Home Alone.

After a stressful day at school, many students come home to a home filled with fear. Before lockdown, some students struggled with family relationships, but now that they are stuck at home with nowhere to go and things have gotten worse.

There are many different types of family relationship issues, such as abusive parents, substance abusive parents, emotionally abusive parents, abusive family members or any other toxic relationship at home regarding a student and family. Family relationships can heavily impact a student’s life.

“Family issues—such as divorce, financial strife, and sibling bullying—have the potential to negatively affect those directly involved as well as distant relatives. Kids, however, are common victims left reeling from a family problem. These young individuals do not have the tools or mental capacity to properly manage stress, and it shows in multiple capacities: one being their performance at school”, Taylor Bennett from Thrive Works said.

Whether it is impacting their social, emotional, academic or physical parts of their lives, family issues weigh heavily on students. Paired with the stress of standing out and succeeding in school it almost feels unbearable.

Sometimes students’ parents struggle with alcoholism or drug abuse. This can influence the student to start using these substances, which eventually leads to substance abuse. Substance abuse can lead to crimes such as driving while impaired, destruction of property, and violence. The use of illegal substances can lead to greater problems in the future such as incarceration and death.

“One in five children in the U.S. live in a home with a parent who is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Parental substance abuse severely impacts children’s health and development; it establishes an unspoken understanding of the role substances play in being an adult”, Dr. Todd Thatcher from Valley Behavioral Health said.

Being stuck with parents or family members that harm you since the beginning of quarantine can lead to worsening problems. Many of these family relationships are caused by financial problems and or mental health issues. Financial issues could become extremely bad because of Covid-19, making the abuse worse. Mental health can start deteriorating under the pressures of work or Covid-19 and parents that were not abusive before can start to become harmful role models for their children. 

“Children are also especially vulnerable to abuse during the pandemic, says child psychologist Yo Jackson, PhD, associate director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State. Research shows that increased stress levels among parents is often a major predictor of physical abuse and neglect of children” claimed Ashley Abrahamson from the American Psychological Association said.

Stress levels in both parents and children are affecting family relationships. This makes parents more likely to resort to violence and makes children more likely to become abused by their caretakers. For divorced parents, many things such as loneliness and financial issues can cause them to become unreasonably angry or abusive. The resulting consequence is a child left to deal with emotionally or physically abusive family members or parents which can change their lives forever. 

For help with abusive relationships please visit, https://www.myflfamilies.com/service-programs/abuse-hotline/report-online.shtml or contact 1-800-962-2873.