Survivor Stories: A Mother’s Account of Tough Love

Domestic Violence can take on many forms and manifestations. While the majority of cases involve current or former intimate partners, abuse can be committed in the context of any relationship. This includes the abuse of a parent by a teenager or adult child.

At its core, the purpose of abuse remains the same as any other form of domestic violence: to exert power and control over the victim. Children can abuse their parents in varied ways: physically, verbally, emotionally, psychologically, or financially.

The account below is an unedited true story, submitted anonymously to WomenSafe by a parent who found herself in an unthinkable situation of having her life threatened by her son.

If you are living in an abusive home, know that there is somewhere to turn. Please call COPEline: 1-888-285-5665 and speak to an advocate; COPEline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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With an angry looking, swollen black and blue eye, I stand in the door watching as my son is put into handcuffs and taken away to the police car sitting in the driveway. Blood, that hasn’t had time to dry yet, surrounds my feet on the step leading into the house from the extensive knife wound that the flesh of my flesh received while trying to stab me. I cried out into the darkness of the wee morning hours to I say, “I love you and I’m sorry.” I then turn back into the house with my body convulsing with grief.

I had done the unthinkable act of having the police pick up my son; I had committed the act of tough love.

Friends had talked to me; in fact, begging me, saying how I should send my child away, having him committed. Tough love they called it, but I saw it as a sign of weakness, cowardice. “Are you nuts?” I would say to them. What kind of mother calls the police on their child?

For years I hid the hideous bite marks, tried covering the bruises that lasted for months. I avoided family functions for fear of the ridicule that I know I would receive, or the never ending lecture that I would hear. I became a prisoner in my own home, not daring to step out much to do anything or visit with anyone.

A punching bag I had become to my son. “It’s his disability that causes him to behave this way.” I reasoned with myself, trying to rationalize his actions. “He cannot help the way he is; he will outgrow it in time.” I was so wrong. Autism, Bi-Polar, Microcephaly, OCD, ADD as well as ADHD are some obstacles to overcome; disabilities do not just go away. He was diagnosed very young, however, the violence had begun to escalate around the time he reached puberty. There was not a magical pill that the doctor prescribed would ever make it vanish from our lives.

On this fateful night, over a conflict of his cellular telephone, what started as a small disagreement turned into an event that I surely will never forget. Lunging at me, knocking me onto the floor, he screamed at me, “I’ll kill you, you bitch,” with a crazed look in his eyes. Fists drawn up in the air, flying furiously against my face and arms, he hit me over and over. I felt myself begin to cry, and beg him to stop. In the back recess of my mind, I could hear those voices telling me I should have practiced the tough love that was preached so often to me.

Thankfully, he did stop; however, just long enough to run to the kitchen to grab the butcher knife from the drawer. It was like the scene from Psycho almost, as he began to come at me swinging the knife into the air trying to connect with me. I thought to myself, “He is going to kill me!” Never before had I been so frightened. This went on for what seemed to me like an eternity. I tried to take the knife from him, which resulted in his finger getting cut. He refused to let go of the knife, but I knew if I did not take it from him I could be seriously injured.

With the knife taken from him, he was in a frenzy, his eyes so wild, the words spewing from his mouth had me wondering, “This is my baby that I gave birth to?” Over and over, he keeps repeating that he will kill me. Through tears, I begged, “Please, just stop! I love you, please stop!”

He picked up beside the door a splitting maul, and swung it at me. In amazement, because I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that my child is doing this to me. Busting holes in the walls and on the side of the house as he swings wildly, I watched as he was destroying our home. Finally, he threw it down, and ran off into the night. Shaking uncontrollably, I stumbled back to the dining room, picked up the phone and called 911. In a haze, I made the call I never thought I would make to the police to have my son picked up. I was finally going to invoke the tough love practice I said I never would do.

After the police arrived, I had to start filling out my statement, going through the embarrassment of having dozens of photos taken of the damage done to the house, then the humiliation of the photos to be taken of myself and the abuse that was inflicted upon me. I saw the looks on their faces, the patronizing glances between the officers as they tried to ease my anxiety. One officer even said, “This is the best thing for him.” I cried harder at his comment. I thought to myself, “You have no idea what this is like.”

Court went in a haze. The Prosecuting Attorney was hard-nosed as can be saying there would be a protective order where I could not receive calls from my son, nor could I visit him or receive mail from him. “Do you have any idea what that will be like? Yes, he did terrible things to me, but this is my child!” He then tossed across the table the photos from that night for me to view again. The angry black eye, the bite marks upon my arms, the reminder of what had happened, and he says, “You want to visit someone who could do this to their mother?” His statement reminded me again that the tough love action would be the best action to take no matter how hard it was going to be. I thought to myself, “This was my entire fault.”

While doing his one year in jail for domestic abuse and assault with a deadly weapon, my son came to terms with his actions, and received the help that he so desperately needed. We wrote to each other and I visited him weekly. It was a very hard year, but we made it though.

After being a victim of domestic abuse by own child, my view on tough love has changed dramatically. I came from thinking that I could not ever do such a thing, to seeing just how important it was. Looking back, remembering that night, it might not have happened if I had practiced tough love before then.

I now advocate for parents to stand up for themselves. “Don’t be a victim!” I tell many parents, no matter how hard it is, it is for the child’s own good as well as your own. I feel that this experience has helped our family to grow and to learn. Although it was a horrific experience, it is one that did bring change, for the better.