Childhood should be a time of safety, learning, growth, and protection. Yet too often, when children struggle because of abuse, neglect, abandonment, instability, or harmful family dynamics, attention shifts toward the child’s behavior instead of examining what happened to the child and whether the adults responsible for protecting them fulfilled that responsibility.

Parenthood and caregiving are more than titles. They carry responsibility. Children deserve safety, stability, guidance, emotional support, and a meaningful voice when decisions are being made about their lives. Holding parents and caregivers accountable does not mean automatically assuming a parent is guilty. It means taking allegations seriously, examining evidence fairly, recognizing trauma, and refusing to let parental status alone shield harmful behavior from scrutiny.

This is especially important in our courts. Judges make decisions that can profoundly affect a child’s safety, family relationships, living environment, and future. Judges handling cases involving children should be equipped to recognize child abuse, neglect, abandonment, trauma responses, coercive family dynamics, and the ways trauma can affect a child’s behavior and communication.

Trauma-informed judicial practice is already recognized as important within the juvenile and family court system. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has developed trauma-informed court resources, training, and assessments aimed at helping courts respond more effectively to children and families affected by trauma.

The need is real. Adverse childhood experiences can have lasting effects on a child’s physical health, mental well-being, development, education, relationships, and opportunities later in life. A child’s reaction to trauma should not become the reason we stop investigating the trauma itself.

This issue also inspired my work creating children’s books centered on protecting childhood, healthy boundaries, emotions, safety, and giving children a voice. The message behind that work is the same message behind this petition: children need protectors, and the adults entrusted with protecting them must also be accountable.

I am calling on lawmakers, judicial authorities, and court systems to require comprehensive child-trauma and child-abuse training for judges who make decisions involving children, while strengthening practices that ensure allegations of abuse, neglect, abandonment, and caregiver misconduct are taken seriously and evaluated fairly.

We need to change the question from only, “What is wrong with this child?” to “What happened to this child?”

Every child deserves to be safe, heard, and protected. Sign this petition if you believe our justice system should be equipped to recognize childhood trauma, prioritize child safety, and hold responsible adults accountable when children are harmed.