The mother's fear is heightened by the other stresses and not helped by other family members who just sit back and watch offering only critcism and abuse.

The child discovers that she can gain sympathy from these people by telling little snippets of what's going on. Only little bits though, cos if she told the truth the reaction would be the opposite to sympathy and she knows this.

The result of all this is that the mother's family gain the very wrong picture that the child isn't being cared for properly.

And what do they do? Offer help, support, anything?

NO! They gather together and badly beat the mother the night before she has to move house. Then they do it again twice more over the following few weeks. They damage her property and hurt her so bad that she considers giving up completely because her ungrateful daughter can't see what she has done. She has lied and cheated and caused her mother to be beaten all because she doesn't want to do things she's supposed to do.

And now the mother is alone and broken.

And the daughter has to stay with her father and her granparents who don't want her...