Q & A: Can play-fighting lead to serious abuse?

06.28.2010

On March 13, 2010, PADV Teen Scene sponsored our 1st annual Spotlight on Teen Dating Violence summit. We gathered some questions that we were unable to answer during the summit, so we are going to answer them here on our blog. Check back as we answer more questions.

Q: Do you think that two people in a relationship together that play fight could lead to serious abuse?

A: According to Wikipedia, “In humans, play fighting (sometimes called roughhousing or horse-playing) is an activity in which two or more people act as though they are in combat, but without actually meaning to harm their partners, nor dealing sufficient bodily harm to make the game unenjoyable.” However, when we are talking about play fighting where potential teen dating violence is concerned, we might want to look a little more closely. Are both people really okay with it? When does it go too far? Is there a safe word like, “Stop!" or, "Truce!” that both people will respect and listen to?

I think that acting out physically can often be a tool used by those that don’t know the power of verbal communication. Learning ways to express ourselves verbally and through written form is a much more effective way to show emotion and communicate with our partners. Therefore, if you or your partner play fight a lot it might mean you don’t have healthy communication. Also, physical aggressiveness is an indicator of violent tendencies.

And do we really want to wrestle with our partners? Wikipedia goes on to say, “Similar behavior is visible in other animals including cats, dogs, gorillas and kangaroos.” Since being in a relationship isn’t about combat or acting like kangaroos, I think we can move away from play fighting with our partners.

-- Laura B.

International Women's Day

03.09.2010

Yesterday was International Women's Day which celebrated women and encouraged us to take a moment and reflect on women's issues around the world. For us at PADV Teen Scene, we reflected on the work that we do, the amount of progress that we've made in our community and how far we have to go in reaching our goal of ending teen dating violence.

Last year, PADV presented a total of 67 Teen Dating Violence presentations to 2,939 participants. By giving these presentations at schools, churches and youth groups, we were able to provide the metro Atlanta community with more information about teen dating violence, how to recognize the warning signs in an abusive relationship and tools on establishing healthy dating relationships.

For our first annual Spotlight on Teen Dating Violence summit, we have more than 200 teens, parents, educators, youth leaders and community members coming out to Clark Atlanta University this Saturday. We were overwhelmed and overjoyed at the response from the community. In correlation with our summit, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an article promoting the event and sharing the stories of two survivors of teen dating violence; one of which will be sharing their story at the event.

While we are glad to see such great results, but we hope that next year we can reach out to even more teens, parents and youth leaders. If you live in metro Atlanta and are interested in benefiting from a teen dating violence presentation, call PADV at 404-870-9600. For more information, go to http://www.padv.org.