Shirley abandoned Dean and Carly when they were very young.

Do we actually know why Shirley walked out on them or will we find out?

Probably cos she couldn't cope anymore.
Had a breakdown?? There's another plotline to come- what caused her to walk out?
Maybe knowing might make Dean more sympathetic towards her?

Actually no not really funny enough!

I think Jimbo Wicks being ill had something to do with it but she has just said she couldn't cut it as a mother.

More recently I think nearly drowning Mick Carter (her own son) as a baby for a moment of madness and having to look after Tina Carter as well while Stan Carter was drunk and her Mum having mental problems (I think they hinted at due to Stan's behaviour) put Shirley off when she had Jimbo, Dean Wicks and Carly Wicks.

I also presume she knew Kevin Wicks would be an excellent dad if she left, which he proved to be.

I presume there is way more to come on that score. Never hit me there hasn't been an actual specific reason after all these years !

See this is why I'm not warming to Dean(o) and the whole Dean/Shirley storyline. I just don't have enough information to know what I'm supposed to be feeling and relating to. I also have little to no memory of Deano being in the show the first time around, as I didn't really watch during that awful era.

He's more creepy than sympathetic and not in an enjoyable way. I just don't get all these vague references to an unhappy past and Shirley sitting around sulking. It reminds me of the Penn Graham storyline from Home and Away which was also awful.

Because she is a ghastly human being. What more reason do u need?

Bang on point Filz. Shirley would only give her kids a second thought if they were keeping her in booze, case in point: Mick. As toddler Deano and Carly were neither providing her with vodka nor the means to acquire it she shuffled off to find someone that would.

Her first and only love is the bottle and the gutter from which she drinks it, always has been and always will be.

I've been wondering this. There has never categorically been an explanation as to why Shirley walked out. She often puts it down to not being maternal but we have seen her maternal side many times and even Patrick mentioned tonight that he could see it with George, it was also never explained why she decided to find Dean and Carly after all those years. She raised Jimbo and Carly for many years and Dean until he was a toddler(I think) so surely if it was a case of not being maternal, she would have walked out before having Carly and Dean? I think it should be explored as should Shirley's relationship with her own mother as that may play a part.

We know that she went to live with Mick 15 years ago maybe she wanted to have a go at secretly being her firstborn's mother, but it ended up blowing up in her face - literally (with the burning down of the pub an everything)

There's been no real explanation, and we don't know how she then ended up living with Mick, or at least being part of his life.

She just seems to be one of those people, like David Wicks, who are useless parents and then live to regret it. Somehow it's more acceptable when it's the father that walks out.

She is a two bit lush. Ergo, she cares about nothing and no one except her next bottle. Sad but true.

Mick did say that it was Shirley who went looking for him and Tina and got them out of care, never said what age that was though. There has been a lot of emphasis on how Shirley looked after Tina and Mick so Ill be interested to find out why she left Carly, Dean and Jimbo.
She obviously cared enough about the latter to try and find them and make amends.

Marriage break down, caring for a disabled child, drink problems, sleeping about and getting pregnant by different men, own selfish needs could be many things, motherhood isn't for everyone.

I assume when the Mick reveal happens, Dean will get more of an explanation.

Shirley had a kid at 15 (I think!), tried to drown him because she couldn't cope, and then history was rewritten by her mum so that her child was taken away from her. I'd assume since then, Shirley has always been telling herself she was an unfit mother. Then jimbo goes downhill and it's another slap in the face that she can't look after her own children. Maybe she thought she was being punished for her failings with Mick?

I think we will eventually get an explanation, surely all of this backstory will culminate in why Shirley left the kids?

It struck me in tonight's episode just how much we really NEED to know why she walked out on her kids. Trotting out the old "I'm not a good mother" line doesn't cut it anymore now that she's a more prominent character. We have next to no clue why Shirley suddenly decided to walk out on 3 kids she raised from birth. If it had been said she maintained some sort of contact it would make her a bit more sympathetic. She just left and cut them out of her life with not even the knowledge Jimbo would die being enough to make her stay.

Dean no longer makes any sense to me. When he appeared previously he was a reasonably together young man who although abandoned AS A BABY by his mother wasn't mentally screwed. A lot has happened to him since then which explains some of his current behaviour but not his creepy mother/son obsession with Linda. We're also faced with the retcon of Dean now no longer being abandoned as a baby but as a teenager. The new Dean had a childhood where he knew Shirley as a mother whereas the old one didn't. I can't reconcile this retcon and therefore the character makes no sense anymore. It's almost as bad as the head swapping Sam Mitchell underwent in which she forgot her entire 2002-2005 stint as Kim Medcalf.

It has been referred to that Dean was young wheb Shirley left but I don't recall them actually stating he was a baby? It was said that Carly and Dean were too young to remember and Kevin burned all the photos but ages were never catergorically stated, I don't think they would retcon to Dean being a teenager but there is room for manuver around a younger age without it being a retcon. In order to progress Shirley's character they need to explore this, i'm glad we are finding out more now, though it should have been explored already IMO.

