for-abused-kids:

advicefromsurvivors:

I don’t personally believe that the parent/child dynamic can be one of mutual abuse. When children are being abused by their parents, they have a small pool of resources, none of which are guaranteed to work. When a child’s behavior is harming their parents, the parents have a litany of resources available, many of which directly remove the child from the home. That’s not equal footing. The child doesn’t have the same power available to them. A child cannot trap, control, and exploit their parents in the same way that parents can do to their children. When the power imbalance is so absolute, abuse can only go in one direction.

The reason abuse is called that is because it’s an abuse of power. Children have no power available. You can be outright cruel, but abuse can go in only two directions: equal》equal and superior 》inferior.