Children in a violent home already know. Parents almost always underestimate this, and the underestimate is understandable, because the alternative is unbearable to think about.
Children who were supposedly asleep describe arguments in detail years later. Children who were in another room can tell you which door slammed. Children of three copy the tone of voice. The question is therefore not whether to tell them something. It is what to tell them, when, and what to ask of them, which should be almost nothing.
Give one instruction, not a plan
A child does not need the whole picture and cannot carry it. What a child needs is a single clear instruction that works every time and does not require judgement.
- If they are old enough to use a phone, teach them to call 112 and to say their full address. Practise the address rather than the number, because the address is what they forget.
- If they are not, one instruction only. Go to Mama Ngozi next door. Go to your room and close the door and stay there until I come.
- Agree a word that means go now. Practise it once, calmly, like a fire drill, and then leave it alone.
Keep it to one instruction per child. A plan with branches is something an adult can follow. A frightened seven year old cannot.
Never give a child the job of protecting you
Children who step between parents are injured, and older children in particular will try. Boys of eleven and twelve are especially likely to, and they are big enough to be hurt badly and small enough not to be able to stop anything.
Tell them directly. It is not your job to protect me. I do not want you to come in. Going to get help is the bravest thing you can do, and it is the thing that helps me most.
Say it more than once, because a child who has already intervened will need to hear that they are not now failing you by staying away.
What to say about what they have seen
Three sentences do most of the work, and they can be repeated as often as needed.
- What happened was not your fault.
- It is not your job to fix it.
- You are allowed to love him and still not like what he does.
That last one matters more than it looks. Children are often given the impression, usually accidentally, that they must choose a side. The guilt of loving a parent who frightens them is one of the heaviest things children in this position carry, and being told plainly that both feelings are allowed relieves a surprising amount of it.
What to say at different ages, and how to answer the harder questions, is set out separately.
School
School is usually the most stable thing in a child’s week and it is worth protecting, sometimes at the cost of other convenience.
Where it is safe to stay at the same school, stay. A change of school is one of the losses children feel most sharply, because it removes their friends, their teacher and their routine in the same week that their home has changed.
Whether you move school or not, do these three things in writing rather than in conversation.
- Tell the school who may and who may not collect the child.
- Give them a copy of any protection order.
- Ask them to record any unexpected contact rather than dealing with it informally.
The last one is the one people skip. A written record is what makes a pattern visible later, and school records carry weight in court precisely because the school has no interest in the outcome.
What you may see afterwards
Children commonly go backwards for a while, and knowing this in advance stops it frightening you.
Bed wetting in a child who had stopped. Clinging, or refusing to be in a room alone. Sleeping badly, or wanting to sleep in your bed. Anger, very often directed at you rather than at him. Stomach aches and headaches with no medical cause. Trouble at school in a child who had none.
And, most easily missed, a flat calm that looks like coping. A child who says almost nothing and causes no difficulty is not necessarily the one who is managing best.
Most of this settles with time, stability and honesty. Some of it needs help, and children respond to counselling considerably faster than adults do, which is one of the more hopeful facts in this whole subject.
Contact after you leave
Contact between a father and his children is treated by Nigerian courts as a separate question from what he did to you. That is difficult to accept and it is the reality to plan around.
Take advice early rather than making arrangements informally under pressure. Arrangements can include supervised contact and handovers at a neutral place, and those are far easier to obtain as part of an order than to negotiate afterwards.
Never use a handover as a place to meet alone. Handovers are the point at which women are most often assaulted after separation. What a court considers, and how contact is usually handled, covers this properly.
If you are leaving
Take them with you if they are with you and it is safe. Tell them as late as is practical, because it protects them from having to keep a secret from a parent.
Pack one comfort object each. It is not sentimentality. A familiar toy makes a strange room survivable for a small child, and a child who sleeps is a mother who can think the next morning. The rest of the list includes the school records, which are the thing most often forgotten and the hardest to do without.
The wider plan for the day itself is set out separately, and the most important line in it applies doubly with children. Tell somebody before the day, not on it.
Questions people ask
Should I tell the children we are leaving?
As late as is practical. It protects them from having to keep a secret from a parent, which is a heavy burden and one many children cannot manage.
My child is angry with me rather than him. Why?
It is extremely common. You are the safe person to be angry with. It usually settles, and it is not a verdict on your decision.
My child seems completely fine. Should I be worried?
Not necessarily, but a flat calm is the reaction most easily missed. Keep the door open and watch for sleep, appetite and school rather than for what they say.
Can I stop him seeing the children?
Contact is treated as a separate question from what he did to you. Get advice early, and ask about supervised contact and neutral handovers rather than arranging it informally.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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