Signs Your Teen Is In An Abusive Relationship And How To Address It
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There are some behaviors you hope your teen learns early, like respecting their elders and having a good work ethic. There are also some things you hope they never experience, like violence from a romantic partner. Unfortunately, reports show that one in every five female high school students and one in every 11 male high school students experience violence in their dating lives. Those are figures that could make your stomach drop. There is no age when intimate partner violence is acceptable, but something really makes you nauseous thinking of innocent adolescents experiencing it. They may not have the coping mechanisms or communication skills to speak out about it, or even the knowledge to know that it’s wrong.
Sheryl Hatwood, author of The Restored Soul, knows firsthand about being a teenage domestic abuse survivor. She also knows about parenting a teenager who unfortunately found herself in a similar situation, so she can speak to not only surviving and even thriving after that trauma, but also helping a child out of it. Speaking to adults who you believe are in abusive relationships is incredibly sensitive; it’s even more complex when speaking to teenagers, who are in a rebellious state of mind and specifically don’t always want to hear out authority figures. Parents may never think they’d have to worry that their teen would be in an abusive relationship. Hopefully, yours never will. But no good comes from ignoring the signs, and avoiding the conversation. Because February is National Teen Abuse Prevention Month, we spoke with Hatwood about identifying the signs your teen is in an abusive relationship and how to address it.
Some surface signs
Hatwood says that some signs that the person your teenager is dating is abusive include, for example, a desire to speak on her behalf, and an unwillingness to allow her to make her own decisions. She says there will be controlling and possessive tendencies there that, unfortunately, teenagers can misinterpret as real love. They may first feel that possessiveness is just attention that they like. If you become aware of your teen’s partner infringing on their privacy in some way, such as going through their phone, or demanding to have passwords, that’s an early sign of possessiveness that can become abusive. All of these behaviors, says Hatwood, stem from the abusive partner’s deep insecurities.
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Keeping your teen away
Isolation and manipulation are other things that will come up when your teen is in an abusive relationship. Hatwood says your teen might leave conversations or family events abruptly, stating their partner needs them “Right away.” It’s clear that the partner is needy, and demands attention on his timeline. In general, the possessive partner will try to isolate your teen from friends and family. Hatwood says it’s their way of taking any insecurities they’re feeling, and, rather than addressing those in a healthy way, putting them onto their partner. Possessive individuals often are deeply insecure, live with a lot of fear, and wind up finding ways to make their partners feel the same way as a means of controlling them.
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Mild physical abuse
The words “mild” and “physical abuse” don’t even sound like they should ever be in the same sentence. And that’s because even “mild” forms like shoving or grabbing someone will often escalate into worse abuse. “They say sorry, but you’ll start accepting it as the norm, and it usually progresses to get more violent. The more you accept it, the more it progresses,” Hatwood says. If you become aware of your teen’s partner laying hands on them in any way that isn’t gentle or affectionate, it’s not too early to intervene. Don’t wait to see if the abuse gets serious: assume that it will.
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Know what’s “normal” for your child
Being able to identify a teen’s unhealthy relationship will require knowing your teen well, long before she starts dating. You need to know what’s normal to recognize when abnormal behavior begins. “Every parent should know the characteristics of their child. So if they see a child that’s bubbly and they kind of lose their personality, or their attitude changes and, when you’re asking questions, they think you’re infringing on their privacy…that’s a sign,” Hatwood says. It can be tricky because teens are at an age when they often feel even subtle questions are a huge invasion of privacy. But just be aware if there is a major change in your child’s personality aside from the usual teenage angst.
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Look for these changes
Hatwood says that major changes in social habits – like wanting to isolate – as well as changes in the way one dresses, or body language, are all important to look out for. “I spoke to my daughter about her boyfriend at the time. She changed,” Hatwood says of her own daughter who was in an abusive relationship. “She started to be somebody she wasn’t. The way she dressed changed. She wanted to gain weight. She always liked being slim before, but he said he didn’t like slim people. So she put on nearly 60 pounds. He did that so she wouldn’t be attractive to anyone else.”
