Harrowing tales of parents living in fear of own children on tonight's 999: What's Your Emergency?

Viewers of the Channel 4 show, which airs at 9pm, will see cases from across South Yorkshire including a Sheffield mother asking for her 15-year-old to be taken into custody after he starts causing damage at their home

And for the second time in three days, the same officers are despatched to a report of a son attacking his father.

Elsewhere, a distraught mother is under siege from her violent and aggressive 23-year-old son.

A preview of the show adds: “This tour with the South Yorkshire police has the saddest of themes: parents who fear their children. Immediately we’re presented with a tough dilemma as officers visit a woman who, in the wake of her 15-year-old smashing the family TV, insists on him going to the cells. The cops know what this could mean for the boy, but there might not be an alternative.

"Later on we’re shown how, no matter how badly things go, your child is for ever your child. A mother calls because her son, who’s in his 20s and has a history of mental illness, is scaring her. Then an elderly man who normally copes well with his troubled middle-aged son rings up amid the wreckage of a terrible row.

"Every story is awful, but there are some happy-ish endings.”

A spokesman for South Yorkshire Police said: “In tonight's brand new episode, officers confront numerous cases of the fast-growing crime of child-on-parent abuse.”