LINDA could not bear to tell anyone that her daughter had hit her.
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But when she woke up with a black eye, she had no choice but to confide in her boss and ask for time off work to heal in private.
“It’s your child and you feel like you’ve failed, so you hide it,” she said. “I just felt so embarrassed and ashamed.”
The incident was one of the most painful in five “heart-wrenching” rollercoaster years living with violent outbursts that have had a “domino effect” on her life.
She said her daughter fell in to the wrong crowd when she started high school and soon began exhibiting disrespectful behaviour at home.
During one fit of rage, her daughter smashed three windows. On another occasion, her daughter choked her as she lay in bed.
“I was in a state of shock,” Linda said. “How did it come to this? I felt like I put my daughter to bed and woke up to another one.”
Her daughter bounced between friends homes and soon started self-harming and using drugs and alcohol.
Linda believes her daughter was on ice when she punched her in the face and had to be dragged away.
“I was dumbfounded,” she said.
“Where did that little girl go? Where did I go wrong?
“I could never comprehend it.”
Linda called the police and made the difficult decision to take out an apprehended domestic violence order against her daughter, specifying that she could still visit the house but must not intimidate her mother or be affected by drugs or alcohol.
“It was not easy,” she said.
“If she broke it and I rang the police, I’d be putting my own child in jail and you’ve got to live with that.
“You don’t know as parents whether that would do more damage.
“You don’t like them, but you still love them.”
At other times, her daughter punched holes in the walls and would be intimidating and threatening.
“She would say ‘Don’t make me angry or I’ll hit you’.
“They turn it around like it is your fault, saying ‘I told you to stop talking, why haven’t you stopped talking?’”
Linda’s daughter even tried choking her as she lay in bed.
“When I finally spoke up about it I could not believe how many other mothers were going through it,” she said.
“I told some friends and they told me they were having the same problem and asked me where to go for help.
“One of my friends and her husband were being hit by their 25-year-old son.
“It’s a hidden problem.”
Linda said while the experience had left her scarred, it had also made her stronger.
She and her daughter now live apart but are trying to rebuild their relationship.
“At the moment we’re in a good place but it’s like treading water,” she said.
“You never know what you’re going to get. I take each day as it comes.”
Linda said other parents should not be afraid to reach out for help.
“The love you feel for your children is unlike any other,” she said.
“I understand that and I understand it’s hard, but you have to talk to someone about it and seek help – for yourself and for your children.”