1. Why is it important to consider the age when a child is exposed to domestic v

Question

1. Why is it important to consider the age when a child is exposed to domestic violence?

2. Identify and describe the effects of witnessing domestic violence on a child of 3, 10 and 13.

3.  Identify and describe at least 3 ways that professionals/helpers can effectively respond to child witnesses of domestic violence.

4. What behaviors might parents expect to see in their children and what strategies should parents employ to help manage these behaviors?

4.  List at least 2 resources (and/or resource agencies) that would be helpful to professionals working with child witnesses.  Describe the resources and/or services provided by the resource agencies.

Explanation / Answer

Age determines the social constructs and the cognitive development of the child. Younger children are susceptible to be emotionally vulnerable and can naturally feel out of control with the situation. Age of the child also helps us to understand how has the child internalized the violence. The scope and avenues for the child to escape the violence is also governed a lot by age of the child.

Younger children are more dependant on the parent who can be the possible perpratrator. Hence this can create emotional instability in the child.

The age also helps the therapist to determine what type of therapy will help the child to deal with the stress and anxiety.

2. A three year old child is absolutely dependant on his parents . The ability of the child to deal with the stress and violence is weak. They internalize the violence they are being subjected to and can can learn to believe this to be the norm. Though this entire premise can be based on anxiety and wanting to escape the situation. But in such cases where the child is as young as 3, the probability of the child to develop learned helplessness is strong.

A ten year old child who is being subjected to violence can display inappropriate emotional maturity or attachment with people around him. The child will definitely have mistrust and a feeling of being exploited. The child is cognitively better equiped than a 3 year old and hence can also find himself linguistically in a a better position to express his condition and stress.

A 13 year old, an adolescent is though the eldest of the three age categories . may find himself to be the most vulnerable. He may learn violence as the way to deal with any conflicting situation and can perpretrate it towards a target weaker than him. The hormonal changes and external stressors can together create a lethal combination for an adolescent to cope with

Irrespective of age, Domestic abuse will create plethora of issues for a child. Besides the emotional negativity of shame, guilt, helplessness fear, depression to name a few, the child will also exhibit psychosomatic symptoms of loss of apetite, sleep disorders, fatigue, irritability.

Domestic violence will go on to impact their attention span and their behavioral conduct in school and will hence hamper their acadmic performance.

The helpless feeling of wanting to escape the situation but not able to due to the powerful adult perpretrator can make them frustrated and victimized.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse 1
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.