The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish paths are romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com

Lisa, you're having problems with your grandkids. Are you worried about them?

Yes.

Tell me, yeah.

I believe that they are in an abusive situation where their father and stepmother are constantly arguing and fighting and where I know the law enforcement has been involved before.

Okay, so when you say abusive, what are your facts? What do you know?

Just, I mean, just constantly screaming, yelling, where, and then maybe the stepmother going out and, you know, beating on the cars and the windows and hitting her head up against the cars. And, you know, I'm not sure if they are beating on the children or not.

So it's not like—how old are the kids?

Eight and five, eight and five.

And is it your son? Is that the dad?

No.

Oh, how are they related to you?

My daughter.

Oh, your daughter, okay. And does your daughter still have contact with them?

Yes, she does. They still, you know, they split custody. Yeah, they alternate weeks of having them.

Okay? And, you know, he's also concerned about, you know, can she just, you know, take the kids and let him know that, you know, until he improves their home situation...

She needs to be able to build a case, though. And partly, if the kids are eight and five, the eight-year-old can certainly talk if he feels comfortable. And that’s really difficult. Are the two kids close to you?

Yeah, they’re very close with us. They’ve also been warned by their father not to say anything to anybody about what's going on.

How do you know that?

They have said so.

Okay, so they are starting to talk. I see. Dad's afraid of losing custody, then.

Well, I think he may know that could be a possibility, yeah, but I just don't think the situation there is...

It is affecting them. It's affecting them in school.

What's happening in school?

Well, they're being very disruptive in school, which they weren't before. And they also are having nightmares at night and not being able to sleep. Yeah, one has even woken up in the middle of the night. They said he woke up in the middle of the night, put his sweatshirt on, put it over his head, and then went and laid on the couch and slept for a while.

Because he heard them fighting? Or because he was afraid for himself?

See, I'm trying to figure out here. Let me tell you what happens in abuses. Do you think it's physical abuse, not sexual? It's just physical or...?

Yeah, I do not believe it's sexual. No.

Okay. With either type of abuse, usually...

Hey, I gotta interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

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With either type of abuse, usually the parent starts escalating, you know—they might start calling names, and then they start hitting, and then they start, or threatening first, and then it moves into hitting. And then they usually hit on parts of the body that are covered, so the kid, it doesn't show in school—the clothes cover those parts. And so if they're at your house, if you see any bruises that are unexplained, or if they keep saying, "Well, I keep falling down the stairs, I'm clumsy," they may be covering up some abuse. So you want to be able to, number one, just open your eyes and see what's going on. Once the abuse happens—the hitting or the screaming, the yelling—of course, if we're talking about physical abuse, then the parents or the abuser, the perpetrator, has to get their children not to speak, not to talk about it.

And so what type of methods would you use to get a kid to keep quiet? They either use bribes—"Oh, you're my...we have a secret, we don't have to tell this to anyone else; I'll buy you that toy you've wanted," right? Or they use threats: "You say a word to anyone," and then they pick one of the kid's values—"I'll take away your bike," or "You're not going to have the dog anymore in the house," you know, they threaten. Or, "You'll never get to see your mother again." And so the threats and the bribes are two very common ways that perpetrators try to silence the kids. Then the kids may disclose—meaning that's the next stage after the abuse, then the secrecy, then the next stage is disclosure. They might tell a friend, who tells the parent, who tells the school—the teachers, the counselors—or they may tell a grandparent, such as yourself. Or they may not spill the beans, but someone may walk in and see the hitting going on and report it.

So sometimes it's within the kids' control when they report something. Sometimes it's not within their control. Sometimes they're ready to talk; sometimes they're not ready to talk. And you want to make them increasingly more comfortable to talk. But they do...if they're with the parents, there is a real threat. If you see bruises, you can bring them to a doctor, an emergency room, and just have a doctor look at the bruises, and you need to get some documentation. But if you suspect it, I would encourage them to talk. There is a little book Some Secrets Are for Sharing. I don't know the author's name, but you could Google it, which is just a little kid's picture book. It's about a little boy who is afraid to speak up and say that his mom's been hitting him, but he accidentally tells his coach, and then he feels very guilty. And then he goes into counseling, and his mother calls him a liar—of course, she never hit him. But then everything comes out, and they make it very comfortable for the boy to talk, as comfortable as it can be. And the mother does have to go to therapy and get some help.

So that book encourages kids to speak up, because it's a little picture book that gives them permission. Some secrets are good secrets—you help them know the difference between good secrets (like a surprise party or a gift that you got someone for the holidays—don't tell them, it's just what they wanted) and some secrets are not good secrets, and they have every right to speak up to a trusting adult. And you might be that trusting adult. You want to find out what the threats are, though, because if they feel like something really bad is going to happen or they feel really guilty, you need to try to let them know that you'll be there to protect them, assuming you can. And then, the minute you have evidence of any abuse, you can call Child Protective Services, or you can call a lawyer and get some help.

So really, before you can build a case, there's really nothing you can do.

You can work like the dickens to help the kids feel comfortable with you and let them tell their story. You don’t want to go in there like a lawyer—"Okay, have they hit you on this? Have they done this? Have they done this?" It’s more like you say, "So tell me something good that happened to you today. And if you could erase one thing, what’s something that happened today that you didn’t like, or that makes you feel real anxious?" Or they might see a story of someone being hit—it might even be a cartoon—and then they start to ask, "Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been in that situation? And how would you handle it?"

You want to help them open up and talk. Sometimes in play therapy, with play, kids will act out the scenes that they see at home—the parents fighting and the hitting.

Listen, thank you so much for your call. I wish you the best of luck.

For more Dr. Kenner podcast episodes, go to DrKenner.com. And here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

We've all been the target of insults at some point in our lives. We’re familiar with the sinking feelings and hurt that accompany such moments—not the warm closeness of soul mates, but the emotional turbulence of facing an adversary. We feel anger, hurt, guilt, frustration, helplessness, or hopelessness. We feel misunderstood, cast as a villain, accused of doing things we did not do and of not doing things that we did do. In some relationships, this love-destroying cycle goes on for decades until death or divorce puts an end to it. When your partner, your best friend, has turned into an enemy, you both lose. Poor methods of communication are dysfunctional. They don’t work even when the accusations are true.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and buy it at Amazon.com.