When Play Disappears: How Domestic Abuse Perpetrators Violate a Child’s Right to Joy
By David Mandel, CEO and Founder, Safe & Together Institute
Recently, I was reading Ruha Benjamin’s Imagination: A Manifesto, where she eloquently, powerfully, and persuasively makes the case for the relationship between play, imagination, and power. She makes the link between coercive power and play when she writes about the connection between the monopolization of physical resources and the monopolization of imagination. She says imagination—and by extension, play—is a battlefield where domination, identity, and agency are defined.
Benjamin’s framing of imagination as a site of “small P” political struggle—a resource to be controlled or cultivated—made me think about something we talk about far too little in the context of domestic abuse: how perpetrators impact children’s imagination, creativity, and play.
In our field, we speak frequently about fear, trauma, and harm. But we rarely name what is lost when a child no longer feels safe enough to play. We rarely ask how the erosion of joy, spontaneity, and emotional freedom figures into the totality of harm caused by coercive control.
And yet, play is not frivolous. It is fundamental. It is not only a source of happiness—it is a developmental necessity and a basic human right, recognized and enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child:
"States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts."
"States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity."
Play is how children process, connect, learn, and become. This is so important that governments are legally bound to promote children’s play through the arts, culture, recreation, and leisure. When domestic abuse is present, this basic human right is often stunted, distorted, or strategically dismantled by the perpetrator.
What follows is an exploration of what it means to take this form of harm seriously—and why doing so can lead to deeper accountability and more meaningful healing.
The Myth of the Child Witness
Our systems and public conversations often frame children as passive witnesses to domestic abuse—as if violence happens in one room while the child is in another, untouched and unaffected.
As I explore in Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers, this myth is both harmful and inaccurate. Children don’t simply observe domestic abuse; they experience changes in their environment and nervous systems, on their attachments to loved ones, their social and academic lives, and worldviews. They are shaped by it, and it shapes their environment—the day-to-day playing field of their life—inside and often outside the home. Their development takes place within the environment of coercion and fear, not outside of it.
This is why multiple pathways to harm must become central to how we understand perpetrator behavior. When we look through this lens, we begin to see how a child’s inner life and outer actions—including their play—get entangled in a web of control, fear, and disrupted relational safety.
Attacks on Physical and Emotional Safety Suppress Play
Play requires a sense of safety. It is spontaneous, curious, imaginative, and sometimes messy or loud. In homes where abuse is present, children may:
Be hypervigilant, constantly scanning for danger
Learn that “making noise” or “standing out” triggers punishment or rage
Feel it’s unsafe to take emotional or creative risks
Their bodies tell them it’s not safe to be free, expressive, or unguarded. Even when the violence is not currently happening, its residue lives on in their nervous system.
This is not just a behavioral issue—it is neurodevelopmental. A child’s ability to play is directly impacted by how safe their brain and body feel—and vice versa. This harm is invisible to courts, schools, and even some therapeutic interventions—unless we know to look for it.
Disrupt the Family Ecology, Disrupt Play
Children grow in ecosystems. A child’s capacity for play and creativity is shaped not only by their internal safety but by the emotional climate, relational patterns, and support structures around them.
Perpetrators often:
Destabilize routines, housing, and relationships
Destroy or isolate key relationships with siblings, extended family, or community
Erode the emotional and community resources that foster joy and exploration
Impact school environments, which can be a main source of support for imagination outside the home
Attack or interfere with culturally specific forms of play and imagination that are critical to children’s cultural development
This erosion of a child’s ecology undermines the context in which play flourishes. Children don’t just need space to play—they need secure environments to nurture imagination and play. Perpetrators’ behaviors systematically dismantle that web of connection.
Interfering with the Protective Parent’s Ability to Support Play
Perhaps most insidiously, perpetrators restrict play by controlling or undermining the parenting of the other adult in the home—most often the protective mother.
Coercive control often includes:
Ridiculing or punishing the parent for engaging in creative, joyful interactions with the child
Limiting access to materials, time, or space for play
Creating an atmosphere of unpredictability or emotional instability
Undermining or punishing moments of joy between parent and child
When the adult who nurtures a child’s imagination and safety is being constantly undermined, the child’s development is compromised—and so is their relationship to one another.
