Killing Right at Home

 Killing right at home

 

There is another epidemic in our country besides COVID.  It is the incidence of domestic violence.  Every day in our country, according to the National Network to End Domestic violence, approximately three women are murdered by an intimate partner.  Three women have died in Maryland of spousal abuse in the last few months.  The epidemic of spousal abuse and violence has increased dramatically in the last two years, partly due to the confines of quarantine and the pandemic.

The warning signs are clear: over possessiveness, isolation, verbal abuse and gaslighting.  So, what does all this have to do with kids in school.  Children live in these homes.  These behaviors are not limited to the other adult in the home.  Children too are impacted by these behaviors.  All educators are mandated by law to report any abuse to child protective services.  But these are physical abuses.  How do we catalog and report emotional abuse.

As with all things we are counting, we need to begin by identifying the problem and the situation.  As educators we need to teach children what kinds of behaviors are not healthy in a home.  These behaviors are just as unacceptable and damaging as physical abuse, in some sense maybe more so because we do not see them as obviously.

We need to teach children how they should be treated.   When they are not treated in a positive and supportive manner, they need to know that the problem is not with them but with the abuser. We need to make sure girls do not learn that it is ok to be dominated by a male partner.  We need to teach boys that being a man does not mean bullying a woman.  We must create a common language for talking about a situation that is hard to define and even harder to stamp out.  We need to teach our kids how to recognize abusive relationships so they can report them to us and to their friends.  We need to teach our kids so they can teach their friends to recognize what is happening as well.  

In every instance of murder and abuse, the red flags were there.  Intervention could have saved a life in the short term and changed a child’s future long term.  It is too late after a death to see the warning signs and it is too late to change a child’s future after he/she has seen the killing right at home.