The things that are a stop rather than a lesson

These are here in lesson one rather than at the end, because somebody in a bad enough state may never reach lesson six, and because getting help early is cheaper than getting it late.

You have hit your child in anger, or hard enough to leave a mark. You are frightened of what you might do. Your child is frightened of you. Somebody else in the home is hurting the child. Your child has stopped eating, stopped sleeping, is hurting themselves, or has said something about not wanting to be alive. You are not getting through the day and the child is going without. You feel nothing towards the child.

Every one of those is a reason to talk to somebody this week rather than to read on. Lesson six says who and what happens. None of them makes you a monster, and several of them are far more common than anyone admits out loud.