Smarter Starts
For most children, the beginning of a new school year brings excitement around the prospect of new teachers, new friends, and stylish new kicks.
However “new” can also be uncomfortable and overwhelming, especially for those who are living in the aftermath of domestic abuse. For parents who have endured violence in the home, as they watch their kids shuffle onto the school bus, the safety of their children, and themselves, is often at the forefront of their mind.
To better understand the impact of the new school year on survivors of domestic abuse and their families, it is important to understand what domestic abuse entails. At Kendall County Women’s Shelter (KCWS), we define domestic abuse as an act of assault, intimidation, or threat that is part of a systemic pattern of power and control by the abusive perpetrator against the survivor. Domestic abuse encompasses all physical, sexual, psychological, financial, and spiritual abuse experiences that occur between two people (or by a person onto a pet) within the home.
While most kids are sharpening their pencils and deciding what sorts of snacks to have packed in their lunches in early August, children who have witnessed or experienced violence in their home are often facing a unique set of challenges, including:
At KCWS, a critical part of our programming has been, and will continue to be, serving the children of our clients. In fact, in 2023, approximately 35% of our clients staying with us in the shelter were the children of domestic abuse survivors. And often, our child clients have their own painful history of experiencing abuse.
Our goal is to support the children of domestic abuse survivors and provide positive influences and experiences for these children, in hopes that they do not grow to become either our future clients, or perpetrators of the same violent behaviors their parents exhibited. We know that this can be possible by increasing access to the child’s education, offering quality social support, and creating space for kids to just be kids.
Because KCWS heavily focuses on meeting the needs of children whose parents have made the brave choice to leave their abuser(s), including creating over 200 educational plans for our clients’ children just last year, we are sharing the knowledge we believe is critical to possess to adequately support these kids and their needs.
“These kids don’t have the context to ask for help. They don’t have a model for an adult recognizing their needs and giving them what they need.”
The Toll of Toxic: Impacts of Domestic Abuse on Children
In the U.S. alone, more than 24% of individuals recall having been exposed to domestic violence (Dong et al., 2008), and 15 million children (approximately twice the population size of New York City), live in homes where domestic abuse was reported to their state at least one time (DFPS, 2024).
How are intimate partner violence and child maltreatment connected? Perpetrators of abusive behavior in intimate relationships are likely to abuse others living within the home. In fact, The National Link Coalition, an international educational and advocacy organization working to prevent animal cruelty, domestic violence, child maltreatment, and elder abuse by showing how they are all connected, suggests that abusive behaviors are often intergenerational and cyclical. Abusers may become desensitized to the impacts of their actions over time. While physical acts of violence may initially be between parents, without early intervention, children are likely to be directly impacted.
Even without directly experiencing abuse themselves, children who witness violence between others in the home are also likely to be impacted. According to the Office on Women's Health (2024), for school-aged children, seeing family members engage in abusive behaviors increased the likelihood for developing subsequent self-esteem issues, getting in trouble at school, and reporting stomach and headaches while at school. Witnessing violence within the home also has been linked to children exhibiting lower levels of classroom engagement and having fewer friends at school.
More than Back-to-School Jitters
You may be wondering what this really means for kids who have experienced abuse as they prepare to return to the classroom after the summer break. We are glad you asked…
For some children, returning to school means leaving their surviving parent behind at home, which can be overwhelming if the child takes on an identity of being their parent’s protector (real or imagined).
For others, there is deep sadness and anxiety around moving to a new school to ensure their safety. Kids like to feel like they belong with others, and this is hard to achieve when you are constantly ‘starting over.’
For many, the expectation of regulating the big emotions in their small bodies after traumatic experiences is nearly impossible, and the probability of developing learning issues, obtaining lower grades, and expulsion significantly increases.
And for children who have experienced extreme levels of violence in their homes, school simply may not be an option because of the level of danger that the abuser poses to their safety.
In fact, in 108 of the 164 Texan child fatalities due to abuse or neglect in 2023, the child was not enrolled either in a day care or in school (DFPS, 2024).
Supporting Children by Supporting Schools
At KCWS, we believe that the best defense against the impacts of abuse affecting a child’s learning environment is to maintain a trauma-informed staff within the school.
You may think that the only staff in need of this training are those who only work with children who have experienced abuse (domestic violence shelters, child welfare agencies, etc.).
But the reality is, no matter where you work with children, there are likely to be those carrying a history of traumatic experiences. When your staff is well equipped to identify and address the effects of violence on children, these children are more likely to thrive.
“Having trauma informed practices implemented in schools improves posttraumatic stress symptoms, whether that trauma is coming from home or from a traumatic event at school.”
