Children can be profoundly damaged

Whether a child is part of domestic violence or only witnesses it, it can have a profound impact.
“They’re devastated because they don’t want one parent to be hurt by the other,” said Dr. Sandra Kaplan, the Director of the Division of Trauma Psychiatry at North Shore University Hospital-Zucker Hillside Hospital. She also said, “They’re often very ashamed of what’s going on at home.”
Erin Salvatore, the supervising social worker for Sanctuary for Families at the Family Justice Center in Kew Gardens, said that witnessing domestic violence can affect each child differently, regardless of if they witnessed emotional or physical abuse. Some children may become anxious and be misdiagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Other children, Salvatore said, may instead assume the parent’s problems. They might be a great student who is “mom’s helper” as they try to mitigate her stress.
Children might regress and lose skills they have learned. This could mean that they start wetting the bed or having nightmares. Younger children might also want to sleep in the same bed as their mother.
“Younger children may have more separation anxiety or may be clingier,” Salvatore said. “They might be more likely to regress if they’re younger.”
Kaplan said children might be frightened and anxious. Younger ones might not want to be separated from the parent being abused out of fear that they will not see them again, Kaplan explained.
With children under five, Kaplan said that they might develop separation anxiety and won’t want to leave to go to school.
Salvatore said that “with adolescents we might find more acting out behavior [and] rebellious behavior.” Kaplan said older children, and particularly boys, might imitate the aggressive behavior they have seen at home.
If a child’s home life is chaotic, Kaplan said they might not have the energy to focus on schoolwork and will start to have academic problems.
There are different factors that can impact how a child reacts to witnessing abuse, Salvatore said. This includes how long the child has witnessed the violence and the relationship between the child and abuser.
Sanctuary for Families works with children ages three and up who have witnessed domestic violence, including through individual and group counseling. Some of the children have also been abused.
“Our kind of goal with the counseling is helping them to process the domestic violence that they’ve witnessed and helping to give them coping techniques for whatever is happening with the domestic violence,” Salvatore said.
For example, if a child has nightmares, Salvatore said they might work on developing techniques for changing their thoughts so when they wake up they can think about their safe place. If the child has anxiety in the classroom, they might work on breathing or relaxation techniques.
Salvatore said that another goal of the counseling is to “break the secret of the domestic violence, to really help the parents talk to their kids about it.” She said that many parents come to the center and don’t know how to talk to their children about what happened.
“Our goal is to strengthen the relationship and for the child to leave here and know that they can have that safety and security at home and that they can rely on their parent after they leave here,” she said.
Communication between a parent and child is “very important,” Salvatore said, since the children may have questions about what has happened and the changes that are taking place, such as not being able to see a parent that was the abuser.
Salvatore said that the most rewarding part about working with the children is seeing how they change, including gaining confidence.
“They’re amazingly strong and the families that we see are extremely strong and they really have a will to survive and rebuild,” Salvatore said.
Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence Commissioner Yolanda Jimenez said that the Family Justice Center “really is a great opportunity…to help the children that have witnessed this violence at home and make a difference in trying to break the cycle of violence.”