Helping Young Children to Understand Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control: A Professional Guide

This guidebook is designed to support professionals with the effective use of the storybook, Luna Little Legs, which has been created help pre-school aged children understand about domestic abuse and coercive control.

Sensitively and accessibly written, the guidebook presents the adult with comprehensive information regarding domestic abuse and coercive control, and its impact on young children, putting them in a position to have important and informed interactions with the young children in their care. These conversations help children to make sense of their experiences of domestic abuse, giving them the opportunity to vocalise their feelings and to understand what to do when something is not right.

Key features of this book include:

• Page-by-page notes to support the sensitive reading of the Luna Little Legs story
• Accessible information about domestic abuse and coercive control based on the latest research
• A comprehensive list of helplines and organisations in place to support adult victims of domestic abuse.

This is an essential companion to the Luna Little Legs story, and is crucial reading for anybody working with young children and their families who are experiencing, or have experienced, domestic abuse and coercive control.

Table of Contents

Before you read this book

Gender and parenting issues

The characters

Page by page teachers notes

Attachment and the Window of Tolerance

How children experience domestic abuse

The impacts of domestic abuse and coercive control

Talking and listening to children

Websites and helplines

Bibliography

Appendix