At KCWS, we use, and highly recommend, Trust-Based Relationship Intervention (TBRI) to train our own staff to be trauma informed. TBRI, developed by Dr. Karyn Purvis at Texas Christian University, is unique because it uses an attachment theory framework (a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people) to better equip individuals to address the complex needs of children who have experienced trauma, adversity, and/or toxic stress.
Aside from implementing trauma informed training for staff, creating an environment where students feel safe disclosing their experiences and expressing their trauma-induced behaviors is critical. If children do not feel safe telling us about their experiences, we will not always know when intervention and support is needed.
“It is wrong to stereotype all children as inevitably and permanently damaged by living with domestic violence.”
Research has shown that when children talk about their experiences of domestic abuse, it can create an additional sense of trauma for that child. Often, cases are reported of family members becoming upset if they find out the child has discussed the event with another adult (Children’s Commissioner, 2018), creating more anxiety around disclosing. However, one safe relationship with a caring adult is all it takes to protect that child’s development and build resilience.
Once a child has disclosed their experiences, it is important to understand that their behaviors are often motivated by their emotional and physical needs not being met. At KCWS, we often hear our adult clients say something like, “I cannot handle one more call from the school saying my kid is talking too much in class” or “Did they really get in trouble for that? We are just trying to make it through the day!”
In fact, childhood adversity can ‘rewire’ the child’s brain, affecting overall functioning and behavior. Understanding how domestic abuse experiences can affect how the child acts and knowing how to work with the child instead of punishing them, could be the defining factor for that child’s level of wellbeing and success in the classroom.
“Instead of suspending children schools need to work with them on changing their behavior. When a student is acting up in class, teachers need to recognize the powerful feelings they are expressing, if inappropriately.”
Generation Hope, a national program that works to ensure all student parents can succeed and experience economic mobility, recently released a set of recommendations for policymakers, higher education professionals, and community leaders to consider as they work to mitigate the prevalence and impacts of intimate partner violence for all students. These included:
Creating campus environments that explicitly embrace and support students.
Prioritizing the cultivation of safe and inclusive campus environments where all students can learn and work free from sex and gender-based discrimination, harassment, and violence.
Standing with survivors and champion policies and programs that are survivor-centered and focused on equity and justice.
Increasing access to safe and affordable housing for survivors and their families and investing in programs that support their access to basic needs.
Creating policies and programs that preserve economic security for survivors of intimate partner violence and their families.
Psychoeducation around healthy and unhealthy relationship behaviors also plays a key role in violence prevention efforts, although these opportunities are rarely offered in school systems. While these topics can be emotionally heavy, it is possible, and important, to teach them in an age-appropriate way.
“Although staff in schools may not be able to stop the violence at home, they are in a position to make a considerable difference to children’s lives”
At KCWS, we have developed a teen dating violence prevention program for high school students, called Young Hearts. And even more exciting? Our students are giving educational talks around healthy relationship concepts to other high school students, middle schoolers, and have been invited to present in local elementary schools during the upcoming school year.
Wondering if students would have any interest in learning about these topics? The domestic abuse charity foundation, Refuge (2008), collected surveys from over 500 young women ages 18-21, and found that while 70% of these young adults agreed they would have welcomed a domestic abuse curriculum while they were in grade school, only 13% reported they had received such education.
While children are often hesitant to listen to the advice of adults, we have proven it is both possible and important to implement this type of peer-led curriculum into school systems.
Beyond Parent-Teacher Conferences: How we can Better Support Non-Offending Parents during Start of School
“It is important to remember that the non-abusive parent needs support as well. There is no typical victim. Domestic violence can happen to anyone. Shame or embarrassment often gets in the way of victims getting help.”
The well-being of a child truly starts with the well-being of the parent, from pregnancy to adulthood. We know that quality social support, understanding, and access to resources are things we can offer survivors while they navigate an exceedingly difficult and emotional situation.
While women who have experienced intimate partner violence may show more negative parenting behaviors (Sypher et al., 2022), the ability to parent well may be overridden by fear, depression, or their perpetrators' control of their parenting style, finances, and/or other resources.
Even when the non-offending parent has left their abuser, legal child contact arrangements (supervised or unsupervised visitations, etc.) often provide abusers an opportunity to further sever the relationship between the child and non offending parent.
Strong, supportive parenting is one of the most important protective factors when predicting both child and parent success (Katz, 2015), so at KCWS, we urge others to adopt the mentality that supporting parents is supporting children.
Domestic abuse victims are likely to show behaviors like their children, such as anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, substance use issues, increased aggression, and paranoia. These symptoms can sometimes make navigating important conversations around the child’s well being with parents more difficult than with parents who do not have a history of abuse. But that does not mean we stop having these important conversations with them about their child’s well-being.
