Parents, foster carers, school staff and child protection practitioners can use this child emotional abuse poster to help identify harmful behaviour that may not leave physical injuries. It offers clear language for discussing non-physical abuse, emotional harm and coercive behaviour affecting children and young people.
The five illustrated panels name shouting, humiliation, rejection, control, and threats and intimidation as forms of abuse that can harm a child without visible bruises. Each panel gives a short, plain-English explanation, helping adults distinguish repeated frightening or degrading behaviour from ordinary conflict or appropriate boundaries.
Shouting is described as repeated yelling, screaming, or using words and tone to frighten a child. The humiliation panel covers mocking, insulting, shaming and putting a child down, while rejection highlights repeatedly excluding a child, withholding affection, or making them feel unwanted.
The control and threats sections make the poster especially relevant for safeguarding conversations. They identify excessive or frightening control over a child’s age-appropriate choices, alongside threats of harm, abandonment, punishment or other consequences used to force compliance. Speech bubbles provide simple examples of the messages a child may hear.
Printed for a staff room, family support session, parenting course or safeguarding display, the poster can support careful conversations with parents, carers, social workers, teachers and trusted adults. It may also be used as a visual prompt when explaining emotional abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse and coercive control to older children and teenagers in an age-appropriate setting.
A closing message reinforces that children can feel scared, controlled, rejected and alone even when harm leaves no visible marks. The single-page format makes it suitable as a quick child welfare awareness handout or discussion prompt.
