Parents with violent kids

TodayI have been thinking about violence and kids. Has it always been thus?  Have there always been terrified parents locked in their own bathrooms with a wish and a prayer that they could change it all?
Have you been there, in that bathroom?  Or have you been so very close to it that you knew, just knew, that you had to take action to prevent it happening?
It's a pattern, a long tapestry of increasingly aggressive behaviour from the kids that can lead to that place where they have all the power and you, the parent, have none.
Of course there are degrees of power imbalance in the parent child relationship - what percentage of the power do you have?  60%?  80%? or are you struggling at under 50%? Sometimes the power slips away unnoticed, little by little, until one day you realise that your child is now in control but, because they have so little life experience, the power they have wrested from you overwhelms and confuses them. 
I think back over many years of parent support and how often a 'power issue' arises.  It sounds so simple,  two small words, power and issue. Locked in that bathroom, alone and afraid, it's anything but simple.

Parent Support - will anyone get in touch?

So, about 5 years ago I was a Samaritan.  I tell you this because it was the beginning of my journey towards parent counselling.  We used to sit in small cubicles in a run down area of London, each of us with a phone, headset and paper and pen. Sometimes we heard tales of such sadness and despair that we wondered if there was anything positive left in the World. Sometimes we listened while life ebbed away slowly on the other end of the phone.  We never really knew the outcome...we could only imagine.  Sometimes, surprisingly frequently, we answered the telephone and could only hear panting, a great deal of panting.  Distress or self pleasure?  We had to ask the question and 'direct' the call accordingly - phone down if pleasure, carry on and support if pain.
Moving on from the Samaritans I moved into parenting support. At first I started on a 24 hour helpline and progressed to managing a team of one to one parent support workers. 
I loved it! The endless variety of parents, kids, trauma, joy, tears, laughter. 
Over the years I had often thought about starting a parent counselling service. A really high quality and discreet service that could cater to those parents for whom privacy and one to one service would be important.
Last week, along with one of my fantastic colleagues, we started this service and I am waiting nervously for our first call........

http://www.parentconfidential.co.uk/