Teaching schoolchildren not to engage in domestic violence

[Deadworm]

Apologies if there is already a thread on this govt announcement. I was quite shocked by the news that the government is instructing schools to hold lessons on the subject of domestic violence.

My first thought was despair that we actually needed to tell children that it was not right. But my rapidly following thought was that the lessons probably would make a difference, would erode children's sense that the violent context of their own family is normal and the way of the world, would contrbute to a culture where domestic violence is at last regarded as unacceptable.

Thinking of my own sons I feel reassured but sad to think they will be exposed to these lessons.

Further thoughts:

Will the lessons avoid the pitfall of concentrating on telling potential victims how to keep themselves safe, rather than telling potential perpetrators not to offend?

The government is instructing schools to hold these lessons. It is shocking how educational culture has changed in a generation. When I was at school any central dictat would only come from a French government to French schools.

Scarletlilybug, the fact is that of the recorded stats on male victims of domestic abuse, they constitute 19% of all DV, of them half are abused by female partners, the other half are presumably in gay relationship being abused by their partners.

That's not to say that there aren't more men who are being abuse but are unwilling to come forward, and that's not to say that we shouldn't teach boys how to protect themselves from abuse. We should teach children how to have healthy relationships, be they male or female. I am unhappy with the focus being on women as victims, but the stats show otherwise, and we have to deal with the evidence before us.

Unless you are yourself in an abusive relationship, I can't see why you'd have a problem with your kids getting a lesson on how to have a healthy relationship and what constitutes an abusive relationship. It's not about what's right and wrong subjectively, you can objectively state what is an abusive relationship and what is a healthy relationship. There are no grey areas. Abuse is about control, healthy realtionships are not. Why do you feel threatened by the possibility of your kids being taught that?

I think a lot of the hostility to this initiative stems from a perfectly understandable desire to protect kids from the horrors of the world. But it's sticking your head in the sand, children live through this every day. The majority of people now accept the need to teach kids how to protect themselves from molestation with "feeling yes, feeling no" type lessons, why is this so different? Children and their mothers (and yes even their fathers) are being hurt and killed every day. Domestic violence happens to 1 in 4 women. We need to do more, just leaving it up to parents is clearly not working.

Sure, your kids are alright, but are you willing to lets others suffer and die just so you can keep your kids coddled in a fantasy of a perfect world for a few more years? Is it safe to let your kids grow up not understanding that these things happen, could happen to them, their family and friends?

Scaryteacher-

I think that you are right, teachers need good training on how to deal with these lessons and their possible consequences. But that is not impossible. You presumably have had training on child protection and procedures surrounding a disclosure, why would these lessons throw up something more difficult to deal with than a disclosure of sexual abuse?

You don't need to talk about "normal" families, as we all know that such a thing is a myth. You'd need to talk about healthy families and relationships. It's not so hard. It is not healthy if someone is being physically hurt, sexually abused, verbally abused or emotionally abused. Relationships where people fear a family member or partner and are controlled by that fear are not healthy. That's not too specific on what's normal, is it?

I understand your concerns, this ought to be done properly with training for teachers, but why can't we do that? This has been done in the past for sexual abuse, why not do it for DV?

As a teacher you need to understand that you are probably the the one significant adult who does not abuse them in many children's lives. I know many of my teachers were. I did well, and tried hard in school because I craved any positive attention and teachers were the only adults I received it from without controlling strings attached.

Formal education will not make even the smallest dent in the ingrained misogynistic culture girls and women face.

Neighbours need to pick up that phone and call Social Services. Social Services need to make the safety of children a number one priority.

The government needs to massively increase finding for shelters and services for abused women and their children, including job training and benefits that allow these women to make a real choice for a better life and not worry about homelessness.

Prison needs to be used much more for offenders against women. Sentences need to be very harsh, with no discretion in sentencing allowed for idiot judges who think 'she must be a right cow for him to have hit her that hard'.

