AIBU to ask what more I can do for traumatised children?

[CherryBerryBlossom]

What am I missing? What else can I do?
I’ve left an abusive marriage after 12 years. I suffered physical abuse, emotional abuse and my ex is being charged with coercive and controlling behavior, harassment and GBH (as well as some other things but let’s not be too outing!)
As a result I’ve been left with some very damaged children (aged 7 and 6) - I will never ever forgive myself for the damage that’s been done.
They replicate the behaviour they’ve seen and been victim to themselves. They speak to me in the most vile way with insults, swearing and disrespect, they tell me to shut up, they rampage my house, they kick, bite and punch me and one another. They call me liar and useless. They say ‘I don’t have to listen to you’
I have an allocated Social Worker, I have completed an 8 week DVAP course and the children are on the waiting list for DVAP, I’ve had a DVAP worker allocated this week. I’m in the process of paying for private play therapy for the children. I’ve paid for the Freedom Programme.
What else can I do? what else should I do? I can’t fail the children any longer.

Why have you aimed this post at me??

I'm not sure who it's meant for but obviously you have the wrong poster.

It sounds like you have all the right support in place or lined up. It's just going to take some time and patience. Recovering from trauma isn't a quick fix. I wish you and your DC all the best 💓

I've met several children who were adopted and had horrible starts in life. They became very difficult teens whose behaviour was horrendous, at times, because there were no firm boundaries and the adoptive parents gave in to their demands to try and make up for their abusive starts. Please don't do this. You cannot change the past but you can put the necessary support in place, plus plenty of outlets for them to experience positive role models and have good times.

OP I don't know that you have said anything which is making people give the advice about not parenting out of guilt. It's more that it's a common pattern in situations like this and it can cause problems so people are just wanting to reiterate it is useful advice. Letting the stress behaviour go unchecked because the child is struggling or giving in to demands by the children etc. It is well meaning, but it doesn't ultimately help.

If you have your set of rules and you're working on specific behaviours that is OK. You don't need to "address" every problem behaviour immediately, sometimes that is too much. But you should have a very rough road map in your head e.g. if you are currently giving a (minor, temporary, token) consequence for violence like headbutting, kicking and hitting, but you are currently ignoring behaviours like spitting, shouting, swearing, throwing, and the vague idea is that once violence is eliminated or reduced you will move onto other physical things like throwing and spitting - that makes sense. And it would not be helpful to e.g. give 12 consequences because the child did 12 different things in an outburst because they were having a stress/threat response. You can just do one because it was one incident. The purpose of the consequence is not to stop the incident in its tracks and generally you have to let these things run their course in the moment and just do your best to keep yourself and everyone else safe.

No I targeted you as you were the first to start the victim blaming. How has op failed her children? As a victim of domestic abuse trying to mitigate and protect your children from of, there is no right option because at that stage all you can do is damage limitation. I assure you every decision that woman made would be the best she could at the time for those kids and NONE of this is her fault and she has certainly not failed her children!

Quite a lot of ignorance about domestic abuse

OP, please don't blame yourself. Any harm caused is down to the perpetrator alone

@Longtimelurker1980 if you're a teacher, I find it worrying that you blame OP for failure to protect. That's a very outdated attitude. I haven't heard social workers use that language for around 20 years

You really are a fucking prick to double down on kicking someone who has already been through so much.

Great argument, well made.

@Longtimelurker1980it was well made she summed you up perfectly. You’re naive and supercilious if you think you’re an expert on supporting children as you’ve clearly demonstrated zero discernment or comprehension of domestic abuse. Back to the drawing board.