Parents ‘abused by own children’ on rise

There has been an alarming rise in the number of children abusing their parents, with the majority suffering in silence because of shame and guilt.

One in seven calls made to Parentline last year were from parents who said they had been abused by their children. The abuse, which involves children up to and including adults, includes physical, emotional, and verbal abuse. The figure for people parenting alone is likely to be even higher.

Parentline chief executive Rita O’Reilly said calls to the helpline about child-to- parent violence had been increasing every year over the last five years.

The helpline now has a team trained to deal with parents experiencing domestic violence from their children. Ms O’Reilly said no parent wanted to admit their child was violent towards them.

“Often, it is not talked about and can fester in the home,” said Ms O’Reilly. “Parentline offers parents an opportunity to talk with someone in a confidential and non-judgmental setting and be offered the tools to deal with it.”

Declan Coogan, a psychotherapist and lecturer in social work at the National University of Ireland Galway, said: “More and more parents are talking about child-to-parent violence, which has been a hidden but growing social problem in Ireland and across Europe.”

Police arrest figures recorded in the US during the 1990s show that 18% of two-parent families and 29% of one-parent families reported that their children were abusing them.

Research published last year also found that 21% of adolescent girls and boys attending school in Spain had been violent towards their parents.

Workers at Parentline have benefited from the Non Violent Resistance Programme adapted for use in Ireland by Mr Coogan.

NUI Galway will host an international conference on child-to-parent violence this month to raise awareness and share information on best practice, as part of an EU programme taking place in Ireland, England, Spain, Sweden, and Bulgaria called ‘Responding to Child to Parent Violence’.

Ireland project leader Mr Coogan said one of the speakers at the conference, Eddie Gallagher, a psychologist based in Melbourne, Australia, found a lot of violence to parents happened when children felt a sense of entitlement on reaching a certain age.

“The children are growing up in middle class families where both parents are working,” he said. “They are told they can’t have sex, drink or take drugs because they are under age but they don’t deal well with being told no and that leads to them assaulting parents.

“From what I have been told, and it seems to make sense to me, that where we are now with child-to-parent violence in this country is where we were with domestic violence about 30 years ago.

“Back then, nobody ever spoke about domestic violence but gradually people began to talk about it and to find ways of dealing with it. That is what is happening now in relation to child-to-parent violence.”

See: www.parentline.ie