Education cannot prevent potential abusers from abusing, nor can it prevent more than a handful of girls and women from ending up with abusers, imo. The dynamic that leads to abuse and victimhood is so well established by the time children are very young that no attempt to improve things in schools could possibly make a difference, any more than schools can help win the battle against teen pregnancy or alcohol abuse or obesity.

Any initiative in schools will only help a handful of children. Massive efforts to provide psychotherapy and fund research into personality disorders are needed.

This is a step in the right direction. I don't think we should underplay the impact this kind of lesson can have. Certainly some of the posters on here who experienced this violence in their families think it would work. That's good enough for me. Anything that reinforces my messages to my children and gives their peers the same is also good enough for me.

Math, what a depressing view. Whilst it would of course be great to increase shelters and I crease punishment etc, wouldn't it be better to tackle the cause rather than the sypmtoms??

great column in the Times today by Camilla Batmanghelidjh

"The problem needs to be tackled from all sides though"

I would agree with that.

Kathyis, just read your link.

I hope the "go orders" work. I have known both a relative and a friend to have to leave under cover of darkness, one with children and start again effectively with nothing.

The following paragraph are desperately sad, and illustrate why we need to get in early, and keep those children seeing or receiving abuse, from "going numb":

"For the profoundly disturbed individual (the initiator), violence often begins in the family home. The child is relentlessly exposed to violations, either by witnessing them through domestic violence or by being exposed to them directly through sexual and physical abuse. Initially, the children plead for mercy, but when they are not saved they absorb the blows and bank the revenge for the time when they?re strong enough either to escape or take on the role of the perpetrator.

There is greater dignity in being the one who causes harm than being the harmed. This type of child needs to be protected from conditions of violence as early in its life as possible, to minimise the damage we now know to be done to the brain when even the youngest baby is exposed to harm and deprived of love..."

Whilst I understand Camila's point about child-protection not education, I still think education will create a much needed understanding of DV and the channels that can get a person out of it... possibly even prevent/end some (christ if it saves one child's life it's worth it).

I just don't see what harm these classes can do - unless of course, they promote the old myths about DV but one hopes that won't be the outcome...

Scaryteacher, I agree with your objections and would like to add that it's possible that there are some teachers who are themselves abusers at home.

I look at sentencing as a very valuable educational tool for the general public as well as being useful for the punishment of the criminal. A lot of what drives the crime of spousal abuse is a massive sense of entitlement on the part of the abuser. This sense of entitlement can be picked up if it's modelled in the home environment, or from how the abuser perceives the dynamics and culture of society at large.

Showing young boys that abusing your partner will land you in jail for a long time would make them take the issue seriously. Most abusers scorn well-meaning attempts to educate them or try to inculcate empathy in them for their victims -- in fact, they often learn nothing from mandatory anger management classes and the like except better ways to hurt their victims. They respect only the guy who wields a bigger stick than they do. They sneer at anyone else.

mathanxiety-

I agree with your point about sentencing, I think we'd all like to see more justice for victims of DV and rape. There's no reason why we can't do both though is there? Educate kids and change the justice system to ensure that abusers are given an effective disincentive.

Sure, it's possible that some abusers are also teachers. It's possible that anyone could be an abuser however, so I don't really see that as a logical argument.

It's true that most abusers scorn attempts to get them to change and take the issue seriously, but these are adult abusers. I think there's a world of difference between trying to educate children on what is and isn't acceptable in relationships and how to get help if you or your loved ones end up in such a situation, and trying to rehabilitate criminals though.

If you catch them young enough, you can get kids to be whistleblowers for their parents abusive relationships. With the right system in place to help such children and effective training and support for teachers, we could stop the cycle of abuse dead in its tracks. Girls and boys wouldn't have the opportunity to form these warped ideas about relationships and we wouldn't need to try and rehabilitate DV offenders because the next generation would clearly understand what is acceptable and what isn't. I think one of the things that allow DV to thrive is the secrecy, shame and people re-enacting their own DV parents relationships as adults because they don't know what a healthy relationship is like. If schools push the message then the culture will eventually change when those kids grow up. The community would be more empowered to tackle DV because there would be a consensus on what is a baseline of a healthy relationship which would prevent abusers hiding behind the myth of normalcy and their victims hiding in shame.

