Children Witnessing/ Exposed to Domestic Violence at Home

Children are vulnerable to domestic violence in their home as they are unable to shield themselves from the violence. Infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities or delays are even more vulnerable to being in the presence of domestic violence within their home. In my role as an Investigator of Child abuse and Neglect I notice a common theme of parents not being aware of the cause and effect relationship between the violence between the adults and the direct and or indirect outcomes for the children witnessing it. My observations with the families that I work with who have dynamics that mirror domestic violence led me to research on the outcomes for children witnessing domestic violence in their home.

According to Kennedy et al (2010) these children in homes where violence is being observed, experience feelings of fear and they also feel threatened. Feeling of fear is a natural response to when one is feeling as though what is presented to them is a threatening.  My concern with the children witnessing the violence and not being shielded from it is the possible problems they may face in the future as a result.  In the article The impact of Family and Community Violence on Children’s Depression Trajectories: Examining The Interactions of  Violence Exposure, Family Social support and Gender , the authors listed “affect regulation and heightened self-blame” as a result of violence exposure to children (Kennedy et al, 2010). This suggests that the children will have difficulties with affect regulation because some emotions are over exposed while others are underexposed to them.  In the cycle of domestic violence, I know there are periods when the batters show anger and frustration, then in the honey moon phase they demonstrate emotions such remorse and sadness. The issue here is that the children are not able to predict their caregiver's emotional response as they fluctuate. The next outcome that Kennedy made reference to was the child feeling a sense of heightened self-blame. These children believe that they did something to cause the violence in their home, while in my opinion they shouldn't feel that way. It should be noted, the “child’s perceived level of threat and self-blame have been identified as key predictors of internalizing problems” (Kennedy et al., 2015). This article makes it clear that each child responds to emotions they view differently and unless the child perceives the violence around them as a threat then the violence won’t have a long term effect on their development; they won’t internalize it. (Kennedy et al., 2010).

In this article a study was done on 160 families, 100 of which had children in the home over eight years of age. The sample of participants came from domestic violence shelters and all participants started this study once they had decided to leave the facility. Questions given to the children were about if they had ever heard the adults yell, call names, threaten to hurt one another, or saw them hurt one another (Kennedy et al., 2010).  The results showed a correlation of “0.78-0.92” which means these children saw or heard these things more than four times in a given week (Kennedy et al, 2010). The study’s purpose was to see the correlation between the violence witnessed, family support and depression.  The findings were interesting, yet not shocking. Children “can be buffered by the effects of violence by family support, particularly from mother” and “children who reported higher initial support had lower depression levels” (Kennedy et al., 2010).  From a community psychology standpoint, I understand the importance of one’s relationship with the community around them. Our systems (micro , meso,  exo, macro, and chrono) play a important role in our development; support within those systems lead to better outcomes. On a micro level, children witnessing domestic violence are affected by the violence attached to the relationships the adults in their home have. While at the macro level there are laws in place that serve to protect those being harmed and to punish those who are causing harm to the other individual. The most important take away message in this article is the importance of family support while dealing with the after math of domestic violence in a child’s home. I know that going forward I am going to begin encouraging the families that I work with to be a resource for one another as research suggest the support piece is crucial to one not internalizing the violence later on in their stages of development.  

 Click Link to See Effects of DV on Children

Kennedy, A. C., Bybee, D., Sullivan, C. M., & Greeson, M. (2010). The impact of family and community  violence on children’s depression trajectories: Examining the interactions of violence exposure, family social support, and gender. Journal Of Family Psychology,(2), 197-207. doi:10.1037/a0018787