Effects of Family Violence on children

Children who are living in an environment where Family Violence is occurring are also at a high risk to experience violence and/or abuse either directly or indirectly. Witnessing or experiencing Family Violence has an extreme negative impact on children that can result in emotional and psychological trauma.

Children exposed to Family Violence can develop behavioural difficulties, for example:

1. Low self-esteem
2. Increased levels of anxiety
3. Repressed feelings of fear, anger, guilt and confusion
4. Regression
5. Clinginess
6. Aggression/temper tantrums
7. Sleeping problems, such as nightmares, difficulties falling asleep etc.
8. Fear of being touched or close to someone
9. Lack of trust
10. Fear of making mistakes
11. Restlessness
12. Suicidal thoughts
13. Inability to form stable relationships
14. Eating problems, such as increased or decreased appetite
15. Stress-related physical symptoms, such as bed wetting, headaches, stomach aches etc.
16. Poor school performance
17. Difficulties to concentrate
18. Decreased cognitive abilities
19. Lack of social competence
20. Self-harming tendencies, such as hair pulling, nail biting, etc.
21. Alcohol and drug abuse

Children often feel responsible for the violence and do not understand that it is a problem between adults. They might feel that parents are fighting because their school performance, fighting with siblings etc. The egocentric view of being the centre of the world increases this view and their fear of being the cause for the violence and abuse.

In particular older children feel the need of protecting the ones that are being hurt, such as the victim of abuse and/or younger siblings. This might bring the child in dangerous situation with an increasing chance of getting hurt directly.

Family violence often leaves the child with a feeling of confusion in particular when they feel close to both parents. Their feelings of love and affection towards both parents conflicts with what is happing between them.

Experiencing Family Violence is closely related to loyalty conflicts in children. Children often feel in the middle of the conflict between their parents and sense that parents want them to be on their side. The love towards both parents makes it impossible to deal with this situation. Some children might side with one parent while others might feel that they cannot relate to any one of their parents.

Some children develop the strategy of acting out their feelings by increasing their negative behaviour. Often parents misunderstand this strategy and see it as disobeying what they request. Punishment as a reaction is very contradictive as it ignores the children feelings and increases their thoughts of being the cause for the Family Violence.

Parents are role models and children who experience Family Violence learn from their parents. Children learn that Family Violence is acceptable and that it is OK to be loved and hurt at the same time. They believe in what they see: Females are weak and more often the victims and males are strong and more often the perpetrators. They accept that living in a distressing environment is part of life.