The dynamic is not that simple, though. Children love their parents in an irrational way, especially when they're young. Mum and dad are their whole world. They see all creatures and even inanimate objects as family groups -- the mummy saucepan, the daddy saucepan and the baby saucepan, to use an example of how one of my DCs classified the kitchen pots at a certain age. The family unit is very important to them even if it's very dysfunctional.

And if a campaign in the schools was aimed at having children become whistleblowers, I think there would be a serious fallout in terms of guilt (which children heap upon themselves whenever there's trouble in the family anyway) on the part of the child who may thing it's their fault if daddy gets taken off to jail. I think it would be unrealistic to expect children to blow the whistle on their adored parents if they're young, and also when they're older, because there's shame involved, as Scary points out, and issues like Stockholm Syndrome would also come into play.

Another potential problem in the idea of putting teachers up front and centre in this campaign is the fact that most teachers are women. Most abusers are men or teenage boys. Part of the mentality of the abuser is a very basic disrespect for women and for their values and a basic assumption that as males they are entitled to treat women horribly. They function in a relationship with a woman as wielders of power, because they fear if they're not 'on top', the woman will be -- they don't have a concept of equality. Women are to be scorned and controlled. To let one have her own way is to suffer a reduction in their manhood. A boy on his way to becoming an abuser will put up with a female teacher telling him that beating a woman or teenage girl is wrong and illegal, but will feel deep down that that's only what a mere woman thinks.

Any campaign would have to be really well thought out and teachers involved in the courses would have to be trained to the nth degree. I personally feel that there is already too much expected of teachers. They didn't sign up for the job of Superhero or set out to change the world when they went to college. They are on the front lines of the battle against so much that's going wrong in families, such a huge hodge podge of dysfunctions and social pathologies it's amazing any of them ever succeed in imparting the academic lessons at hand most of the time.

"The family unit is very important to them even if it's very dysfunctional."

Which is why we need to offer kids in these families an explanation of what a healthy family life is like.

"I think there would be a serious fallout in terms of guilt (which children heap upon themselves whenever there's trouble in the family anyway)"

I don't know if you read all my above posts, but I told a teacher at school about my DV family life and convinced her not to tell anyone because I didn't want my mum to think I was disloyal and lose what little esteem and love I got from her. She agreed, and I remember feeling relieved and disappointed. If that teacher had said, "No, I'm sorry but we have to take this further, but we'll make sure you're safe." That would've been ideal. I was all alone and wanted someone to help me, but told her not to tell because I knew that I would be even more alone if my DV family totally abandoned me in the wake of "telling". She was a good teacher, but she didn't know what to do, and there was no system in place to help her to deal with the fallout so she had to walk away for fear of making my situation worse.

If I were a teacher, that would break my heart. To teach a kid every day knowing the horrible abuse they suffer every day, but being unable to help. It would make me feel complicit in the abuse. So is it better to keep those teachers in the dark? Don't bring it up so no uncomfortable revelations arise and they can continue ignoring abused kids? Or is it better to tackle this head on, get a system in place to train and support teachers to support and get help for kids in abusive, families? Whilst at the same time making sure all the kids in the class are innoculated against future abusive relationships by naming the demon?

We have these systems in place already. Everyone who works with kids has to have child protection training, all we need to do is extend it to cover this issue too. Then set up a clear set of procedures within social work etc to follow in the wake of a disclosure.

I think you are wrong when you describe little boys as thinking like proto-abusers. They're kids, and as such still mouldable. Their asshole father may have planted the seeds of future misogyny and violence in their minds, but remember here- most kids of DV families will probably love the abuser but they don't like the abuser. A benevolent adult, male or female, actually has the opportunity to make a great deal of difference in their lives because they'll offer attention in an appropriate, uncomplicated way which I can assure you, is a great relief compared to the suffocating fearful confusion of a DV household.

