Child Abuse and the Behaviors Associated with Domestic Violence

As a former counselor at a woman's shelter for domestic violence, my main responsibility was to counsel children who were in abusive situations. Some of these clients were abused physically, sexually, or mentally while others witnessed abuse in their household. In my own experiences, those who only witnessed events in comparison to those who were directly abused all had various behaviors due to their personal traumas.

There is really no way to classify what kind of behavior a child will display when domestic violence or child abuse occurs. I have seen children who were brutally abused, physically, and acted out in violent ways. Not able to maintain their own anger, children have acted out physically towards other people or objects. I have witnessed many events where children would beat on their mothers, in the shelter, because of something they witnessed and learned in the household. Some of these child victims did not receive physical abuse from the perpetrator, but picked up on the behaviors of the abuser just by viewing his/her actions. It is amazing and saddening to see that actions such as these are considered normal to one single child. One thing is for sure, most of these behaviors are a result of anger. This may be anger towards their mother for leaving the household, anger at themselves for not being able to stop the violence, or simply anger towards minute matters (considering that this is the most popular learned emotion of the child).