Contact with your child after a separation where there was violence

Friday, five minutes to five, a supermarket car park. The car is idling, and on the back seat sits a six-year-old with a full rucksack. When he sees the other car turning into the car park, he says quietly, without looking at his mum: “Do I have to go?”

His mum has a lump in her throat. She knows he has to. She also knows what went on at home before she left — the shouting, the smashed plate, the night she slept with her child at her sister’s. And now, every other Friday, she has to hand him over to the person she ran away from. And then wait two days to see how he comes back.

This piece is for parents standing in that car park. Mostly they are mothers, sometimes fathers. I won’t be writing about laws, deadlines and procedures — those are things you need to sort out with the social work centre and a lawyer, because they differ from case to case and no article can replace them. I will write about what goes on inside the child and inside you, and about what you can do between one Friday and the next.

When the relationship ends, the violence doesn’t necessarily

Many people who leave a violent relationship expect that leaving will be the end of it. Often it isn’t. When the shared home, shared money and shared bed fall away, one single channel remains through which control can continue: the child. Handovers that are an hour late, or happen at unexpected times. Messages sent through the child. Questions the child gets asked during the visit: who mum talks to, who comes round, where she was on Saturday.

That doesn’t mean every dispute about contact is a continuation of violence. Separated parents argue about times, holidays and rules even when there was never any violence. The difference is whether one of the parents is afraid. If you sleep badly before every handover, if you check messages with a knot in your stomach, and if your child comes back with questions that aren’t theirs, then this is something other than an ordinary dispute.

Stalking and harassment after a break-up are a subject of their own. Here I am focusing on the child and on you.

What a child carries to every visit

A child who has lived with violence between their parents was not just an onlooker. Even if they were asleep, even if they were in another room, they heard the violence, sensed it in the atmosphere and carried it in their body. What children pick up and how it shows in them is described in Domestic violence and children: what they see even when they are not in the room.

A 2003 meta-analysis by Katherine Kitzmann and colleagues, which brought together a large number of studies, found that around 63 per cent of children who had witnessed violence between their parents were doing worse than the average child who had not experienced it. That figure says two things at once. First, the harm is real and common. Second, it is not inevitable — roughly one child in three was developing much like their peers. What protects a child is therefore an important question.

One of the things researchers such as Ravi Thiara and Cathy Humphreys emphasise is the relationship between the child and the parent who protected them. Violence often harms not only the person who experiences it but also their bond with the child — because mum was exhausted, because the child’s anger was directed at her, because the other parent told the child that mum was to blame. When that bond grows strong again, it is one of the most powerful protective factors a child has.

But a child often loves both parents. Including the one who was violent. For the parent who experienced the violence this can be incomprehensible and painful. But a child’s love is not betrayal. It is proof that the child is a child. Often they love and fear at the same time, miss the parent and don’t want to go, all on the same day.

Protective concern is not being a “difficult mother”

Parents who worry about a child’s safety during contact often hear that they are being obstructive, that they are frightened for no reason, or that they are turning the child against the other parent. In 2008 the British researcher Christine Harrison published a study with a telling title: Implacably hostile or appropriately protective? She showed how quickly the concern of a mother who had experienced violence is read in proceedings as opposition to contact — and how often it was in fact well founded.

That doesn’t mean every fear is justified, and it doesn’t mean the other parent is always dangerous to the child. But it does mean your concern is not in itself proof that you are doing something wrong. The most you can do is express it in a way that institutions can hear: with facts, not accusations, with written records, not with memories that blur over the months.

How that process works, where you can report and what happens next, the social work centre will explain for your particular case. If you have a lawyer, tell them about everything that happened, including what seems unimportant or shameful to you. If you can’t afford one, ask about the options for free legal aid.

What a child needs from you around contact

You can’t control what happens in the other home. But you can influence what kind of space the child comes back to. And that space matters a great deal.

Don’t make them the messenger. Anything that needs to be communicated to the other parent, communicate yourself, in writing. A child who carries messages between parents also carries the tension in them.

Don’t interrogate them. When your child comes back, it is natural to want to know everything. But a string of questions — what did he say, what did you eat, was he angry, did he talk about me — tells the child that they went into dangerous territory and that they are now responsible for reporting back to you. Give them room to tell you in their own time instead. If they do tell you something, listen calmly.

Give them permission for every feeling. Including having had a nice time. A child who senses that every smile they shared with the other parent hurts you will stop telling you things — including the things they should tell you.

Be predictable. The same ritual when they come back, the same corner, the same supper. A child’s nervous system settles alongside an adult who is calm — we call this co-regulation. You don’t have to be perfect. It is enough to be consistent enough for the child to lean on you.

The handover: the hardest ten minutes

For many parents who have experienced violence, the handover is the moment everything comes back. The same face, the same tone, sometimes the same passing remark that at home meant an outburst was coming. So it is good to arrange the handover so there is as little contact between the adults as possible.

There are different options. A handover in a neutral, public place. A handover through a third person both of you trust. A handover at nursery or school, where one parent drops the child off and the other collects them. Where the risk is higher, there is also contact supervised by professional services. Which option is right for your case is agreed with the social work centre or through the court — it is not something you can choose on your own.

Most advice on co-operating after separation assumes that the parents are not afraid of each other. Co-parenting after separation: how to stay a team when you are no longer a couple describes what that looks like when it is possible, and you will also find a short explanation under co-parenting. Where there has been violence, it is closer to what professionals call parallel parenting: each parent looks after the child in their own time and in their own way, and contact between the adults is cut down to the bare minimum.

