Children and Domestic Violence

Copyright ©2006 Sure Woman.com/Dawn G. Prince

“As I’d lay there in my bed waiting for the time to come for me to go in the kitchen, pick my mother up off the floor and wipe the blood from her face, I’d always wonder if she’d still be breathing when I got there. Quiet. Did he stab her this time? Did he shoot her?”

This is part of the preface to “Woman at the Well” and the voice of then 10-year-old T.K. Jordan retelling of her childhood amid domestic violence. She’s like 3 million other children who fall prey to the ravages of domestic violence that not only tears apart families but also impacts the victims emotionally and physically.

Domestic violence turns a home that should be a place of love and encouragement into a battlefield of fear for a child. A national survey of over 6000 families shows that half of men who frequently assaulted their wives frequently abused their children (Strauss & Gelles, 1990), and nearly half the household where domestic violence occurs also has a child under 12 years old (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998).

“They are the victimless voices. They don’t have a role in anything parents do. Parents need to stop treating their children as volleyballs. We live with that the “kids should be seen and not heard,” that’s how they treated,” says Susan Murphy-Milano, an advocate who’s fought for the rights and justice for abused women and children.

Children who grow up amid domestic violence often have behavioral, emotional and social problems. According to The American Academy of Experts on Traumatic Stress (AAETS), it is often difficult for younger children to verbalize their emotions and their stress manifests itself in behavioral ways such as hitting and biting. Pre adolescents may exhibit anti-social behavior, sleeping disorders, threatening siblings or fighting with siblings and peers and withdrawal while teenagers who grow up with domestic violence are prone to high failure and dropout rates, delinquency and substance abuse.

While boys are more likely to act out in aggression, girls tend to withdraw and unfortunately the signs of trouble may be missed. Studies show that a history of family violence or abuse is the most significant difference between delinquent and non-delinquent youth, according to the AAETS.

Jade, the 27-year-old mother we met earlier in the series has 3 children (all under 10) that often witness her common-law husband beating her. And while there could be several explanations for his behavior, her oldest son acts out in ways typical of children who grow up amid domestic violence.

According to her sister, he disrespects and talks back to his mother because he sees his father doing it. He’s also mean and rough with his younger sister, pushing and yelling at her for no reason. Having difficulties at school and a slow learner, he’s in a special class.

“He’s not afraid of her because he sees his father treating her this way,” says her sister. “It's kinda like she's got no control over him, at times.”

A lot of times children who witness abuse will get in the middle of the fights and sometimes get hurt trying to defend their mother. Jordan recalls an incident from her childhood when her mother was pregnant and her father was assaulting her.

“My mother was about 5 months pregnant with my brother and my dad started throwing things at her,” says Jordan. “So I jumped in front of her and allowed everything he threw to hit me in an effort to protect not only my mother but also my unborn brother.”

Jade’s son also tries to protect his mother—asking his mother to help him with homework to get her away from his father in the middle of a fight, or he will peek from the bedroom door to make sure he isn’t hurting her. The middle one cries and begs daddy not to hurt mommy—even the young baby’s cries can be heard above Jade’s crying and the father’s yelling.

More than putting the children in the middle of the chaos and violence, the father uses them to get to Jade after he beats her. The sister says when he calls to speak with them, he tells them to tell mommy that he loves and misses her and he brings them presents. They then get upset with the mother because they feel like the father is sorry and wants to come home, and she is the reason that daddy is not coming home.

“The kids just want for everyone to be happy and live a normal life—with two parents,” says her sister. “Later when daddy's not on the phone anymore, the kids will say stuff like – ‘I miss my daddy, I want my daddy to come home.’” The secret nature of domestic violence also makes children responsible for keeping the family secret. A lot of them grow up knowing that what goes on behind closed doors stays behind closed doors and a lot of times, they don’t bring up the subject or take friends home because they don’t want the secret getting out.

“The kids are very aware of what’s going on, but they won’t talk about it,” continues her sister. “They’re being taught to lie (even the 5-year-old); if I ask if daddy was at the house (after he beats her), she tries to lie to me. They were taught at a young age not to discuss private family life stuff.”

And even when children speak out, sometimes they are not believed. Murphy-Milano, in grade five, wrote a poem about a man who drank and carried a gun. She was talking about her own father, a violent crimes detective who later killed her mother, but the school deemed her a liar and a problem child who made up stories.

“You know I was suspended for that,” she says. “We were afraid of him, he had a gun. I remember as a kid running to the phone to make a phone call and it would be torn out of the wall…nobody believed.”

The emotional impact of domestic violence can have lasting effects. Even though a child might appear unaffected, problems could surface later on as they try to form intimate and social relationships. Jordan, whose father also watched his father beat his mother, witnessed her mother being beaten by her father. Growing up her “self-esteem was fine,” but having had her first child by the time she was eighteen, she started on a roller coaster that heralded five marriages by the time she was thirty-four.

“As an adult, once I entered the “love game” I had issues with fear of loneliness, abandonment that probably came from my childhood. I do believe that these issues had a lot of negative effects on my decisions where men were concerned.”

In part of the preface from the book, “Woman at The Well,” she writes, ”Who could sleep through slaps across the face so loud it sounded like symbols clanging together? Who could sleep through furniture being knocked over, the sound bouncing off the wall like thunder? Who could sleep through piercing screams?”

Today, some twenty something years later, she and her siblings still have trouble sleeping at night. Although she’s gotten off the roller coaster and has taken control of her life, she’s still shocked and tearful when in speaking engagements they dramatize the explosive preface to the book and it all comes rushing back.

Jordan says,” The most devastating bruises are not the black eyes. It is not the ones we can see, because they heal. But the most detrimental bruises are those damaging blows to the spirit of that child.”

It is important that children receive counseling and get involved in programs designed to nurture a child’ emotional well-being. Children need to feel safe and secure in order to break the cycle and prevent them from carrying the pattern into adulthood. Research suggests that there is an increased risk for boys who grow up in homes with domestic violence to abuse in their adult intimate relationships (Office for The Prevention of Domestic Violence).

Even though some studies insist that women who grow up in abusive relationships aren’t likely to go on to be abused, exposure to violence didn’t prevent some of the women who told their stories in the first three parts of this series from entering such relationships. Monica Young mother’s lover abused her as well as the mother and she found herself in the same situation as an adult. Carolyn Chappelle sees the similarities between her abuse first marriage and that of her parents’ abusive marriage and Jordan’s traumatic childhood of seeing her mother abused, left her moving from relationship to relationship to get past the pain.

“There are patterns. You know the old adage, I’ve become my father; I have become my mother,” says Murphy-Milano. “Later on in life, there are certain things that we do that we attribute to that. It becomes automatic. It’s learned behavior. We have to unlearn what we expose our kids to or ourselves to.”

Teenage Dating Violence

Top National Domestic Violence Hotline:
1-800-799-7223(SAFE)