Am I a bad parent?:(

My son is 5 and going through the process of diagnosis, he’s got a great school who do one to one support and meditation/ nurture sessions. 

There was an incident whilst he was at a family members home where an older relative, primary school age nearing secondary and also autistic had asked my son to pull his trousers down and photograph his genitals. He’d then asked my son to photograph him. This happened allegedly when their grandmother had left the children unattended for around 10 minutes. 

I spoke to the older boys father about this and spoke to the headteacher at my sons school. Not in a derogatory way about any children involved, purely as the older children had been studying sex Ed I thought this might have made it a primary focus in this child’s mind and he was exploring it in an inappropriate way. I was also worried about the risk of images ending up on social media and in the wrong hands.

since this my family have completely ostracised my son, they have told their children to ignore him and have been ‘telling tales on him’ constantly to try and get him into trouble. They’re insulting me to him and have even contacted social services etc to make false allegations. All this is breaking his heart and sending him into meltdown:( is this my fault? I feel if I hadn’t of done anything he wouldn’t be suffering now. I don’t know if I should move schools, which in itself would be a huge upheaval? 

Parents
  • This must be heart breaking and I can't imagine what you are going through, I don't think you are a bad parent, you had concerns and raised them in an appropriate manner. 

    Hopefully social services will look at this matter sensibly and since you highlighted your concerns to the school after the incident it should help them to see from your perspective. 

    Families can be very strange things, it may be that they are embarrassed and trying to shift focus and blame from their child to yours instead of having an adult discussion about how or why this happened and how to stop it happening again 

    I would also suggest calling the helpline for some advice 

    Best wishes 

Reply
  • This must be heart breaking and I can't imagine what you are going through, I don't think you are a bad parent, you had concerns and raised them in an appropriate manner. 

    Hopefully social services will look at this matter sensibly and since you highlighted your concerns to the school after the incident it should help them to see from your perspective. 

    Families can be very strange things, it may be that they are embarrassed and trying to shift focus and blame from their child to yours instead of having an adult discussion about how or why this happened and how to stop it happening again 

    I would also suggest calling the helpline for some advice 

    Best wishes 

Children
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