Why do parents feel they have to kill their kids?

Heineken Helen

gaz wrote:

Thats so true. As parents you do all you can to protect and make sure your kids are safe and then you hear about something like this and it kinda makes me feel angry that anyone can have kids and it doesn't matter how fucked up you are.
As I said before though there is a serious suicide problem in this part of the country and its not getting any better. I think theres kinda an attitude of 'just get on with it, stop feeling sorry for yourself' here. Psychological problems don't seem to be considered a 'real' illness.

Well Ireland has one of the highest rates of suicide in Europe and Wexford (where this happened) has the highest rate in Ireland :(

It's true I suppose that maybe there's a history of depression... also with the whole Ferns thing it would make you wonder

Heineken Helen

Cheguevara6 wrote:

The original poster should have asked, why in society do we tacitly accept the deaths of children and adults as the price we have to pay living in a free society?

No, if that's what YOU want to ask, then ask it... but that's not what I'm asking... I'm asking how can a parent who nobody doubts loved their kids very much KILL their kids... the rest of your examples are other threads. When do you decide that your kids are actually better off dead? When is that breaking point? And yes, you must be a psycho to do that.

Sure there are bad things in this world but 90% of the time it's actually a pretty fucking great place to be if you just open your eyes and see all the things you're not seeing.

Heineken Helen

Ahnimus wrote:

I think they were more than likely psychopaths. Or they really loved their children and rationalized some reason they shouldn't live. Which would make sense if they had some strong ideological convictions, like.. murder ourselves during the next meteor shower and we will ascend to heaven.. that kind of thinking has got lot's of people killed, including children. I suppose then that would be some extreme psychosis. Either condition is probably pretty rare, but in billions of people your going to have a lot of stories to tell. This doesn't surprise me at all.

Well judging by the stories coming from neighbours and locals, they don't seem to be a family of 'weirdoes'... they just seemed to be like a normal regular nextdoor neighbour family

Daughter of Jeremy

Heineken Helen wrote:

That's the way I see it too... I mean the neighbours are saying they were GREAT parents and did everything for the kids.

It's a sad family story though, his father died last year and his brother committed suicide a month ago . He's suffers from hereditary blindness... and the kids have it too and most of his siblings.

You would have to REALLY crack up to do something like that but I can't say I've seen a story before where the two parents planned it between them :eek: :(

I know that hindsight is a wonderful thing and all, but that above information adds a lot of pieces to the puzzle. There are a lot of warning signs there. Dead dad, brother who suicided recently, the hereditary blindness, that's a lot stacked up against that family. Suicidal people generally can't see their way out of the dark hole they're in, they're thinking gets screwed up and they see death as a very viable option. Sometimes people feed off each other. Last week 2 16 yr old melbourne girls hung themselves together in a suicide pact. They fed off each other's negativity and probably gave each other the courage to go through with it.
Not saying that I understand why they chose the path they did, but I've seen lots of kids (and a few adults) with this concrete thinking and it's a fucking scary thing to have to deal with. If I were the undertaker I would've shat myself!

zenith

DOJ - u must have just beat me into this thread.
the two melbourne girls were sad, but apparently there were warning signs all over the place for both of them but (and please, this is in no way excusing or brushing off what they did) they are old enough to a certain extent to know, and choose, and only took themselves. stupid, pointless and sad, but they choose.

someone didnt choose for them

remember in australia a few years ago - there was a case of a man bringing his little boys back to their mum from an access visit. he lost control of his car, it ran off the road and into a dam. he managed to get out, but couldnt get the boys out in time and they drowned. to make things worse, it all happened on fathers day.
at first, the country was oh my god, how tragic! the local town rallied around him. it was all over the news. but i dont know - perhaps because im a single mother myself - i just thought it didnt sound right. if they were my kids, i would have shreded my hands to pieces getting thru the car windows to those little boys, even if i drowned myself in the process.
of course - a few days latter it came out that he locked them in the car, put it in drive and calmly stood there watching while it sank into the water - all so the mother couldnt have them back. he is now in jail, if i remember rightly.

now - again - how can people do this to their own children?? out of selfishness. thinking they 'own them' they are 'saving them'

all i know is if i was the mother of those little boys, or if anyone ever did anything like that to mine - it wouldnt really matter if they did put them in jail. i would wait as long as it took and then i would make sure they died the most painful death i could manage to dish out

Heineken Helen

Daughter of Jeremy wrote:

Last week 2 16 yr old melbourne girls hung themselves together in a suicide pact. They fed off each other's negativity and probably gave each other the courage to go through with it.
Not saying that I understand why they chose the path they did, but I've seen lots of kids (and a few adults) with this concrete thinking and it's a fucking scary thing to have to deal with. If I were the undertaker I would've shat myself!

