Children Who Live Domestic Violence

Children Who Live Domestic Violence

WRITTEN BY: MOTHER JUSTICE / July 2, 2016

In 2004, I attended a Praxis International training where one of the conversations was, “what do we call the issue of children who are living in the same home with, or are parented by, a perpetrator of domestic violence?” Many ideas were thrown around, including, “children exposed to domestic violence.” I call it “children living domestic violence,” because – from my perspective – they are dealing with the exact same tactics that their adult victim counterparts do.

It is a dangerous myth that just because batterers abuse their adult victims doesn’t mean they will abuse children in their home. Not only are abusers harmful and neglectful as parents, they are willing to use children as “collateral damage” to maintain their dominance in their intimate relationships. We minimize abusers’ direct impact on children when we make “Using Children” a symptom of coercive control against adult victims, instead of recognizing that perpetrators deliberately use the exact same tactics of power and control on their child victims in order to gain their partner’s compliance.

Here are some examples of how: CLICK HERE

Every child who “lives domestic violence” experiences it in different ways. Children are remarkable in their resiliency, but they must be protected from continued exposure with their caretaker’s abuser in order to heal.

Here are some symptoms of children who live domestic violence: CLICK HERE