Episode Details

Are you hoping to help your daughter avoid teen dating violence, even if it’s “just” emotional and psychological abuse?

Anne Blythe, M.Ed. interviews Sid, a teenager, who shares her heart wrenching story with empowering tips for mothers of teens.

Teen dating violence never happens without emotional abuse. The best way to avoid teen dating violence is to determine if there’s emotional abuse. Take this free emotional abuse quiz to find out.

If you have experienced emotional abuse and need live support attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session.

Teens Dating Violence Can Start With Lying

Sid shares that early on in the relationship, her abusive ex-boyfriend was kind, flattering, and romantic. The first red flag for her was that he told her a lie.

Abusive relationships are often detectable by the presence of lying. If your teen’s dating partner is telling lies, it is a strong indicator that your teen may be a target of sexual coercion and abuse.

Sexual Phone Calls Are Sometimes The First Signal Of Teen Dating Violence

A teen may feel uncomfortable by the way her boyfriend uses sexually explicit language on phone calls, but she may not realize that this is a form of sexual abuse.

Parents can open preemptive discussions with children who are not yet dating, or initiate discussions with teens who are dating, regarding the red flags of an abusive teen boyfriend.

Teaching teens about sexual coercion is important, so they know what to watch for.

Here are some steps you can take to begin empowering your children to engage in healthy relationships:

• Educate teens about coercion, dating violence, and abuse
• Set boundaries with your husband so your children can see your example.
• Meet the people your teens date

Transcript: Teen Dating Violence

Anne: I have a special guest on the podcast today. It is my friend’s daughter. So my friend Dina runs Educate and Empower Kids. Many of you may be familiar with Educate and Empower Kids. It is a non profit that provides parents with education to teach their kids great online habits and healthy ways of interacting.

And Dina called me to tell me about an experience that her daughter had. This is an important conversation to help teens avoid abuse. So I’m actually going to have her share the experience. She is 18 years old. Let’s just start Sid with what happened. Can you please share your story?

Sid: Sure, so I began dating a guy we’ll call him David. It was the end of my junior year of high school, and we only dated for about five months. It was a difficult experience for me, because of how he treated me. And the habits I learned from that experience of dating him. And I’ve also just begun noticing some patterns that he has with every girlfriend he’s dated.

I know his current girlfriend and I just see a lot of the same things going on with her. I wish she would listen to me. I’ve shared my experiences with her, and it’s just drawn attention to them more to me.

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