THAT'S MEN:Parents need not be cowed by violent teens, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
THE ABUSE of parents by their adolescent children is not talked about much – and understandably so. This is one domestic problem parents don’t want to broadcast to the neighbours or the wider family.
For that reason, we don’t know how much of it goes on, but we do know it happens. Organisations dealing with adult domestic violence, such as Women’s Aid, certainly encounter it.
Who abuses and who gets abused? According to Melbourne-based counsellor Eddie Gallagher, who specialises in this area, about 70 per cent of children who are violent toward their parents are boys.
Very often, these parents are women raising their children without a partner and who have suffered abuse from the partner in the past.
This doesn’t mean that the children have to have witnessed the abuse. It is enough for them to have picked up on the father’s attitude of denigration and verbal aggression towards the mother.
In two-parent families where parent abuse is going on, fathers are also abused in about half of cases, according to Gallagher. A father raising children on his own is almost at the same risk of being victimised as a lone mother.
Gallagher developed the Break4Change programme in Brighton and Hove in the UK. There, parents and their abusive children (aged 11 to 16) undergo separate eight-week training courses, which appear to have brought about beneficial changes in behaviour.
Parental abuse, like other forms of abuse, is about control. Essentially, the adolescent is trying to dominate his or her parents by physical or psychological means. Some adolescents, as I mentioned above, learned this behaviour from a parent. Other abusive adolescents have a huge sense of entitlement to whatever it is they want. It is perhaps fuelled, I would suggest, by being treated like gods throughout childhood.
According to the Parent Abuse Research Network at the University of York, psychological abuse includes threatening to hurt or kill a parent or themselves, running away from home, name-calling, criticising and put downs. Physical abuse includes hitting, punching, slapping and pushing.
Financial abuse includes stealing, damaging the parents’ possessions or demanding that the parents buy items they cannot afford and creating an abusive conflict over that.
It’s a miserable situation. To see the child one has nurtured becoming an abuser must be heartbreaking. For that reason alone, it is very likely that it takes parents quite a long time to realise what is going on, let alone to seek help from anybody outside the family.
What can parents do about this problem? There is no perfect answer to that question but Gallagher has a list of suggestions on his website to help parents to take charge of the situation and to take steps to bring about an end to the nightmare.
It seems to me that having the help of somebody else in working out the steps might be invaluable especially for lone parents. An organisation such as Parentline (1890 927 277) can be a helpful resource.
One parent who e-mailed Gallagher’s website outlined three attitudes she found particularly helpful in dealing with her son’s abusive behaviour: “First, I am not responsible for my son’s abusive, angry or destructive behaviour.
“Second, even if I totally empathise with his pain and problems, it doesn’t excuse him being abusive and taking it out on me or his step-dad.
“Third and most important – giving in to his pressure tactics and walking on eggshells to avoid a blow-up ultimately only makes his behaviour worse, because it gives him the result he wants.”
If you have got this problem in your family or if you feel you may be heading that way, take a look at Gallagher’s website (tinyurl.com/3xwqjbq) and at the website of the Parent Abuse Research Network (tinyurl.com/675f9ld).
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
His book, Light Mind - Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail