Child to Parent Violence and Abuse

Family Interventions with Non Violent Resistance

Declan Coogan

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781849057110
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784502317
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Providing an authoritative overview of the growing phenomena of child to parent violence - a feature in the daily life of increasing numbers of families - this book outlines what we know about it, what is effective in addressing it, and outlines a proven model for intervention.

Based on non-violent resistance (NVR), the model is founded on a number of key elements: parental commitment to non-violence, de-escalation skills, increased parental presence, engaging the support network and acts of reconciliation. The book outlines the theory and principles, and provides pragmatic guidance for implementing these elements, accompanied by case studies to bring the theory to life.

Part 1

THEORY AND GOOD PRACTICE

Chapter 1

Coming to Terms with Child to Parent Violence and Abuse

‘It manifested in lots of shouting, smashing things, taking my bag, threatening to break things, threatening behaviour, physical violence, smashing various parts of the house and being very out of control. This just got worse and worse. All the boundaries I had been using before just were not working.’

Jane, mother, in Wilcox et al. 2015: 5

‘Parents told us that there is a huge lack of knowledge and understanding of child to parent violence and abuse, which is one reason why it is difficult to talk about.’

Wilcox et al. 2015: 7

Unless it directly affects you, it is hard for many of us to imagine what it is like to live with a son or daughter under the age of 18 years old who makes you feel as if you are constantly walking on eggshells. That is the phrase I have heard used time and again about and by some mothers and fathers who go through similar experiences to the ones described in the quote above. Jane was talking to researchers involved with the Responding to Child to Parent Violence Project. This was a European Union (EU) Commission co-funded action research project carried out by Paula Wilcox and her colleagues between 2013 and 2015. As part of this project, practitioners, researchers and trainers in Bulgaria, England, Ireland, Spain and Sweden revealed some of the hidden dynamics of the problem of child to parent violence and abuse. It can include a wide range of behaviours such as those described by Jane above – verbal abuse, physical abuse and threats of harm – together with a pervasive sense of living in fear of the next outburst or assault from a son or daughter under the age of 18 years. Throughout the EU there is a need for the development of policy, research and practice guidance, since without this, practitioners feel unprepared and uncertain about how best to respond to this problem.

But this is not just a concern for the EU. Reflecting on their research with 185 mothers in Sydney, Australia, who were targets of their child’s violence, Michel Edenborough and her colleagues commented in 2008 that there is much we do not yet know about child to parent violence and abuse. Edenborough et al. (2008) drew out the implications of these gaps in our knowledge: other family members, practitioners working with families, and researchers are not recognising the impact of a child’s violence at home on parents or the seriousness of the violent behaviour used by sons or daughters towards mothers and fathers.

But it is clear that child to parent violence and abuse is increasingly recognised as a problem, as policy makers, researchers and practitioners dedicate time to writing about the issues with which families and practitioners have been living and working for some time. The work of authors such as Haim Omer (2004, 2011), Barbara Cottrell and Peter Monk (2004), Amanda Holt (2013, 2016a, 2016b), Paula Wilcox et al. (2015) and Eddie Gallagher (2008) illustrates the emergence of child to parent violence as a matter of concern in countries such as Israel, the USA, Canada, the EU nations, Australia and New Zealand. In Ireland and the UK, Trish McMahon (2013), Elayne O’Rourke (2013) and Eileen Lauster and her colleagues (2014) report that practitioners such as social workers, psychologists and family support workers in children and family health and social care settings have told them that the abusive and violent behaviour of children and adolescents towards their parents is an increasing concern.

Finding it difficult to locate a service to support them in their local area, some people turn to national telephone support services for parents. Rita O’Reilly, the Chief Executive Officer of Parentline, a national telephone service for parents in Ireland, reported in 2014 that increasing numbers of parents are availing of their services, describing their feelings of embarrassment and fear as they talk about their experiences of being the target of their child’s physical and emotional aggression and violence in their homes. Similar experiences are reported in the UK where, in their research into police involvement with families due to child to parent violence, Rachel Condry and Caroline Miles (2014) reveal that the UK charity Parentline Plus received helpline calls from 22,537 parents struggling with aggressive behaviour from their children over a two-year period, 7000 of which involved incidents of physical aggression.

