Category: Child-on-Parent Violence (CPV)

Child-on-Parent Violence (CPV), Parenting advice

NVR: Parenting strategies for children with Reactive Attachment Disorder

Adoptive parenting can present unique challenges, especially when parenting a child who has experienced trauma or has behavioral difficulties. Traditional disciplinary approaches may not always be effective or appropriate in these situations. This is where Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) comes in—a powerful and compassionate strategy that focuses on building connection and resolving conflicts without resorting to violence or aggression. 

NVR offers parents a set of principles and strategies to address challenging behaviors while promoting the child’s emotional well-being and strengthening the parent-child relationship. It focuses on empowering parents to take a proactive role in managing difficult situations and building a foundation of trust and connection. It emphasizes de-escalation techniques, non-violent communication, collaborative problem-solving, and setting limits without resorting to physical or verbal aggression.

History of NVR

Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) originated as a therapeutic approach developed by psychologist Haim Omer as a method to address violent and self-destructive behaviors among adolescents. The development of NVR was influenced by several psychological theories and practices, including family therapy, attachment theory, and non-violence movements. Haim Omer drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent resistance philosophy and Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of non-violent social change.

Omer recognized the need for a non-punitive, non-adversarial approach that could help parents and caregivers address challenging behaviors without resorting to aggression or violence. NVR is rooted in the belief that individuals can change, and relationships can be repaired through non-violent means.

Core Principles

Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) can be a valuable approach for parents dealing with children who exhibit violent behavior. While it may not provide an immediate solution, it offers a long-term strategy that focuses on building trust, connection, and communication. Here are some ways NVR can help parents address violent behavior:

  1. Maintaining Safety: The first priority when dealing with violent behavior is ensuring the safety of all family members. Implementing safety plans and establishing clear boundaries is essential. NVR emphasizes the importance of setting limits on violent behavior while avoiding physical or verbal aggression in response.
  2. Calm and Composed Response: NVR encourages parents to respond to violent outbursts calmly and without aggression. By remaining composed, you model self-control and show your child that their behavior won’t elicit an aggressive response from you. Take deep breaths, regulate your emotions, and focus on de-escalation.
  3. Physical Distancing: If the situation becomes physically unsafe, practicing physical distancing is important. Gently guide your child to a safe space where they can calm down and regain control. This protects everyone involved and prevents further escalation.
  4. Non-Violent Communication: NVR emphasizes the use of non-violent communication techniques to address conflicts. This includes active listening, empathetic responses, and reflecting on shared goals. By creating an atmosphere of understanding and respect, you encourage open dialogue and problem-solving.
  5. Building Emotional Connections: NVR recognizes the significance of building emotional connections with your child. This involves finding moments of connection, expressing empathy, and offering support. Strengthening the parent-child bond can help address underlying causes of violent behavior, such as trauma or unmet emotional needs.
  6. Collaborative Problem-Solving: NVR promotes collaborative problem-solving, involving both parents and children in finding solutions. Engage your child in discussions about alternative behaviors, consequences, and ways to address conflicts constructively. Encourage them to take responsibility for their actions and involve them in developing strategies to manage anger and frustration.

If your child’s violent behavior persists or escalates, it may be necessary to seek professional help. A mental health professional experienced in NVR or trauma-informed care can provide guidance, individualized strategies, and support for both you and your child.

Example de-escalation techniques

Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) de-escalation techniques are strategies that parents can employ to defuse tense situations and prevent conflicts from escalating further. These techniques aim to promote calmness, open communication, and mutual understanding. Here are some common NVR de-escalation techniques that parents can use:

  1. Stay Calm and Composed: As a parent, it’s essential to maintain your own emotional balance during moments of conflict or intense emotions. Take deep breaths, regulate your own stress response, and focus on staying calm. By modeling composure, you can create an atmosphere of safety and stability.
  2. Physical Distancing: If tensions are rising and emotions are running high, physical distancing can help create space and diffuse the situation. Gently suggest that both you and your child take a break to cool down. Encourage them to go to a quiet place, such as their room, where they can engage in calming activities like deep breathing or listening to soothing music.
  3. Use Active Listening: Show your child that you are genuinely interested in understanding their perspective. Practice active listening by giving your full attention, maintaining eye contact, and nodding or using verbal cues to acknowledge their feelings. Reflect back what you hear to ensure accurate understanding, without judgment or criticism.
  4. Validate Emotions: Let your child know that their feelings are valid and understandable, even if you may not agree with their behavior. By acknowledging their emotions, you can create a sense of empathy and understanding. Statements like, “I can see that you’re feeling frustrated right now,” or “It seems like this situation is really upsetting for you,” can help validate their experience.
  5. Reflect on Shared Goals: Shift the focus from conflict to shared goals and aspirations. Remind your child of the positive things you both want to achieve together. For example, say, “We both want our family to be happy and peaceful. How can we work together to find a solution?”
  6. Problem-Solving Together: Encourage your child to engage in problem-solving with you. Invite them to brainstorm potential solutions or alternatives to the current issue. By involving them in the process, you empower them to take responsibility and develop critical thinking skills.
  7. Offer Choices: Provide your child with choices within reasonable boundaries. By giving them some autonomy, they feel a sense of control over their actions and can be more receptive to finding constructive solutions. For instance, say, “Would you like to take a break and come back to discuss this later, or would you prefer to write down your thoughts and share them with me?”

