Children's Needs – Parenting Capacity - Digital Education Resource ...

148 Children’s Needs – Parenting CapacityExperiencing domestic violence or seeing parents who appear unable to controlthemselves or their circumstances may leave children of this age group feelinghelpless and confused.I was really scared when I first heard my Mum and Dad shouting. I was afraid togo downstairs, and when I realised it was a fight I didn’t know what to do. I triedto forget all about it and go to sleep, but I couldn’t because of all the things in myhead. I didn’t know what to do – should I say something, stand up and speak out,or lay here and let it unfold? One night I went downstairs but they told me to goback to my room, and when I woke up the next morning it was all back to normalagain. I didn’t know what to do...(Silas aged 11 years, quoted in Barron 2007, p.13)Children’s sense of helplessness and low self-esteem is compounded when theperpetrator of the violence and controlling behaviour also targets them.My father did not let me sit on the sofa with my brother, I had to sit on the floor.When he got angry he held my head in the toilet.(Seven-year-old boy, quoted in Greenwich Asian Women’s Project 1996)A third problem is that children may assume they are responsible for their parents’actions. It is commonly reported that children of substance-misusing parents, orwhose parents are violent to each other, feel that they are somehow at fault forwhat is happening. Children may believe that what they do triggers their parents’drinking, drug use or violence, or that they should be able to find a way of stoppingit. Children’s ways of coping included attempts to shut out the exposure to thetraumatic episode and wishful thinking (Joseph et al. 2006). ‘I wished this horriblesituation would go away’ (young girl, quoted in Joseph et al. 2006, p.32). To tryand stop their parents’ drinking, drug use or violence children may use ‘methodscontaining a magical element, for example finding exactly the right words’ (Brisby et al.1997, p.11).Doyle illustrates well the belief in the magical quality of words.People were talking, kind of shouting. I stopped. It was cold...The television was on; that meant my Ma and Da weren’t in bed. They were stilldownstairs. It wasn’t burglars in the kitchen...– Stop.I only whispered it.For a while I thought it was only Da, shouting in the way people did when theywere trying not to, but sometimes forgot; a bit like screamed whispers...But Ma was shouting as well...I did it again.– Stop.There was a gap. It had worked; I’d forced them to stop.(Doyle 1994, p.42)