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Leave your door open
So what do you say? Your instinct will be to usher your baby away to a far-away land to get away from the abuser. But she’ll ultimately need to want to leave on her own if the decision is going to stick. “I tried to avoid saying ‘I know better because I’m the mom.’ Because that can drive them right into the hands of the abuser. I left the conversation such that she felt, when she left him, she could come to me.” Hatwood knew how important that was because, unfortunately, it wasn’t something she got from people in her circle when she left her abusive relationship. Many of them had withdrawn their support after losing patience because she stayed with her abuser for so long.
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Don’t judge
Hatwood brought up the important concept of victim-blaming, which is something she experienced and didn’t want to put her daughter through. “I said to my daughter, ‘When you’re ready to leave, I’m here.’ It was the opposite for me because my friends shut their doors. They thought I was the problem. They said ‘How could you stay?’ rather than ‘Why does he do what he does?’ You have to say ‘You always have a safe place here. I don’t agree with what you’re going through. I love you. You don’t have to go through this. Just pick up the phone and no questions asked.’…We tend to beat the abused down even more, and the beat down is what makes them stay where they are.”
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Abuse doesn’t come from out of the blue
“Abuse is not something you start out of nowhere,” Hatwood says. “It’s a learned behavior. Any behavior that we accept, or do, it’s because of some sort of observation we made growing up. For me, I was disciplined with a strap. My parents hit me with a belt, but said they still loved me. I didn’t realize it wasn’t okay for someone else to do that. I started to believe that I deserved that kind of treatment and that if a man did not hit me, that he didn’t love me. I would try to make men hit me. That was the only love that I understood at the time. And my daughter went into an unhealthy relationship because she saw her mother in unhealthy relationships.”
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How COVID-19 is making things worse
Hatwood touched on the ways the current pandemic is making already problematic situations bubble to the surface. Stress can make sick people sicker – including emotionally sick individuals. “COVID has made it worse. With the shelter in place order, already abusive situations in the home accelerate. The child will leave the home, and be with an abusive partner. So we’ve passed the torch and put that child in an environment where they’re with this partner all the time. Domestic violence abuse calls have gone up 20 or 30 percent so they say. But that’s not even all of them. Those are just the ones who can get to the phone,” Hatwood says.
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Frontline workers can look out
Frontline workers, including those working at grocery stores, drug stores, and other essential businesses, may have a very important responsibility beyond bagging up our prescriptions and foods: they may be the only people who some individuals in abusive relationships interact with, besides their abuser right now. “With isolation has come financial destruction. Scarcity of basic provisions in the home,” Hatwood says. “Train people on the frontlines. Every boss, every employer has a responsibility to equip their team with knowledge of signs of abused people. They can have a card to hand out that says ‘Here is where you can get help’ or ‘Are you in trouble?’”
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Educate teens on healthy love early
“Talk to kids about what healthy relationships look like early. That includes things like independence. Communication. Relationships should benefit both people. It’s hard with teens because of the immaturity. They can engage in relationships without the tools adults have. We have to let them make some mistakes. If the parent can go and talk to the other parent about the relationship, that’s good, but sometimes the other parent doesn’t want to hear it. In their eyes, their child is perfect. Have a plan of action to talk to kids about what a healthy relationship looks like. And don’t be a hypocrite. Be in a relationship that models your advice.”
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There is no one right way to recovery
If you do help a son or daughter out of an abusive relationship, know that their journey may look different from yours. For Hatwood, she went to church. She says, “I’m a firm believer that my faith helped me. With church, you start to identify with the god spirit within yourself. But the recovery journey is different for every person. For me, it was finding the wrong relationships until I found the right one. My daughter just didn’t have relationships for a long time for fear someone else would do the same thing. My daughter still has moments when she’s insecure. It’s a continual process of self-development. I try to encourage women to speak their truth about what happened. Live without the mask of pretending everything is okay.”
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