Learn more:

Online training by Al Coates MBE Social Worker and Advanced Non Violent Resistance Practitioner

NVRnorthampton offers services for locals, but also blog posts and a FB page

Child-on-Parent Violence (CPV), Most Popular

The Secret Next Door (Child on Parent Violence)

Annie watched in horror as Charlie, red-faced with rage, snatched a picture frame off a wall and slammed it against the bedpost. The glass shattered. He picked up a long shard and brandished it like a dagger. Stalking towards Annie, he growled, “I’m gonna kill you.”

This type of abusive behavior in relationships is far too common. 29% of women and 10% of men in the US will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes. Child protective services investigates more than three million reports of abuse and neglect annually. However, Charlie and Annie’s altercation isn’t included in either of these statistics.

That’s because Charlie is a 13-year-old boy. And Annie is his mother.

What the parents living next door may be hiding

Like Annie, I’m the mother of a son who acts out. Both our boys are products of the foster care system, adopted as toddlers, and who are diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Conduct Disorder (CD), serious behavioral disorders. They have both received medication and thousands of hours of treatment, but nothing has helped.

When Annie and I tell friends, family, and mental health professionals about our sons’ behaviors, we are met with disdain and disbelief. In the same way many sex abuse victims are treated, parents like us are blamed and shamed into silence. We have been forced underground, into private Facebook groups where we find non-judgemental support from thousands of other parents in similar situations.

Four years ago, Lillyth Quillan founded the online parent support group, Parents of Children with Conduct Disorder. She says, “More than 1,000 families have come together to share their stories; to know they are not alone. They are emotionally raw and shredded to the marrow at how they’ve been treated and not believed by close friends and family.”

How many families this affects

The general public assumes these situations, where children are violent towards their parents, are isolated to a handful of sensationalized episodes of Dr. Phil.

This is simply not the case.

While the anecdotal evidence of children with serious disorders abusing their parents is abundant, quantitative data is desperately lacking. This is why I recently surveyed more than 200 parents of children diagnosed with, among other behavioral disorders, RAD and CD. This type of informal survey is an invaluable way to begin to understand the scope of the problem.

According to my survey, Are You In An Abusive Relationship? more than 90% of the respondents are in chronically abusive relationships – and the abuser is their child.

  • 93% say their child threatens them, other family members, or pets with physical violence.
  • 65% say their child grabs, hits, kicks, or otherwise physically assaults them.
  • 71% say their child hides their behavior from others and blames them for their outbursts.

These aren’t merely numbers; each one is a tragic story. Here are just a few of the examples shared anonymously by survey respondents:

“My son purposely hurts the cat to get my attention.”
“My daughter attacked me with a steak knife.”
“My son choked me and broke my wrist.”

Anonymous parents

These findings show that it is alarmingly common for children with serious behavioral disorders to abuse their parents.

When children abuse their parents

Intentional Child to Parent Violence (I-CPV) is deliberate, harmful behavior by a child to cause a parent physical or psychological distress. These are purposeful behaviors intended to gain control over, and instill fear in, parents. I-CPV takes many different forms and varies in severity. It is often chronic and usually directed at the child’s mother figure. [1]

One surveyed mom has a moon-shaped scar on her forehead from her 14-year-old daughter grabbing her by her hair and slamming her face onto the stove. Another mom says her son tried to push her down the stairs and makes homicidal threats towards her.

Parents like these sustain physical injuries and may develop mental health disorders including PTSD. They are isolated from friends and family. Their marriages can become irreparably damaged. They frequently lose jobs and friends. Other children in the home suffer secondary, if not primary trauma.

Without highly specialized treatment, the child perpetrating the abuse will not get better. Far too often, it becomes necessary to have them institutionalized, or end up incarcerated, for the safety of their siblings, parents, and themselves.

Hypervigilance – and fear – are common for parents in these situations. One mom describes how, “Before my son was taken to the hospital, then jail, and then a treatment center, I had to sleep with my door locked and a chair jammed under the knob because he knows how to pick locks.” She suffers with PTSD after years of chronic abuse.

Why children abuse their parents

While there is no one clear “cause” leading to antisocial behaviors like I-CPV, there are a number of underlying factors to consider. Perhaps the most significant is “developmental trauma,” a term coined by leading expert, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, MD. When a child is chronically neglected or abused at a young age, their brain development may be impacted, causing long-term issues sometimes including physical aggression. This is called Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) and is commonly diagnosed as CD or RAD.

