I need help with my melee combat system

I've been scouring the internet all day long and I am still very perplexed by this. I hope somebody here can help me. My main issue is that child trigger colliders just don't like me. Or I'm doing something wrong. It's making my head hurt.
Essentially, I am making a 2D top down melee system. The player character is surrounded by four different trigger colliders that turn on and off with a button press, depending on which direction they are facing, and this works fine. However, the main issue arises with the player receiving damage. There is a script attached to the player that determines their health. It looks for a collision with an enemy in order to take damage. The player activating their attack from a distance counts towards being hit by the enemy, however, as the attack colliders are children of the player. Obviously, the player taking damage from landing attacks is not the result I desire.
Am I doing this all wrong? I really hate colliders and the fact that children colliders can never act as their own objects...

 

Bumping.

 

Anybody?

 

So in a nutshell, whenever the player attacks, they're hurting themselves as well?

It sounds like you're using the same colliders for both dealing out damage, and also for receiving damage.

Am I understanding the issue correctly?