When your child comes back

After a visit, children are often different. More irritable, quieter, clingier or, on the contrary, withdrawn. They sleep badly the first night. This is common in children of separated parents even when there has been no violence — moving between two homes is tiring, and a child needs time to “settle in” again. What research says about what protects children through divorce is set out in Children and divorce: what the research really says about what protects them.

There are, however, signs worth writing down and telling the social work centre or the paediatrician about: the child is afraid to go and the fear grows with every visit; they come back with injuries they can’t or won’t explain; they repeat sentences that aren’t theirs; after a visit they slip back into behaviour they had already grown out of; they say someone threatened them or that they have to keep something secret. This is not a list for making diagnoses, and it is not a tool for assessing danger. It is a list of things you must not stay silent about.

This is how the moment might sound when a child brings home a sentence that isn’t theirs (composite, not a real person):

“Daddy says it’s your fault we don’t live together any more.”
“Hm. How was it for you when he said that?”
“Don’t know. A bit sad.”
“I understand that it’s sad. But you’re not to blame for any of this. The grown-ups are responsible for how the grown-ups sort things out.”
“So is it your fault?”
“I decided to leave because home wasn’t safe. That was my decision and I stand by it. You can still love Daddy.”

The mother doesn’t correct the father or accuse him. She doesn’t pull the child onto her side. She tells a truth the child can carry at their age, and gives back permission to love both. She doesn’t have to be perfectly calm — calm enough is enough. How to explain a separation to a child at their stage of development is described in How to tell your children that their parents are separating — with one important difference when there has been violence: you don’t have to lie to the child that their parents “parted on good terms”.

Exercise: an after-contact notebook

This exercise has two purposes. The first is to have facts in front of you, not just feelings, when you talk to the social work centre, a lawyer or the paediatrician. The second is to move the tension out of your head and onto paper by writing it down. It takes ten minutes after each contact.

1. Write down the date, the time of the handover and who was there. Whether it was on time, and what was said between the adults.
2. Write down how the child was before leaving and after coming back. Descriptively, not interpretively: “he cried in the car”, not “he is traumatised”.
3. Write down word for word what the child said of their own accord. Not what you drew out of them with questions, and not your interpretation.
4. Write down how you felt. Separately from the child. Your fear matters, but it is not the same as your child’s.
5. Once a month, read the notes together. Is anything repeating, escalating or calming down? Bring that to your next conversation with the professional services.

Keep the notebook somewhere the other parent cannot get to. Don’t fill it in in front of your child.

Your body at every handover

Every other Friday you meet the person who harmed you. That is not a neutral event. The body remembers before the mind does: a racing heart, a clenched jaw, a sleepless night before, exhaustion the whole day after. If this is what you experience, there is nothing wrong with you. It is a response to repeated contact with a source of threat. More on what trauma is and how it works can be found in the knowledge base under trauma.

Because your child reads your body, looking after yourself is also looking after them. That doesn’t mean you have to be completely calm at the handover. It means you need a place where you can set your fear down: a friend you call after the handover, a counsellor at an organisation that supports victims of violence, your own therapy. In individual therapy you can work through what the violence left in you — including the feeling that you were to blame, which is the subject of Self-image after abuse: when you believe it was your fault — and prepare for the encounters you cannot avoid. When there has been violence, however, joint sessions with the other parent — couples therapy or joint counselling — are not an appropriate form of help until safety is assured. You can calmly say this at the social work centre too.

Where my argument stops

This subject is full of strong feelings on all sides, so it is right that I also say where this piece doesn’t apply.

Not every bit of resistance from a child is a sign of danger. Children resist transitions for many reasons — because change unsettles them, because they are more comfortable with one parent, because they sense your tension and take it on. Resistance deserves attention, but it is not automatically proof. That is why notes that separate observations from interpretations are so important.

People who have been violent can change. Not all of them, not quickly, and not because they promised. But there are parents who took responsibility, did long work and became safe for their child. What that path looks like from the other side is the subject of When you recognise yourself as the one who is violent. For a child, contact with a parent who has changed can be valuable. But the measure is not what that parent says about themselves, but whether the child — and you — feel safe around them.

Contact in itself is not a value above safety. The idea that a child needs both parents holds for most families. But when contact exposes the child, or the parent handing them over, to violence, safety comes first. This is not your personal opinion — it is the starting point that all services deciding on contact are meant to follow.

Where to turn

If anyone is in immediate danger, call 112 or the police on 113 in Slovenia. This applies during contact and at handovers too.

For a conversation and support there is the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence, 080 11 55 in Slovenia. Children and young people can call the TOM helpline on 116 111 in Slovenia themselves. If distress overwhelms you at night, there is the Mental Distress Helpline, 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia (7 pm to 7 am), and the Samaritan helpline, 116 123 in Slovenia (24 hours).

For everything to do with contact, custody and decisions about the child: the social work centre and a lawyer. For your child’s health and wellbeing: the paediatrician or GP, who can also refer you to a child psychologist.

What to remember

• After separation, violence can continue through contact — handovers, messages and questions put to the child are common channels of control.
• A child who witnessed violence is often affected, but not inevitably; a strong bond with the protective parent is one of the most important protective factors.
• A child must be neither messenger nor spy. They need predictability and permission to love whoever they love.
• Write down facts after every contact and bring them to the social work centre and your lawyer — take legal questions to them.
• Safety comes before contact. Joint sessions for the parents are not an appropriate form of help when there has been violence.