Emotionally affected children
To understand why this impacts on children emotionally, we have to understand "attachment".
Children need to have what is known as a healthy "attachment" with the adults that care for them. A healthy attachment starts from birth between the carers and the child. This is an important part of the child's development, which allows the child to grow into a healthy adult. Children who have a secure attachment are able to trust, love, be confident and feel good about themselves. This means as they grow up they will be able to know what is right and wrong, do well at school, and have good healthy relationships.
To develop a healthy attachment, carers need to be able to offer love, respond in a calm, consistent manner and meet all the child's basic needs like feeding, clothing, bathing, etc. It is important to offer a child a safe and secure environment. However, in situations where there is domestic abuse the environment becomes unsafe, and carers become so caught up with the abuse that it leaves little or no time to care for children. In some situations carers are injured themselves, which means it's harder for them to care.
Here is a list of reported forms of harm that children have suffered, or are likely to suffer in an environment where domestic abuse takes place:
- Weight loss
- Eating disorder
- Stomach aches
- Anxiety and panic attacks
- Living in fear
- Being angry, and/or copying the abuser's behaviour
- Depression
- Experiencing nightmares or sleep disturbances
- Feeling the need to run away from what should be a safe environment
- Children suffer risk of self harm
- Children suffer risk from drug and alcohol misuse, especially if they are trying to escape the emotions that they are feeling
- Many of these concerns often cause the child to bed wet