{"id":27517,"date":"2015-03-20T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=27517"},"modified":"2016-05-23T02:13:57","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T09:13:57","slug":"help-i-believe-my-father-in-law-is-abusing-my-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/dear-gt\/help-i-believe-my-father-in-law-is-abusing-my-daughter","title":{"rendered":"Help! I Believe My Father-in-Law Is Abusing My Daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of course you are concerned! Anytime we see a behavior like that in a child and she or he is unable or unwilling to explain the change, we fear the worst<\/a>. Your primary responsibility is to protect your daughter. Your mother and father-in-law may get offended and angry, but that can\u2019t be a reason to ignore your fears.<\/p>\n

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Since you are working from intuition, it may be worth looking into having an evaluation done with a good, reputable child therapist to explore if anything has happened with your daughter. It is true that you don\u2019t want to plant ideas in her head, but you also want to find out if something scary or inappropriate has happened and help her process it. A good therapist can do that without planting ideas. It may be that your father-in-law has been inappropriate with her. If so, you will want to connect her with professional supports<\/a> as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Your mother and father-in-law may get offended and angry, but that can\u2019t be a reason to ignore your fears.<\/span><\/p>\n

It also might be that she had a bad dream about him and is now scared of him. It may be that he was stern with her and she got upset and doesn\u2019t want to engage with him. Without knowing more, it is hard to know how to proceed. I don\u2019t want to diminish your concerns\u2014until you know for certain that he is a safe person for her, absolutely continue to make sure that you supervise their interactions.<\/p>\n

How receptive do you think your mother and father-in-law would be to a conversation that explored whether they had noticed a change in the way your daughter is reacting to him? If you approach it from a place of curiosity rather than accusation, you may be able to learn more. If nothing untoward has happened, they may be concerned and confused as well.<\/p>\n

That said, if you want to wait to address any of this with them until you have more information, you can certainly do so. You know your family dynamics<\/a> and should proceed in the safest way possible for everyone, particularly your daughter.<\/p>\n

Best of luck,
\nErika<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erika Myers, MS, MEd, LPC, NCC, responds to our latest reader-submitted Dear GoodTherapy.org question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[625],"tags":[21,522,393,51,25,385],"class_list":["post-27517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-goodtherapy","tag-child-and-adolescent-issues","tag-dear-gt","tag-family-problems","tag-healthy-parenting","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-sexual-abuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}