While developmental trauma can explain much of RAD, not all children who are violent towards their parents have a trauma background. Some children from nurturing families are diagnosed with CD. Psychologist Stanton E. Samenow, PhD specializes in working with juvenile offenders and says early identification of emerging antisocial behaviors is key. He points to a study that found “aggression at age 8 is the best predictor of aggression at age 19, irrespective of IQ, social class or parents’ aggressiveness.” [2] He believes, regardless of environment and parenting, children become antisocial by choosing the bad behaviors that eventually become an entrenched pattern.

As a parent, I don’t believe these are mutually exclusive views and find both to be informative. My son has a history of developmental trauma. As a result he struggles with impulsivity, attachment, and cause-and-effect thinking. At the same time, his behavior is not involuntary. He is making a choice when he acts aggressively and knows right from wrong.

Why families can’t get help

Even once parents understand the complexity and seriousness of the abuse taking place, there is nowhere to turn for help. Unfortunately, the systems designed to protect victims of other types of abuse don’t have a mandate to protect the victims of I-CPV.

Most domestic violence shelters are for intimate partners, and, for example, offer no help to a mother whose son or daughter beats her. Advice commonly given to victims of domestic violence simply doesn’t work. Take for example the following from the online article, “What to Do if You Are in an Abusive Relationship“:

1. Talk with someone you trust
Parents are rarely believed by friends, family, teachers, and mental health professionals. Instead, they’re blamed for their child’s misbehavior and labeled bad parents. One mom says, “My son can be incredibly sweet and charming when he wants to be. My friends, his teachers – my own mother – don’t believe my 9-year-old son is dangerous because he’s so good at hiding his behavior.”

2. Call the police if you are in immediate danger
Parents receive little assistance from police, especially if their child is under the age of 16. They also hesitate to press charges knowing incarceration is not the “treatment” their child needs. One mother called 911 after her son beat her. The officer said to her son, “It’s okay, Buddy, you’re not in trouble. Let’s talk.” The next time her son beat her, she ended up in urgent care.

3. Make a plan to go to a safe place such as a shelter
Despite their child’s abusive behaviors, parents are still legally and morally responsible for them. Even if parents want to seek safety, their hands are tied. “If I were treated this way by a man,” says one mother, “I would have left long ago. But because this is my daughter, my options are limited.”

Unfortunately there are no good solutions for these parents, and no quick and easy cures for their children. Few therapists and mental health professionals are equipped to offer the highly specialized treatment needed. While there are promising advances in neuroscience, emerging treatments are not accessible for most families. They’re expensive, rarely covered by health insurance, and unavailable in most areas.

Out of all the families she’s worked with, Quillian says only one family has ever received appropriate treatment. “One. One family experiencing what I believe to be the absolute bare minimum of care. One.”

What needs to change

I-CPV isn’t merely talk-show fodder. It’s happening behind closed doors in your neighborhood. It’s happening in Annie’s home. It’s happening in mine.

Intentional Child on Parent Violence (I-CPV) isn't merely talk-show fodder. It's happening behind closed doors in your neighborhood. These parents need support and viable treatment options for their kids. Click To Tweet

While the US lags behind, there appears to be growing awareness of I-CPV in the UK where a new domestic abuse bill includes I-CPV. US citizens can support these families by asking their legislators to draft similar legislation which would not only provide legal remedies, but more importantly, facilitate funding for research, prevention and treatment.

We need viable treatment options for our children, as well as resources to combat the violence and destruction we face in our daily lives,. We need help and the support of our communities. That begins with a national dialogue about I-CPV and viable treatment options for serious behavioral disorders.

Parents deserve the same support and understanding that all victims of abuse deserve. Until then, they will suffer physical and psychological harm while their child faces a lifetime of relational, educational, financial, and legal struggles.

Child-on-Parent Violence (CPV)

What happens when your child becomes violent … with you

Under my desk is an antique iron. It has been there since the day my mother hid it from my teenage son. That day, attempts to get him up had repeatedly failed. He was hungry but refused to eat, he became increasingly volatile until eventually he threatened to hurl the iron at my head.

I’d had enough objects thrown at me in the past to not take any chances. I ran out of the house and for the first time called the police. While I waited for them, my son punched through a window, the resulting cut narrowly missing his artery.

While some may find this shocking, for others it’s a familiar story….

Read the full story from The Guardian here.

Child-on-Parent Violence (CPV)

Amazing stories of violent children with RAD and the families that love them. (Video)

Here are the stories of one dozen children with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and how their families found the answers to stop the fighting and the violence. Amazing loving parents, that never gave up and fought for their sick children to heal, offer their stories for