Spike in despairing parents seeking help with abusive children

CEO of Parentline, Aileen Hickie, said a spike in calls last year 'blew the record 2020 figures out of the water'. Picture: Alan Betson / The Irish Times

More parents are seeking help with abusive children from confidential national helpline Parentline than ever before, according to the charity's CEO.

Aileen Hickie said more than 6,000 calls were made to its helplines in 2021, a 47% increase from the previous year.

She said the “standout principal reason” why 42% of parents rang Parentline was children displaying anger and aggressive or abusive behaviours at home.

Those types of calls more than doubled last year.

There was also a rise in “child-abusing parents”, with 195 calls during 2021, or a 57% increase year on year.

School refusal and school work issues were also a big reason for parents ringing the service looking for information and support. These amounted to 14% of all calls.

The results are preliminary results and a full breakdown will be available in early March.

“The pandemic had made parenting more challenging than ever, with more parents and families being forced to spend a greater amount of time in close proximity in their homes," Ms Hickie said.

"Many parents have also faced school and educational uncertainty in relation to their children, particularly those doing Leaving Cert exams. 

"This caused additional stress on both pupils and parents. Parents also struggled to work from home and many were at breaking point."

One indication of the scale of the problem is in the number of parents who seek help from the Parentline’s Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) programme, which supports parents dealing with aggressive and violent children in the family home.

Approximately 40 parents completed the eight-week NVR programme with Parentline in 2019. This figure jumped fivefold to 222 in 2020.

Although the number of parents doing the programme fell to 187 last year, that was because volunteers had to divide their time between facilitating the courses and answering busier helplines.

As a result of the increased number of people calling for help, the charity has increased its numbers of volunteers to 50 and approximately half of those are trained NVR programme facilitators.

There are plans to train more volunteers this year to deal with the waiting list of parents waiting to go on the NVR programme.

More and more parents are reporting that they are afraid of their own child in their own home and struggling to manage the conflict.

“Parents talk about the shame they feel about their child’s behaviour and that they feel they have failed as parents," Ms Hickie said.

“They have often kept the situation a secret from family and friends.

“The NVR programme supports parents to change the way they deal with violence and aggression and hostility. 

“It helps them to de-escalate situations, to stay calm and to help stop a bad situation developing into something worse.” 

Calls to the helplines increased dramatically in 2021, she said.

"This is particularly notable as 2020 was already a record year in our 40-year history with over 4,000 calls to the service but last year has really blown things out of the water.

“It is important to note that some of the reason for this increase is because parents are more aware of our service, thanks to media coverage. But it is also a fact that parents are dealing with or reporting to us more issues in relation to their children." 

Children abusing their parents does not always mean physical abuse, although it can do in many cases.

"It can also mean emotional abuse, verbal abuse, violence, and manipulation.

"It all forms part of child-to-parent violence whereby a parent is fearful in their own home of their own child.” 

Boys aged 12 to 17 years tend to make up most of those involved in incidents of child-to-parent violence.

Parentline celebrates its 40th birthday this year.

Since it was set up in 1982, by a group of social workers and nurses who wanted to form a confidential support service for parents, it has developed into a national helpline.