Clarifying a definition of child to parent violence and abuse

What are we talking about when we refer to child to parent violence and abuse? There is no single or simple definition of child to parent violence and abuse in the literature. Different people have used different ways to describe the problem, including Debra Jackson (2003), who writes about ‘child to mother violence’ as she describes mothers’ experiences in Australia; Jeffrey A. Walsh and Jessie L. Krienert (2007), who refer to police arrest figures in the US for ‘child–parent violence’; Linda Pagani and her colleagues (2009), who describe risk factors for ‘adolescent aggression towards fathers’ in Canada; and Amanda Holt (2013, 2016a, 2016b), drawing on research in the UK and elsewhere, who refers to ‘parent abuse’. Many authors include intention in their definition of the problem, following the example of Barbara Cottrell (2001), who defined parent abuse as any act of a child intended to cause physical, psychological or financial damage to gain power and control over a parent. Reflecting on trends in the UK and internationally, Paula Wilcox (2012) observes that academics tend to use ‘parent abuse’ or ‘mother abuse’ and practitioners tend to use ‘child to parent violence’.

It seems that parents or carers living with child to parent violence and abuse do not use either of the terms above. Instead, parents and carers tend to speak about fear, shame and being unable to control their child, and they refer to challenging behaviour (Coogan 2014; Wilcox et al. 2015).

Describing a research project involving women who survived domestic violence in Ireland, Mary Allen (2011) challenges practitioners and researchers to take social constructionist approaches to their work. It is more respectful, Allen (2011) argues, to privilege the experiences of those directly affected by the problem of violence and to regard knowledge and truths as socially and culturally constructed; in keeping with this approach, I do not argue for a universal definition of the use of aggressive and violent behaviour of children towards parents, and I recognise the validity and usefulness in some contexts of the terms referred to above. However, the definition of the problem that I use throughout this book is: ‘child to parent violence is an abuse of power through which a child or adolescent under the age of 18 coerces, controls or dominates parents’.

There are a number of reasons why I prefer to work with this definition of the problem:

•This definition encompasses a wide range of abusive behaviours, including acts of physical violence and controlling tactics; the tactics used by some children towards their parents are part of a continuum of indirect and direct attacks. Indirect attacks can include damage to property and threats of self-harm. At their most extreme, direct attacks involve physical assault and the use of weapons such as knives that can lead to the need for medical attention.

•It clarifies that it is the parent – mother and/or father – who is the target of the abusive behaviour by the child under the age of 18 years. In using the term ‘parent’, I am also including any person acting in the role of a parent, such as a step-parent, adoptive parent or foster-parent.

•The definition clarifies that it is the child who uses abusive and/or violent behaviour and that it is a parent or carer who feels disempowered by the abusive and violent behaviour of the child.

•Understanding child to parent violence and abuse as an abuse of power enables us to accept a self-defining approach to a definition of experiences of violence within the family – that is, a child or adolescent’s behaviour should be considered as child to parent violence if family members feel controlled, intimidated or threatened by it and if they believe they must adapt their own behaviour because of threats or use of abuse or violence (Paterson et al. 2002; Wilcox 2012). It also refers to a pattern of behaviour, as it is unlikely that a parent will feel intimidated or threatened by a single incident of aggressive or violent behaviour.

Many definitions of child to parent violence and abuse include intention in their definition of the problem, following the lead of Barbara Cottrell in Canada in 2001 (Wilcox et al. 2015). It was defined then as a harmful act carried out by a child (under the age of 18 years) with the intention to cause physical, psychological or financial pain or to exert power and control over a parent. But it is not clear whether many of the children and young people who use child to parent violence and abuse intend to cause pain or exert control over a parent. Practitioners working with children and young people may have observed that some children and young people who are violent or abusive towards their parents become quite distressed at the impact of their behaviour on parents. A child who uses child to parent violence and abuse may do so for either instrumental (a deliberate choice with a goal in mind – i.e. with intent) or expressive (expression of emotion, impulse, defensive) reasons. Practitioners such as Gallagher (2008) and researchers such as Cottrell and Monk (2004) and Izaskun Ibabe and Joana Jaureguizar (2010) point out that the use of violence at home by a son or daughter may be defensive or reactive to their experiences and threats of abuse or to acts of domestic violence towards mothers. From feminist perspectives on the use of violence, this raises intriguing questions relating to the complexities of motivations for the use of violence by women and by children within family and intimate relationships, some of which will be explored later in this book.

