Online Solutions for Child Abuse © Martyn Carruthers

Online Life Coaching, Counseling & Soulwork Therapy


Is it easier to take drugs than to resolve relationship issues?
Is it easier for you to use alcohol, nicotine, prescription anti-depressants and
stimulants than to apply intelligence and analytical skills to your relationships?

What is Normal?

Since the dawn of history, most people lived in rural communities with many relatives. Almost everyone they knew was family. Learning parenting was simply part of growing up … with family members watching and sometimes too willing to offer advice.

In older times, most parents were teenagers and child-raising was a normal part of busy lives. Who needed to learn parenting? Yet healthy parenting is still rather new in Western countries, and seems little known in older cultures.

Much culture is simply people copying other people. Our cultures seem shaped more and more by the ideals of marketers, politicians and television producers. Many families suffer more seclusion in urban apartments than in rural villages.

What is Abuse?

It is a sad fact that although children do the least to cause marriage and family problems, children will will suffer the most from them. Children are subject to their parents’ rules, maturity, parenting skills, background and beliefs.

I know of no accepted definitions of child abuse, child maltreatment or cruelty to children. Decisions to label a person as an abuser are usually made by victims, or by legal or health professionals. The situation is further confused by differences between physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect.

He who spares the rod hates his son:
but he that loves him corrects him
Proverbs 13:24

A useful definition of an abused child is: “any child who receives non-accidental injury as a result of acts or omissions on the part of adults that violate community standards concerning the treatment of children.”

As emotional abuse seems to be normal in many families, I define it as behavior that causes people to dissociate or fragment or “split-off” parts of themselves.

Children in Crisis?

  1. Is it appropriate for you to offer assistance? See Coaching Children
  2. If so, build trust and offer emotional first aid – breathe, walk and relax.
  3. Empathize with child’s emotions. Listen carefully and talk it through.
  4. Build trust and ask about what happened. Listen carefully.
  5. Help child deal with ideas of guilt and punishment.
  6. Explore options for solutions and restitution.
  7. Prepare to handle consequences.

Severe child discipline can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, Romans and Jews, when slaves were property of their owners and children were property of their parents. Only in the 20th century was cruelty to children first regarded as a legal problem (and then only after Cruelty to Animals legislation.)

Consequences of Child Abuse

The effects of child abuse range from hurt feelings to lasting behavioral, emotional and mental impairment, especially following sexual assault. Some abused children become adults who are chronically depressed or dissociated, people who may abuse or neglect children themselves.

Structural consequences of childhood maltreatment include disruptive development of corpus callosum, left neocortex, hippocampus, and amygdale; functional consequences include increased electrical irritability in limbic areas, frontal lobe dysfunctions … and subsequently the stress response. Grassi-Oliveira R, Ashy M, Stein LM.

Psychology Department, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

While this may suggest that people suffering the consequences of child abuse cannot change, we continually help people to change many consequences of abuse.

Emotional Incest . Sexual Abuse . Incest

Abusive Parents

We find no no single abusive personality. Only a small percentage of abusive parents seem to have severe mental health disorders or extreme religious beliefs. However, most abusive parents lack relationship skills – they often lack friendship skills, teamwork skills, partnership skills and parenting skills. Their skill deficiencies often include problems coping with stress and emotional self-control.

Prevent & Remedy Child Abuse

Do you want to to improve your parenting skills? If you can evaluate your own family and friends, solve emotional problems and develop friendship and partnership skills, you are likely to develop healthy parenting skills.

Parent Coaching . Parent Alienation

In our systemic psychology, both the prevention and resolution of child abuse begins with helping adults evaluate their families (relationship diagnosis). A person’s evaluations of his or her family members can be recorded as a family matrix.

Following relationship diagnosis, we help people plan which should be the first relationship to clarify … which next … and so on. Each clarification helps a person choose how to behave, which changes emotions, compulsions, conflicts, relationship bonds and other effects of trauma and abuse.

The result is a relationship coaching plan in which a person’s verbal and non-verbal communication shows full support of the plan without verbal or non-verbal objections.

Build Interpersonal Skills

Most people want better interpersonal skills to enjoy better relationships – although few seem to be motivated to change. Communication skills help build lasting friendships and improve working relationships and are a basis for partnership and parenting.

  1. Know your values and define your goals.
  2. Solve relationship problems. Learn how to stay calm in chaos.
  3. Express yourself appropriately with parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, etc.
Relationship Skills Training

We provide life models that can help you and others prevent and manage the consequences of child abuse and emotional incest. We offer proven ways to help you change the underlying emotional causes of …

People who were abused as children may fear happiness and success, and sabotage their own relationships. We can help most people change negative emotions, build happy relationships and move on with their lives – in short time frames.

We coach people to identify their individual needs, and make action plans for change. We support and encourage people to achieve their goals and objectives. Contact us for help handling relationship problems.

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