Effects of DV on children

A couple of weeks ago we introduced and defined what “exposure to DV” meant to children. This week, let’s have a look at the effects of that exposure.

Some of the common symptoms that children exposed to DV show include:
• Aggression: towards parents, siblings, classmates, etc.
• Sleep difficulties: such as difficulty falling and staying asleep, nightmares, sleep-wetting, etc.
• Anxiety: which can be specific (such as fear of abandonment) or general (diffuse, without particular cause)
• Stress-related ailments: such as headaches, stomachaches, rashes, etc.
• Developmental regression: in terms of toilet training, cognitive and language development
• Increased distractibility, withdrawal, or apathy, all of which can lead to -->
• Difficulties in school
• Deterioration in parent-child relationship
• [Also, there can be long-term problems: including, but not limited to, higher levels of adult depression and trauma symptoms, increased tolerance for and use of violence in adult relationships]

Children, of course, don’t necessarily recognize that their headaches or nightmares are a result of their exposure to DV. They experience DV in a different way. They often suffer from:
• Chronic worries: that the adults they depend on can’t take care of the family
• Embarrassment or shame: They may believe that they were responsible for it; and they may feel shameful, especially if they were warned not to talk about the DV to others
• “Parentification”: refers to children who ‘grow up too fast’ because they end up raising younger siblings or protecting parents
• Ambivalence towards parents: since children might feel anger (towards the father for perpetrating the violence, towards the mother for not fighting back), guilt (for not doing enough to stop the violence), fear (that they will be abused or abandoned), worry (whether they are still loved), etc. They may feel a preference for one parent over another, and then may feel guilty for ‘choosing.’ This ambivalence can get further compounded by parents who use their children as a bargaining chip or threat.

Are all children equally affected? Not quite. Children have a wide range of reactions to exposure to DV; sometimes the effects are clear, and sometimes they are subtle. Not all children are completely traumatized. Generally speaking, the children who are most affected are those who are:
• younger, since they are less able to make sense of the events
• exposed to DV frequently, and over a period of time
• from families that have other risk factors such as poverty, substance abuse, and mental health problems
• not protected by their parents
• not supported by other caring adults in their lives, including family members and teachers
Girls and boys tend to be equally affected, although they express their symptoms differently – the former internalize (depression, anxiety, isolation), while the latter externalize (aggression, acting out).

In next week’s (final) installment on this topic, we’ll look at how to use this information to work with children who’ve been exposed to DV.

Note: If the information in this blog entry looks a lot like a PowerPoint presentation, it’s because it is from one! A few weeks ago, I had a chance to talk about this topic with a group of people who were attempting to start a program for children who had been exposed to DV. The entries from last week, this week, and next week are all adapted from that presentation.