Others writers, such as Nowakowski-Sims and Rowe (2015), argue for an understanding of child to parent violence and abuse that acknowledges the possibility that traumatic experiences in childhood may play a role in its development, undermining a view that a child always fully intends to control or to cause pain to a parent.

Regardless of whether or not this is the intention of sons or daughters using child to parent violence and abuse, authors such as Haim Omer (2011), Amanda Holt (2013) and Stephanie Holt and I (2015) have pointed out the fact that parents living with this problem usually feel completely disempowered in their role as parents in the family.

An infringement of human rights

It might seem quite a stretch to think about child to parent violence and abuse as an infringement of the human rights of parents and children. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person (article 3) and that no one should be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (article 5). There are no exception clauses relating to parents. Yet the kinds of behaviours directed towards some parents by their child seem to fit under the terms ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’. Some parents live in situations where they do not feel free to determine what they do or where they go within their own home. I believe that child to parent violence and abuse is an infringement of the human rights of children and of parents. This is due to the consequences of child to parent violence and abuse on the ways in which parents and children live their lives together. Such realities are shown clearly in quotes taken from two mothers who took part in research carried out by Caroline Hunter and her colleagues described in 2010 exploring the anti-social behaviour of adolescent males and the consequent risk of family homelessness in the UK:

‘He was like a bloke at 13, shouting at me, made me go to bits and you know, I mean, I couldn’t deal with it.’

‘I was having a lot of trouble with my children and like my son was hitting me – and mental abuse.’ (Hunter, Nixon and Parr 2010: 268)

Thinking about and responding to child to parent violence and abuse as an infringement of the human rights of parents and of other members of the family (siblings) who may also be affected by it underlines the problem as being an abuse of power. And this can help us make a distinction between what could be regarded as childhood challenges to parental authority (which can be regarded as quite normal and to be expected) and child to parent violence and abuse.

Making a distinction between child to parent violence and abuse and child–parent conflict

Reading the comments from two of the mothers who took part in the research described above (Hunter et al. 2010), it is relatively easy for us to determine that they are describing experiences of child to parent violence and abuse. But child to parent violence and abuse is often difficult to detect and to talk about. For Caroline Hunter and her colleagues (2010), it emerged as an unexpected finding from their research exploring what was conceived of as a completely unrelated problem. It is also sometimes very difficult for parents and practitioners to identify the impact of the behaviours they are describing, particularly if it is not clear whether or not the abusive or violent behaviour of a child should be seen as part of a child maturing through adolescence.

Although we may rarely welcome it and find it uncomfortable, we expect that conflict will emerge from time to time between people in intimate relationships and who live together under the same roof. In many western societies and communities, we also tend to expect that there will be conflict between parents and their child as a son or daughter grows and develops through childhood and adolescence and attempts to separate from his or her parents (i.e. individuate). There may be periods of tensions between parental authority and an adolescent’s increasing need for autonomy and independence; authors mentioned earlier such as Edenborough et al. (2008) and Pagani et al. (2009) point out that it is especially during these periods that conflict patterns are developed and reinforced between parents and children. But there is a difference between a young person becoming defiant towards parents and a young person attempting to abuse, coerce and control parents.

Child to parent violence and abuse – an abuse of power to coerce and dominate

When thinking and talking with families and colleagues about challenging behaviour at home, it is useful to identify the difference between the kinds of troublesome behaviours that usually fall within the boundaries of what may be seen as legitimate or expected adolescent behaviour and behaviour that involves child to parent violence and abuse. Noting that the ways in which we usually understand power in families can make it harder to recognise child to parent violence, Jerry Tew and Judy Nixon (2010) suggest that thinking about the dynamics of power within family relationships can make us more aware of and more able to recognise child to parent...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Theory and Good Practice
• Part 2: The Non-Violent Resistance Model
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Join our mailing list
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright
• Of Related Interest