Rigidbody, Collider, Attacking causes Bouncing

I have a character with a rigidbody and a box collider. When the character attacks, it creates a box collider in the area directly in front of itself, and this instance of the collider is a child of the rigidbodyCharacter. This allows me to pass information to the character about what was hit, and then to do damage and all that stuff.

The problem is that when the attackCollider hits something, the physics engine acts like the characterRigidbody clipped into whatever got hit and shoves the characterRigidbody away. This sometimes causes the character to clip through objects completely and fall through game geometry.

Aside from instancing the attackCollider as not-a-child, how can I detect collision without the attackCollider interacting with it’s parent’s rigidbody?

Use a trigger, or layering. Check out the collision matrix.