Co-Opting Play for Control and Image
Importantly, not all play in abusive households disappears. Sometimes, perpetrators allow—or even insist on—forms of play or activity that serve their image, control, or emotional needs. This might include:
Forcing children to participate in sports or competitions that validate the perpetrator’s pride or status
Directing “play” that follows strict rules, performance standards, or reinforces rigid gender roles
Insisting on family outings that appear healthy but are laden with pressure, coercion, or surveillance
Using play to undermine the child’s connection to the other parent
Treating children’s success or compliance in play as a reflection of their own worth and power
Encouraging violent play or play that involves mocking or hurting others
Injecting unpredictable violence into play (e.g., what is fun one minute is violent the next)
Forcing or encouraging play that pushes limits and creates danger for children
Using play to sexualize children and normalize sexually abusive behaviors
This kind of “play” is often conditional, performative, dangerous, and hollow—stripped of the child’s agency, creativity, or emotional freedom. It may even appear externally “functional” while deeply compromising the child’s sense of self. In reality, these behaviours can be best range the spectrum from coerced play to flat-out physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse.
Imagination and Play as Resistance
And yet, many protective parents and children resist. They sing songs in the quiet hours. They carve out moments of magic in bathrooms, closets, or car rides. They hide art supplies and stories and songs. Children find and create spaces—physical, emotional, and mental—to explore their imagination. Whether quietly in their room, at a friend’s, or when the perpetrator is out of ear- and eye-shot, children explore their imagination through art, music, fantastical creations, interactions with nature, visits with friends and relatives, and more.
Survivors often go to great lengths to support their children’s play, freedom, and creativity. They actively work to provide what the perpetrator seeks to control or withhold: space for expression, affirmation of individuality, and emotional freedom.
In doing so, protective parents may allow more emotional openness, creative exploration, or flexibility in behavior. Ironically, these nurturing acts can be misinterpreted—by courts, schools, or systems—as lax parenting or a lack of boundaries.
But what may look like “inconsistent discipline” is often a survivor’s trauma-informed response: an attempt to preserve the child’s sense of self, dignity, and developmental integrity in a context of ongoing harm. These are not failures—they are acts of resistance and care, deeply aligned with the child’s human rights under the UNCRC.
Why This Deeper Frame of Harm Matters
To promote healing and prevent future harm, we need a more robust and developmentally sound understanding of perpetrator behavior. That means seeing beyond physical violence and including:
The full spectrum of developmental harm, including loss or distortion of play
The ripple effect of coercive control across the child’s ecology
The interference with parenting, particularly the sabotage of joyful caregiving
The co-option of play for control, performance, or public image
The resistance and resilience of protective parents and children
This isn’t just a more nuanced picture—it’s a more accurate one. And it leads to better outcomes, better accountability for perpetrators as parents, and more effective support for healing.
Family courts and other child-centered decision-making processes must factor in play when they consider the harm to children and also the assessment of parental capacity. Perpetrators need to recognize the harm they have caused to children's imagination and the subsequent effects on their development. Protective parents need to be seen for their efforts in nurturing play and imagination in a stressful and dangerous environment.
Play as a Barometer of Freedom
When a child stops playing—or never feels safe enough to start—it is a signal. A red flag. A warning that something vital is missing.
Play is not frivolous. It is:
A sign of felt safety
A form of identity and voice
A measure of whether a child is thriving or merely surviving
And just as importantly: Not all play is created equal. Child-driven, expressive, spontaneous play is a developmental necessity. Play that is pressured, performative, or co-opted for adult needs is something else entirely—and often, another form of control.
Holding Complexity Without Losing Accountability
For governments to uphold the UNCRC and to hold perpetrators accountable, we must understand the full scope of what they disrupt. That includes seeing how their behavior alters the ecology of childhood—traumatizing the child directly, disrupting the protective parent’s capacity, manipulating children’s freedom, and breaking down the web of conditions needed for joy and creativity.
At the same time, we must identify and celebrate the resilience and creativity of adult and child survivors to create, imagine, and play in environments that are physically and emotionally unsafe. Recognizing survivors’ strengths is not about diminishing men’s responsibility for harm. It is about creating a balanced picture of the realities of families impacted by domestic abuse perpetrators’ behaviors.
Additional Resources
Podcast: Season 5 Episode 11: Empowering Children: Healing from Domestic Abuse with Dr. Asha Patel
Uncovering Coercive Control: A Multimedia Tool for Professionals Who Work with Survivors
David Mandel’s book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence
Safe & Together Institute’s domestic abuse–informed trainings
Safe & Together Institute’s upcoming events
