News Magazine of the UW Department of Communication
Anusha Ghosh Roy
More than 15 million children witness domestic violence across America, said Professor Lynn Fainsilber Katz at a lecture Wednesday afternoon.
Witness or victim, children need to be helped in such a situation.
Wednesday’s lecture to a small group of graduate students followed Katz’s passion to find the best way for children to overcome domestic violence. Her research led to the development of a new kind of recuperation program for children that use emotions as a tool for recovery.
Katz outlined the recovery program she developed that will help children by working with parents, mostly women, who are domestic violence survivors. The program aims to improve parent’s emotional connection to their children to help them overcome the trauma from domestic violence.
Central to Katz’s study and program is emotion coaching. Emotion coaching relies heavily on the parent to pay close attention to a child’s emotions. Her studies show that validating the emotions of a child, during or after a situation involving domestic violence, helps them overcome the trauma. A parent in a domestic violence situation can help their child adjust to the environment through emotion coaching.
Katz argued that this connection is important because parents play a huge role in their child’s recovery. The link between emotion coaching and smoother recovery from domestic violence is crucial, said Katz.
The other side of the spectrum is when parents shut off and do not respond to a child’s emotions making them seem unimportant. This can have adverse affects on the child’s recuperation and behavior, said Katz. This is what she is trying to avoid.
The program, based off of Katz's research, functions on three levels, awareness, regulation and coaching. Katz wants to work with these women to expand their ability to emotion coach. However, Katz warned that the toughest part about this program is emotion coaching will involve talking about the abuse and abuser.
The study results that led to this program mapped several families on a long-term basis; some of these families were involved with domestic violence. Katz discussed the special type of interview constructed for the studies that dug at parents to understand their emotions. For example, they would ask questions such as “What is it like to be angry?” or “What is it like when your child is angry?” Eventually they interviewed children when they were old enough. These studies helped create an understanding of emotion coaching and its affect on domestic violence victims.
Katz eventually wants to expand the program to work with children as well.
Katz began by saying domestic violence is a crime predominately inflicted on women; in fact, 85 percent of the time the victim is a woman. However, when a child is neglected in such an environment, the mother is blamed for not taking care of the child. Katz said that women will have trouble parenting in such an environment however, protecting their children is many time a mother’s first priority in such a situation.
There was a question and answer period afterwards where the quiet audience probed into the how much of emotion coaching was a moderator and discussed the roots of emotion coaching. The conversation continued on outside during refreshments.
Katz holds a doctorate and is a Research Associate Professor in the Psychology department at the University of Washington. Her special research interest is on how children regulate emotions during adverse situations.
