Parents of Abused Children

Hearing that your child has been abused is a heart breaking and world shattering experience. In that moment your focus is on helping your child, whether they are still a child or have progressed into adulthood. However this often means we miss the impact if has on ourselves, and without understanding our own feelings and emotions it can be hard to stay focused and present with our child.

Most parents think that when they learn someone has hurt their child, their instinctive reaction is to hurt the perpetrator. But the reality is that your child needs you to stay and help them, even when your instinct is to lash out.

Impact on Parents

The impact on parents, whether you discover the abuse was within the family, or external to the family, is huge.

It may show up as:

• Guilt - “how did I not know? I should have protected them.”

• Self-blame - “I let this happen.”

• Fear and anxiety - “what if it happens again?”

• Anger - “I want to hurt the person who did this.”

• Hypervigilance - “Threats are everywhere.”

• Overprotectiveness - “If I don’t let them out of my sight, it won’t happen.”

All of these thoughts and feelings are natural and normal. We want to protect our children, and we want to make sure nothing bad every happens again.

Dealing with these feelings, without support and awareness can be damaging to our mental and physical wellbeing, but it can also result in behaviours that can be unhelpful for both ourselves and our children.

How to Support Ourselves and Our Children?

Having spent many years supporting both those impacted directly by abuse, and the friends and family who gather around then. I can understand the impacts on both.

You want to do what is best for your child, but you don’t know how to.

Firstly, getting the right help and support for them is important, but they may not be ready for that yet. So getting help and support for you is equally as important, so that you can be their safe place, so you can model emotional regulation and so that you can tolerate all the feelings you and they are experiencing.

This is not easy but it is important.

Recognising what feelings are yours, and what are theirs, and being able to have space to talk about what has happened, and how it has impacted on you is an important step in rebuilding a family, a life and a future.