reporting violence

I want to clarify a moment I wrote about in my last post. If your child hits you, that is assault. There are definitely different levels to the danger of an assault by a child. I generally abide by the rule if it hurts then report it to the police. If your child is hurting you, please report it to the police. If your child threatens to harm you, themselves, or other people, please report it to the proper authority. This changes based on whether you think it is a credible threat. A credible threat is when you know they will carry out the actions that they are talking about. If it is credible, alert the authorities, in most cases the police. If it is not credible, please report it to their support team, like their therapist or school officials.

The first reason to report is to keep everyone safe. If someone is going to be or has already been hurt, then reporting the violence keeps everyone safe. We want everyone to be safe so that everyone can be taken care of.

The second reason is to let your kids know that the behavior is inappropriate. You need to draw a line in the sand about what is and what is not appropriate. Especially if you have ever threatened to call the police, you need to follow through when the situation calls for it. It cannot be a baseless threat. Violence is never acceptable.

The third and probably the most long lasting reason is that you will get services to help you. Once your child has had police involvement and reports about violence, then you will be fast tracked to find solutions to keep everyone safe. There are several programs that the government has to put your child through that should be long term and help with getting the care your child needs. The solutions should not be jail. Your child might end up in juvenile detention at first depending on your exact situation, but you should be able to get them into a residential therapeutic environment where they will work on the hostility issues, maybe do some medication management and begin therapy.

There are also other solutions like day treatment or outpatient therapies. This would mean your child would be living with you while receiving treatment. These treatments include therapy and maybe medication management. The staff at day treatment facilities have been trained for restraint protocols if the situation arises. Day treatment was amazing for our family and I would do it all over again. School districts are required to provide bus services to the day treatment facility. Ours was about a 40 minute drive away and her home school district provided a bus for her and a couple other children to their various treatment facilities.

Even if you cannot afford to put your child in these therapeutic services, your child can still qualify for state insurance and the state insurance will cover these needs. My children are adopted, which means they automatically are enrolled for state insurance. In my state, if you have mental health services through the state you are supposed to have a case manager available to you. You just need to call and ask! I had no idea that this was a thing until the state insurance denied us and we questioned their denial. They looked up our child’s case file and were shocked to see that we did not have a case manager. They immediately assigned us to one and they reversed the denial of insurance coverage. We have been working with the case manager ever since. He has been a great help to find services or even suggest services we may have never considered.

It may feel ridiculous to report your child, but you should never live in fear of your child. If you are afraid of your child, you cannot give your child the support they need. The responding officer may not be very sympathetic about your situation. Most of ours were not. In fact, one of them told us to spank the child until they behaved better. Physical violence is never the answer. If you assault your child, they will see no reason not to assault others just like you. You need to show them that violence is never the answer by using your words and using the systems in place to help your family move past this awful situation. Your child is only going to get larger, so they will be able to be more physically violent as they age. Please get help if you need it.