The cost of being a non-entity in my own home

When you are the parent of a child who is violent towards you, you can begin to feel like a non-entity. Not only is the violence minimised or ignored, but too often we are blamed for it. The focus is always on the child, their needs, and on how you parent, as though there is a deficit within us as mothers.

We are told we are not understanding our child enough. We are told we are too strict, not strict enough, need more boundaries, fewer boundaries, parenting courses, rewards, consequences, star bloody charts, medication, no medication, and endless accommodations for brain-based differences. As though we are not trying hard enough.

We are told it is not our child's fault - a response that can sometimes reflect an unconscious bias towards understanding and explaining the child's behaviour while overlooking its impact on the parent. We are told we are our child's "safe person", as though the violence towards us is a badge of honour that somehow makes it easier to bear. As though it is a privilege to be smacked in the head or threatened with being stabbed.

The noise thrown our way is relentless.

Amid all of this, our own wellbeing is overlooked. My experience has often been drowned out by everyone else's narrative. What I want professionals to understand is that, unless you have lived it, there will always be a gap between knowing about child-to-parent violence and truly understanding what it does to a family. That gap can become a gaping hole that the whole whānau falls into, if you are not careful with these precious families.

If someone had stopped and asked how I was coping, perhaps I would not be living with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, nervous tremors, digestive problems, exhaustion, and the profound grief that has knocked me sideways.

While everyone focused on understanding my child, very few stopped to understand what the experience was doing to me. No-one asked what it felt like to be frightened in my own home, to absorb daily violence and blame, and to keep functioning while my nervous system slowly broke down under the weight of chronic stress.

Parents' wellbeing matters too

If you want families to heal, you can’t focus only on one person while ignoring the rest of us.  You must see the whole whānau.  A child is part of a family unit, and every member of that family carries the impact of violence, stress, and trauma.

Unless we support the whole whānau, we are only addressing part of the problem. Expecting us to implement your strategies while receiving little or no support for our own burnout is unrealistic and harmful.  It places responsibility on us without acknowledging the toll the violence has taken.  By failing to recognise and support our wellbeing, you have failed to see us as part of the healing process.

In my role supporting families affected by child-to-parent violence, I often bear witness to the stories of broken and exhausted parents. The themes are painfully familiar.  Living with a violent child can have profound and lasting impacts on a parent's health and wellbeing. Yet despite all the expectations placed on us, all the advice about how we should parent better, and all the scrutiny of our parenting, we are too often left to cope alone.

We are expected to hold everything together while carrying fear, grief, trauma, and exhaustion that few people truly see. Our children need support, but so does everyone else within the family unit.