Children are resilient, right? Many times, parents, caregivers, and even professionals can promote protective factors of resiliency within our children.

Although resiliency is a trait not to be undermined, domestic violence is a traumatic event that has harmful, lasting impacts on children.

There are a number of ways domestic violence exposure can impact children by:

• Witnessing: Visually seeing and hearing violence happen or violence aftermath
• Intervening: Getting in between abusive and non-abusive parent during violence
• Messenger: Relaying information (verbal or physical) to non-abusive spouse
• Protecting: Intervening to minimize harm to non-abusive parent
• Joining: Intervening to participate in violence against non-abusive parent
• Confidant: Abusive or non-abusive parent discusses adult content and abuse with the child like a friend
• Caretaker: Takes on adult responsibilities to care for parents during or after violence
• Distractor: Attempts to call attention to self to distract abusive parent
• Hiding: Stays out of sight during violence
• Escaping: Leaves the space where violence is happening

There may be immediate reactions a child can experience after domestic violence exposure. There are also harmful impacts over the lifetime of children.

In part 2, I will discuss this further in detail and provide warning signs that counseling may be necessary.

Porsha Jones, LMFT