Parenting is hard under the best of circumstances. Parenting a child who carries trauma from childhood sexual abuse is something else entirely. It asks more of you than you ever imagined you had to give emotionally, mentally, and sometimes physically. And when you are a survivor yourself, it can crack open wounds you thought had healed long ago.
I know this terrain intimately. I’ve lived it. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and the author of Blackout Girl, I’ve spent decades unpacking my own trauma, my silence, my coping mechanisms, and my healing. What I did not anticipate was how becoming a parent would awaken parts of that story I thought I had already laid to rest. I write about that in Awakening Blackout Girl.
Parenting a traumatized child is not about fixing them. It is about creating safety, predictability, and space for healing while also tending to your own nervous system.
Trauma Changes How Children Experience the World
Childhood sexual abuse doesn’t just harm a child in the moment it occurs. It alters how their brain develops, how they perceive safety, how they regulate emotions, and how they form attachments. Trauma can show up in ways that don’t always look like trauma.
Some children become hyper-vigilant, constantly scanning for danger. Others dissociate, shut down, or seem emotionally distant. Some regress developmentally. Others explode with anger or melt into panic over things that appear small on the surface.
As parents, we are often told to focus on behavior. Trauma requires us to focus on meaning.
When a traumatized child is “acting out,” they are often communicating something they don’t yet have language for. Trauma lives in the body before it ever becomes a story. So punishing a child’s behavior is not only unhelpful, it’s confusing to the child and frustrating for the parent. We must address what is lingering underneath the behavior.
Why Parenting a Traumatized Child Can Be Triggering for Survivors
This is the part we don’t talk about enough.
If you are a survivor parenting a child with trauma, you may find yourself unexpectedly overwhelmed. Your child’s fear may mirror your own childhood fear. Their dysregulation may pull you back into moments you worked hard to survive. Their disclosures or even their questions may reopen doors you had firmly shut.
In Blackout Girl, I wrote about survival through disconnection, about learning how to go numb because it was the only way to get through. I was raised by two traumatized parents who lacked any understanding of their own issues and capacity to parent from a compassionate place. Rather, they were overly punitive because my trauma held a mirror to their own. and they were ill-equipped to deal. Parenting forced me to stay present in ways my trauma never allowed me to be as a child.
You may feel guilt for not responding “perfectly.” And may feel rage toward systems that failed your child the way they failed you. You may feel grief not just for your child, but for the child you once were.
None of this makes you a bad parent. It makes you human.
Safety Comes Before Healing
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned both personally and professionally is that healing cannot happen without safety.
For children impacted by sexual abuse, safety is not just physical. It is emotional and relational.
This means:
- Believing your child without hesitation
- Avoiding “why” questions that can feel interrogative
- Letting them control the pace of disclosure
- Respecting their boundaries, even when it’s inconvenient
Consistency matters more than perfection. Showing up calmly, even when you are scared, teaches a child that they are not alone with what happened to them.
Regulation Before Discipline
Traditional parenting advice often fails traumatized children.
When a child is dysregulated due to trauma, discipline alone can reinforce shame and fear. Trauma-informed parenting asks us to regulate first, correct later if correction is even needed.
This might look like:
- Sitting quietly with a child during a meltdown instead of escalating
- Naming emotions instead of punishing behavior
- Offering choices to restore a sense of control
- Understanding that regression is not defiance, it’s communication
Trauma steals agency. Parenting that restores choice and voice helps rebuild it.
Talking About the Abuse Without Re-Traumatizing
Many parents worry they’ll say the wrong thing. Silence, however, can be just as harmful.
Children need to know:
- What happened was not their fault
- Their body belongs to them
- They are allowed to talk about it when they’re ready
- They will not get in trouble for telling the truth
You don’t need perfect language. You need honest, age-appropriate reassurance. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is, “I’m so glad you told me.”
Therapy Is Support, Not Failure
Seeking trauma-informed therapy for your child is not an admission that you’ve failed as a parent. It is an act of protection.
The right therapist can help a child process trauma safely and help parents learn how to support healing at home. Therapy also creates a space where your child doesn’t feel responsible for protecting you from their pain, a burden many children silently carry.
If you are a survivor, your own therapy matters too. Parenting through trauma without support can lead to burnout, compassion fatigue, or re-traumatization.
Healing Is Not Linear for Them or for You
There will be good days. There will be days that knock the air out of your chest.
Trauma healing does not move in a straight line. Milestones, developmental changes, school transitions, and even puberty can resurface symptoms long after you think you’ve moved past the worst of it.
Progress does not mean the absence of pain. It means increased capacity to move through it.
What Survivors-Turned-Parents Bring That Matters
Here is the truth I wish someone had told me sooner: survivors bring something profoundly powerful to parenting traumatized children.
We understand silence. And recognize fear. We know what it means to survive.
Our job is not to project our story onto our children but to let our empathy guide us. To use what we’ve learned to create the safety we didn’t have. To break cycles not through perfection, but through presence.
In my writing, in my advocacy, and in my parenting, I return to this truth again and again: healing happens in relationship.
And while childhood sexual abuse takes so much from a child, it does not get to define the rest of their life or yours.
You Are Not Alone
If you are parenting a child impacted by sexual abuse, especially as a survivor yourself, know this: you are not weak for struggling, and you are not failing because this feels hard.
You are doing sacred work.
And one day, your child may not remember every word you said but they will remember that they were believed, protected, and loved.
Andreozzi + Foote has written a comphrehensive parenting guide for more tips.