My brothers both grew up with me in a horrificly abusive situation and drew upon other role models to understand how to have a healthy relationship, they are grown now and not abusers but protectors. This is because they learned outside of their home what is normal and healthy in a relationship, and if they can then other kids can too.

I suppose that if teachers are really so callous that they'd rather wash their hands of offering help to abused kids, then schools could offer these lessons with a group of outside professionals. People who trained as social workers perhaps, trained extensively for exactly this purpose who travel from school to school giving this lesson and making themselves available to teachers who are dealing with fall out from a DV disclosure.

There are many ways we can do this, I don't accept that hiding from the problem OR simply demonising all men and boys and screaming "lock them up" will help.

I hope I have not demonised all men and boys. Not my intention if I somehow did. And I agree that a benevolent adult can make a huge difference in the life of a child living in a horrible home I have no doubt that there are many teachers who do this on a daily basis. I think what bothers me about the proposal to leave this to schools is that solving social problems by having the schools deal with it is almost too attractive and sounds too easy. We've known about domestic violence for centuries and recognised it for what it is for a good many years now someone has had the brilliant brainwave of solving the problem by telling children in schools that it's not acceptable, and it will be wiped out? I like the idea of training teachers to respond the way you suggest if a child makes a disclosure of an abusive home. Sensitive protocols can go a long way in the direction of helping individual children. And even publicising the fact that teachers can be entrusted with this sort of disclosure may help children to understand that what they are experiencing is not normal and not right.

Violence and sexual abuse are not the only ways an abuser can destroy children and curse future generations, though. Abuse can take emotional, verbal, psychological, and other forms, including financial and spiritual (using money or religious beliefs to control a spouse). How would a child be able to identify a dynamic which might be quite subtle and not very amenable to labelling, but which might be just as harmful as being physically abused or seeing others being physically abused. Abusers can be extremely manipulative and subtle and brainwash those around them into thinking everything is their fault. There are very complex dynamics at work here.

Schools are having a hard enough time, by all accounts, dealing with the dreadful issue of bullying (which is not unrelated to the issue of domestic violence) in their own playgrounds and corridors and lunchrooms. I would like to wait and see schools successfully tackle that old chestnut before entrusting to them the task of eliminating domestic violence in the next generation. Dealing with it well on a case by case basis would be more helpful than just a public education campaign in schools.

Have read this thread with interest as I work in a primary school offering pastoral support to children and families, and am at present teaching year 2 on 'protective behaviours' covering keeping themselves safe from any kind of abuse and violence.(with training and materials provided by local authority advisors). There are several children in the class who we know have lived / are living with violence or abuse of some sort, more I'm sure we don't know about - same throughout the whole school.

We have systems set up and children do tell us, all the time. We refer all disclosures on, follow them up and pull in whoever we can to help, and for some at least we do make a difference.

The trouble with just dealing with it case by case is that the majority may never tell - if it is also talked about at whole-class and whole-school level then children who have never told anyone may find a way - not necessarily to teachers in school - we can suggest other sources of help.

To make an obvious point, social workers are restricted in what they can do because in terms of taking children away, they have to have evidence that will stand up in a court and that is not necessarily straightforward - I have watched three families go through care proceedings in the last couple of years, where there had been horrendous abuse, and they were by no means clear cut cases, and not all the children were taken away in the end.

Just to clarify, exposure to domestic abuse has been classed as emotional abuse for a while now and any / all schools' child protection procedures have to cover these disclosures and refer them on for social workers to investigate. There is no option for a teacher to 'say nothing'.

Sorry, long post!

Purplejennyrose, thank you for your post. It is a huge pity, and a situation that cries out for change, that social workers are restricted in what they can do in these cases. This is the weak link in the chain, and it must be terribly frustrating for social workers and for teachers when a case comes up against the brick wall of the 'justice' system.

This is where change is needed, imo. What is the use of educating and encouraging children to speak up, or increased reporting, if the chances are high that nothing will be done in the end that would really make a positive difference in the victims' lives, because of the courts seemingly operating in a vacuum on this issue?

It seems completely illogical to spend money on an educational campaign but not retool the entire system to deal with the problem.