That's really sad. See whatever about people cracking up and doing things that aren't 'normal', I've never understood how these people find eachother. I always wondered that about the killing of Jaime Bulger - two 11 year old kids :( . How does the topic come up and how do they convince eachother to do it? It's just mind boggling really :(

Heineken Helen

zenith wrote:

now - again - how can people do this to their own children?? out of selfishness. thinking they 'own them' they are 'saving them'

all i know is if i was the mother of those little boys, or if anyone ever did anything like that to mine - it wouldnt really matter if they did put them in jail. i would wait as long as it took and then i would make sure they died the most painful death i could manage to dish out

Absolutely! There was another case of a few months back where an Irish man on holiday in a fit of rage after an argument with his wife, grabbed a kid under each arm and jumped off the balcony. He landed on the kids who both died I think and he had a broken arm or something. He's in jail at the moment... I'm sure she's just waiting for him.

Collin

Last week there was something on the news about a man who had called his wife to tell her he was going to drive into a wall and take his 8-year-old with him. She called the police but she was too late. The crazy fucker pushed his kid of a cliff and he jumped. The father's still alive but in critical condition.

Daughter of Jeremy

Heineken Helen wrote:

That's really sad. See whatever about people cracking up and doing things that aren't 'normal', I've never understood how these people find eachother. I always wondered that about the killing of Jaime Bulger - two 11 year old kids :( . How does the topic come up and how do they convince eachother to do it? It's just mind boggling really :(

The Jamie Bulger case was definitely some fucked up shit. And blaming it on a freaking horror movie that did not share any similarities with the callous brutality those kids showed that poor little boy was horrible. If I get anyone like that walking through my doors I honestly don't know what I'd do!

Daughter of Jeremy

zenith wrote:

DOJ - u must have just beat me into this thread.
the two melbourne girls were sad, but apparently there were warning signs all over the place for both of them but (and please, this is in no way excusing or brushing off what they did) they are old enough to a certain extent to know, and choose, and only took themselves. stupid, pointless and sad, but they choose.

someone didnt choose for them

remember in australia a few years ago - there was a case of a man bringing his little boys back to their mum from an access visit. he lost control of his car, it ran off the road and into a dam. he managed to get out, but couldnt get the boys out in time and they drowned. to make things worse, it all happened on fathers day.
at first, the country was oh my god, how tragic! the local town rallied around him. it was all over the news. but i dont know - perhaps because im a single mother myself - i just thought it didnt sound right. if they were my kids, i would have shreded my hands to pieces getting thru the car windows to those little boys, even if i drowned myself in the process.
of course - a few days latter it came out that he locked them in the car, put it in drive and calmly stood there watching while it sank into the water - all so the mother couldnt have them back. he is now in jail, if i remember rightly.

now - again - how can people do this to their own children?? out of selfishness. thinking they 'own them' they are 'saving them'

all i know is if i was the mother of those little boys, or if anyone ever did anything like that to mine - it wouldnt really matter if they did put them in jail. i would wait as long as it took and then i would make sure they died the most painful death i could manage to dish out

The point I was clunsily trying to make by using the two melbourne girls was that the mum and dad in the ireland case may have been perpetuating each others problems and may have been supporting each other the way the two melbourne girls did. And you're right, there were warning signs all over the place for those two girls and sadly nobody picked up on them, but again that is often the case with suicide.
I do remember the dad with the boys in the dam, and I had similar thoughts to you when it first came out, not because I'm a mum, just because I'm horribly cynical!!!!
Someone else made a point about why the family bothered going to the funeral home,w hy they didn't just leave it in a note, maybe that was their way of reaching out for help. Thankfully the people who present to mental health have by and large presented to the right service when they reach out, but we've had kids disclose to the check out chick at woolies what they were planning to do with all the panadol, and not hanks they didn't need a bag for it because it was going straight into their stomach because they had had enough.
Then again, maybe not...