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(ibid). Children's Responses To Witnessing Domestic Violence Will Depend On ...

(Ibid).
Children's responses to witnessing domestic violence will depend on age, race, class, sex, stage of development, and the support of others. (Women's Aid). Children may feel angry at their mother or father for not protecting them, as well as blaming them for causing the violence. Others may be so concerned about their mother's distress that they keep private their own grief (Saunders, 1995. From Women's Aid).

Long Term effects
Research by Fantuzzo and Mohr concluded that children who live in violent households are at greater risk of being maladjusted. (Fantuzzo and Mohr 1999: 22.) Some of these problems include:
Behaviour Modelling
In very young children through to adolescent age, behaviour is often modelled on people who the individual spends significant time with. Piaget in his 1972 publication noted that children's play behaviour involves modelling on those around them, and eventually to reproducing that behaviour at any given time or place.
As children grow up the parent figure becomes a role-model and if an abusive relationship exists then this trust is taken away. In a study conducted by American researchers on aggression and violence in adolescent boys, 15 interviewees were asked questions which sought to identify areas for improvement concerning intervention and prevention. Participants disclosed that their aggressive responses to provocation were frequently modelled on responses that they had seen exhibited by others, particularly those observed among immediate and extended family members. For example, a respondent called Dan said the following about his father:
He gets mad too quickly.... He'll get aggravated and he'll just explode and
that's when the fights start.... We'll argue and then I'll get mad and tell
him some stuff and then he'll get mad and just start yelling and then like
one of us will go after the other, and then we're fighting so my mother
will try to break it up or call the police. (Ballou et al 2002: 221).
Not all interviewees connected their behaviour with their families, however, there were many family interactions which involved aggression and domestic violence. It is perhaps the impact of what children witness that remains with them and encourages them to learn negative behavioural responses more quickly. As Brian explained, "When I was younger, I didn't have a very organized family at all, so I looked towards the people on the streets. That's when it gets you in trouble."
Social Integration
The abused child's unstable, often dangerous, home environment is likely to limit the child's development of social skills, self-confidence, and experience of positive interactions (Herrenkohl et al., 1995). Taken from Cooper 1999: 10). Children who grow up in a violent, unpredictable family have a `world view' in which potential threat is constantly present.


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