When It Isn’t Safe for Children to Have a Voice
One of the most common questions I hear from parents in the thick of custody battles is: How can I encourage my child to speak up and advocate for themselves?
It’s a fair question.
We all want our children to be strong and confident, to feel like their voices matter. There’s an uncomfortable truth here: sometimes it isn’t safe for them to do so and no child should ever carry that expectation. Most adults who have experienced domestic abuse (even after years of therapy), admit that they struggled to advocate for themselves in abusive relationships. If it is hard for grown adults to speak up, how can we expect children, still developing emotionally and neurologically, to stand up to an abusive or manipulative parent?
I speak to this from three perspectives.
1. As a child of the Family Court system
My life started in this system. I was just six months old when my parents divorced, and there were several junctures when I found myself caught in the middle. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I didn’t want to upset either parent. As a result, I said whatever I thought would keep the peace in that moment. It backfired, of course.
I was just a child, doing what children do, trying to survive the pressure of adult conflict. It is damaging and traumatic to expect a child to carry that burden.
When our kids choose to have a voice, that’s theirs to decide, and whether the court listens is another story altogether. Forcing or pressuring them into advocacy against a parent is not protection. It’s another form of harm.
2. As a mother who raised two little girls
When my daughters were young, I worked hard to empower them, but in safe, age appropriate ways. Did I want them to find their voice at birthday parties, asking for more ice cream or politely declining it? Absolutely. I wanted them to practice speaking up in everyday, low stakes situations. Choosing their own clothes in the morning. Helping pick recipes for dinner. These small acts built confidence without putting them in danger.
Asking them to stand up to an abusive parent? That was never their burden to carry. My job was to be their protector, I cannot outsource my role and place it onto their little shoulders.
3. As an advocate watching countless families
For fifteen years I have walked alongside parents and children navigating post separation abuse and the broken family court system. I have seen the toll this takes on kids, the anxiety, the confusion, the survival mode. Beyond that, we are in a system that does not understand the basics of domestic abuse or post separation abuse. It fails children who have been abused on a daily basis. Courts and professionals often do not understand trauma, nor are they educated on what is age appropriate when it comes to disclosures. A three year old who reports abuse will often be dismissed because professionals do not know what is age appropriate and what is not. Even children who are able to articulate and advocate for themselves are dismissed because the safe parent is accused of coaching them. There are so many layers of failure wrapped up in this one issue, and children are the ones carrying the cost. At the far end of the spectrum, there is the reality that there is no money to be made in believing that abuse is taking place. There is a lot of money for unscrupulous professionals who override a child's voice and autonomy.
The complexity of giving children a voice
Some argue that children should not be given a voice because there are cases where they have been turned against the healthy parent. Dr. Emma Katz calls this CAMS, Child and Mother Sabotage. (You can read her work here: From “Parental Alienation” to Abusers’ Child and Mother Sabotage (CAMS)).
These cases are devastating, and giving a child in that situation a voice can be deeply painful for the protective parent. Even here, I believe we must still listen to children because the current “remedies” for these cases come from the reunification or alienation industry, programs that are experimental, traumatizing, and that strip children of their autonomy. These children are not going into these programs willingly. Forcing them against their will not only fails to heal the bond with the safe parent, it risks fracturing it permanently.
As parents and advocates, the task is to hold the tension: we empower children to use their voices in safe spaces, we protect them from being forced to advocate against dangerous parents, and we push back against systems that would silence them altogether. Their voices matter, but it is never their job to carry the weight of advocacy in unsafe terrain. I know this because I lived it as a child, I witnessed it as a mother, and I have carried it as an advocate. That is why I will always believe that children deserve to be heard, even when the system fails to listen.