Remember that video of Shirley, Kevin and the kids Phil helped Shirley find in Pat's attic a couple of months ago? It was stated in 2007 that Shirley walked out very soon after that video was filmed. Dean is a baby in the video.

Oh, was it? I remember the video but I don't remember they saying that she walked out not long after that...how on earth did you remember that? Your memory must serve you well! To be fair, I guess the casual viewer wouldn't remember that being said, I didn't!

I don't remember the specifics from 2007 but I'm sure that Dean didn't recognise her (although I think Carly did). As most people's memories start at about 3 or 4 he must have been younger than that to not have retained even a vague image of her in his mind. They do now seem to be saying he was a lot older which is a fairly massive retcon.

Why did she feel the need to go out drinking and picking up men every night after giving birth to her first child? The answer first time round seemed to be that she was just too young to cope with a very sick child and maybe she argued with Kevin about it a lot but this whole new back story with Mick muddys the water a lot. I suspect she thought Kevin was her second chance and then she couldn't hack it when Jimbo was born sick and them knowing he was likely to die young. She might have felt she was being punished as somebody has suggested. Hopefully they will go into it in detail - I'm sure they will at some stage.

I think I worked out once that Dean was three and Mick about thirteen when she left Kevin and her younger children. We know that Mick was involved with Linda by then and she could have been already pregnant.

She's not so consistent so it could be any reason

Dean was not three in the video which was filmed shortly before Shirley walked out. It doesn't matter now anyway. In the new continuity he was a lot older when Shirley left. If we can't be sure he was a teenager (which seems pretty obvious based on the fact New Dean last saw the Carters 15 years ago and is very familiar with Stan) then we can at least be sure he was walking, talking and old enough to go on the rides at the funfair as described in Shirley's story.

Old Dean was left as a baby in 1989, I believe, and didn't recognise Shirley. There were no pictures as Kevin destroyed them all. Had he kept in contact with the Carters Dean would have known what Shrley looked like when they met. That continuity has been erased and replaced with the new one where Shirley waited until Dean was a teenager before bolting and severing all ties 15 years ago rather than 25 years ago.

She didn't want to be a mother

I wouldn't place much emphasis on the video and a comment made back in 2007, most viewers wouldn't remember that. It was never stated on screen that she left in 1989 exactly so they have room for maneuver without it being too much of a change.

Linda said in a previous episode that Lee and Dean met as kids but would be too young to remember each other so Shirley must have left in the 90's, this would make Dean younger than a teen because otherwise he would remember Lee and the rest of the Carters.

I think the 15 years thing was when she last saw Mick not Dean.

There was a comment about when memories start working, but it's different for everyone, 1 of my grandparents passed away when I was 7 and another when I was 9, I didn't remember what they looked like, I found some photo's of them in my late teens and had to ask who they were, so it just goes to show that it does differ for different people, on soaps as well as in real life.


I think there is going to be more too it than that. Another Sylvie mention tonight too so I think some of the reason will involve how poorly Shirley was treated by her own mum.

You can place whatever emphasis you want on it but the storyline in 2006/2007 stated very clearly that Shirley had not been in Dean's life since he was a baby and therefore he did not recognise her. It was a continual part of the narrative the whole time they were on the show together. Kevin and Shirley divorced in 1989 and he never saw her again until December 2006. It was written in stone and has now been changed.

Shirley did not leave in the 90's. She left in 1989 when Dean was a baby. Anything written in recent months contradicting that is a retcon and is the continuity we're expected to follow now. Shirley 2014 left her entire family minus Tina 15 years ago. Shirley 2006 left her entire family (which didn't include the new Carters at the time) in 1989.

Regarding the memory thing, perhaps you just have a bad memory. A lot of people do. It's not for me to tell you what you should and shouldn't remember but I can remember from the age of 4-5 very well. I can't conceive of not remembering important stuff from the ages of 7 to 9 but that's just me.

I think it was me that mentioned the memory thing. Of course everybody is different and when I said most people memories start at about 3 or 4 I didn't mean clearly or for everything - generally more unusual events stick in he mind. For example I remember being in a 'show' at nursery school, us moving house and getting a new dog which happened within a couple of weeks of each other when I was 4, my first day at infants school and being the only kid left there at lunch due to my mother working on the other side of town and not being able to take me home like the other kids. One of my grandfather's died when I was 6 and I remember being told in excruciating detail although my memories of him alive are very vague. It's more just a feeling, a sense, image of him I have in my memories now but there is something.

I couldn't quote specific scenes but I do remember it being made very clear back in 2007/2008 that Shirley was supposed to have left Kevin and the kids when they were very young - Dean only a baby and Carly old enough to vaguely remember her but now well so maybe 3 or 4. It can be argued that most viewers won't remember the details so it doesn't matter that they've changed it to enable them to introduce her family and re-introduce Dean but it is certainly a retcon just as Max and Jack Branning being the youngest members of the family was - it's just that most people probably won't care about it much as they would retconning something like Kathy, Cindy or Angie's deaths.