I don’t actually hate children but just in the context of the movie there was not a single good child in it. There was the mom’s son who screamed for most of his screen time, and his shitty cousin who was like “haha your dad’s dead.”
And yeah, the mother had actual physical wounds, it lead me to assume that the Babadook at least had some sort of physical form. It’s kind of hard for me to be like “yeah all this shit is being flung around Poltergeist-style and the kid is also there to witness it” and think it’s just all in her head