JJ is so full of anger that he has stabbed mother Bobbi several times, tried to push her under a truck and even plotted to kill her. Only nine years old, JJ violently attacks his mum Bobbi on an almost daily basis. And it’s not just his mother who suffers – JJ was excluded from school after he left two of the teachers needing hospital treatment for a detached retina and a suspected broken wrist.

Bobbi says: “He has this absolute anger and strength you wouldn’t imagine. He punches me, kicks me, pulls my hair. He has the worst temper I’ve ever seen in
a child.”

Impossible, you say? Think again, because Bobbi isn’t the only mother who lives in constant fear of her own young child.
Helplines in the UK receive more than 11,000 calls each year from adults who are victims of violent attacks they cannot escape – because the abusers are their own children.

Isla Downey, senior parenting practitioner from Southampton City Council, says:
“Child-parent violence is a really hidden problem and far more common than perhaps society cares to acknowledge.

“The reason for this is hidden is the shame, the guilt. It is the ‘how can my child be being violent to me, and how can I tell someone about that?’”

Bobbi can’t pinpoint an exact age when he first attacked her as JJ’s behaviour has
evolved over time. He was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) aged three and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) at seven.

A year later doctors realised he also had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) and traits of Asperger syndrome

Bobbi says: “I really want people to realize that this beautiful, angelic, gorgeous little
boy, who looks totally normal in the street, but suddenly starts throwing things out of my trolley in the supermarket, doesn’t need a good whack, which is what people say.

“We actually need more understanding, he does have mental health problems. He
doesn’t need a slap.

“He was a very difficult baby. “As he got older, we started to realise he was a very scared child. “As he got able to voice things, he would say he was scared that the sky was going to fall down and crush us."

“It was only when he could talk that we started to see where he was coming from
and that he was a very anxious child who was scared of everything.”

By six, JJ’s behaviour had really spiraled out of control and he hatched a plan to try
to kill Bobbi in the middle of the night. She says: “He had tried to stab me a number of times, so we took away all the knives, scissors, anything that was sharp.

“He tried to involve his older sister. He told her he wanted her to get a knife, and
said when I was asleep that night he was going to stab me.

"She was distraught and came to tell me. I told her he couldn’t because there was
nothing in the house to do it with.

“JJ was very, very angry at the time, and for six months I felt that she was unsafe
to be near him. I used to go to bed at night and put her in bed with me so I knew she was safe. If ever he got up at night I would be up and out of my bed and down to his room before he could get out.”

JJ has been excluded twice – from a mainstream and a specialist behavior school. He is now at his third. But the exclusions were not the worst of it.
Bobbi says: “He pushed me in the road in front of a lorry. We were on our way home from school and he was angry that he had been excluded again, and he was holding my
hand and waited for the lorry to get close enough and pushed me in the road in front of it.”

Bobbi has the patience of a saint and copes with JJ’s violent and unpredictable behaviour with support from JJ’s stepdad Lee and the mental health team in Southampton.

I wonder, does this happen in Nigeria?