In the same way we work to understand the motivators behind a child's behaviors, we can work to better understand the motivators of the parents'. By equipping you and your team with the knowledge of the impact and origins of domestic abuse, you are more likely to support both parent and child success. Jamie M. Howard, Ph.D., a senior clinical psychologist in the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute and the director of the Center’s Trauma and Resilience Service, outlined ways schools can help parents and children in crisis:
Inform parents that without a court order or restraining order, both parents will be able to access school records. Identify agencies in your community that help domestic violence survivors get restraining or civil protection orders and refer survivors to those agencies. A restraining order is an important first step to prevent abusers who are biological parents from obtaining their children’s school records or picking their children up from school. Schools may want to have on-hand written information about restraining orders.
Inform parents who have lost their housing or their rights to enroll children immediately in the local school or keep them in their original school.
Inform parents of their children’s rights to transportation and other services, and provide referrals to counseling, medical, mental health, and legal services, as necessary. Assist parents in deciding what school is best for their children, considering issues of safety and stability.
Speak privately and gently to the parent experiencing domestic violence about services available to him or her and the children, both at school and in the community. Attempt to create a safe space.
Create a welcoming environment for children and families. Upon enrollment, provide new parents and children with a tour of the school and facilities. Assign the children an adult and/or peer “buddy” to assist in the transition.
Be aware of the importance of school to children. School offers adult support, security, friendships, social and academic support services, and a sense of normalcy. Schools also often offer services to parents including access to adult education and social services.
Help parents obtain necessary school records, health records, and other documentation. Although the McKinney-Vento Act requires schools to enroll children without documents, obtaining documents as quickly as possible will help facilitate a smooth transition and adjustment to school. When necessary, help arrange appointments for physicals and immunizations.
“It’s really helpful to brainstorm ways [children] could answer questions they may get from other kids,” she says. “For instance, say a friend asks your child, ‘Why did you move?’ you can tell your child to say, ‘My mom and I just decided to live in a different place for right now.”
Breaking Down School Rules: Policy Concerns and a Call for Effective Solutions
At KCWS, our staff sees firsthand the impact that the beginning of a school year has on families who have been affected by domestic abuse. Agencies serving children should be aware of the signs of abuse for early, trauma-informed intervention, and this begins with policy that is centered around supporting and protecting our children.
The Mckinney-Vento Act, a federal law that ensures children and youth who have lost their housing can attend school and have access to free food while in school, as well as the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects the privacy of educational records from abusers, are a start.
Despite these efforts, our staff still sees the struggles that children and their parents face at the start of every school year, even after bravely leaving their abuser(s).
In Texas, the Christine Blubaugh Act was passed in 2021, which mandates that school districts must teach junior high and high school students about dating violence, family violence, child abuse and sex trafficking topics. While we know that psychoeducation is critical when preventing future violence, the new Texas bill is not perfect.
In June 2021, the original bill was vetoed by the Texas governor, as it did not allow for parental notification or involvement. An updated version was later passed, which requires parents to sign a permission form for their student to engage in the curriculum.
While KCWS supports a parent's involvement in a child’s education, this new bill poses concerns for children who are experiencing abuse by a parent who may not want the child to know that their own behaviors may be grounds for investigation. And in our experience, these are the children who need the education the most.
Read more about SB 9, also called The Christine Blubaugh Act, from the Texas Council on Family Violence here.
We call on local and federal policy makers to continue addressing the unique needs of these children, who we know from experience are incredibly special and gifted, as all kids are. Trauma-informed policy leads to effective trauma informed practice, and when we can understand the impact of abuse on a child’s ability to excel in a school environment, we have a much better chance of seeing these children break the cycle of abuse in their own lives.
By doing so, we can help foster a meaningful education for all children. Our ultimate hope is that one day, their own kids may hop onto the school bus, free from the worry of abuse.
Are you a survivor of domestic abuse feeling overwhelmed by the start of the school year? Call KCWS today for both residential and non-residential support services.
KCWS 24/7 Hotline: (800)-495-8078
About the Author
Prior to her service at KCWS as the Research & Education Coordinator, Sarah received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder and a master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Having dedicated the past six years to researching factors related to posttraumatic stress, Sarah has collaborated with domestic abuse, foster care, and military support agencies. She is passionate about enhancing trauma-informed policies and practices, and is on track to obtain her PhD, Fall 2024.
Email: sarah@kcwstexas.org
KCWS Phone: 830.428.4930
Additional Resources:
General:
How Can Kids Concentrate on School After Trauma?
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
For Schools:
Trauma Sensitivity During the IEP Process (PDF)
Trauma Informed Schools Resources (OSPI)
Policy Considerations:
Domestic Violence, Homelessness, and Children’s Education
A Guide to Addressing Dating Violence in Texas Schools.doc (texasadvocacyproject.org)