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TOPIC: What are the possible impacts of domestic violence on children's development? Suggest some solutions to dealing with this problem.

Domestic violence is a social problem that attracts public attention since the 1970s. However, because there has not been having any active involvement on the part of the state, it currently is a systemic problem. Domestic violence is defined by the UNICEF as “ the physical, sexual or mental abuse of parent or caregiver” toward children. This essay will focus on identifying the long-term and short-term effects of domestic violence on children in terms of physical, psychological and suggest some solutions to dealing with domestic violence.

Victims of domestic violence undergo a lot of physical and psychologically painful experience. According to Groves (1990), the damaging effects of childhood experience as a result of exposure or witness to domestic violence depending upon children’s age, and he had group it into three groups: pre-school children, school-age children, and teens. In the first group, a lot of studies had done by Gjelsvir, Verhock, and Pearlman (2003) show that children had presented 44% of domestic violence events, and 47% of three children are under 6 years old. By suffering or witnessing the violence, children in preschool age are likely to do behaviors that they used to do when younger like bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, and they can fell difficulty falling asleep (office of women health, 2019). One thing needs to notice that, in this age, children can not run away to their friends or social organizations to asking for help (Besemer.S., 2017). In the second group, children from 7 to 12 years old can aware of their parent’s illegitimate behavior. That is the reason why they become to feel guilty, blame themselves for the abuse, and have low self-esteem. Furthermore, domestic violence affects not only their study results, and communication skills at school but also their mental health, they have stomachaches and headaches( office at women health, 2019). In the last group of children, the incidence of children witnessing assaults in the family in 2008 underwent a dramatic increase from 5,8% among 2 to 5 years old to 42,2% among 14 to 17 years old, proving by the U.S Department of Justic (2009). Furthermore, children from this group may have some negative behaviors such as violent tendency behaviors, skipping school, and using alcohol or drugs. Moreover, similar to the former group, they also have low self-esteem and communication problems (office of women health, 2019).

This is a problematic issue not only because of the effect on children's health but also because of the strong relations between domestic violence behavior of parents or gives care and the violent tendency of children in the future. According to WHO, 68% of children were punished violently at least once. Besides that, Renner and Slack (2016) claim that children witnessing or suffering the violence can be involved in a violent relationship in the future as an adult neither victims or perpetrators. Some of the inconsistencies have been explained through the heterogeneity of childhood experiences, and the different ways in which children may experience abuse, depending on several factors such as age, gender, and type of violence; these factors are important considerations in the context of the intergenerational transmission of violence, providing by Howell et al.,(2010). For instance, Busby et al., (2008) found that being exposed to violence as a child is one of the factors which lead to children experiencing domestic violence as an adult. Besides that, Adams (2007) did a study comprehensively examined the life story of 31 males who killed their wife show that these males were exposed to risk factors when younger, including domestic violence.

To address this problem, make “home” become a special place that provides safety, comfort, and peace for all children, immediate action is necessary, everyone, including the government, needs aware that stopping this social evil is their responsibility. With the government and social organizations, they should work with domestic violence perpetrators to change their behavior by holding programs that give treatment to perpetrators. Because 44% of the perpetrators of the 70 clients of Southside's Independent Domestic Violence Advice Service (IDVA) whose data was used for research purposes over the six months between 1st April 2015 and 30th September 2015, were thought to have mental health issues. 12 months after starting the program, two indicators for physical, sexual violence reduced from 30% and 29% to zero. The study of the University of Birmingham(2018) found that there has a 40-50% reduction on domestic violence for perpetrators that attended a community-based program that aimed to heal the mental health and psychological problem of abusers. As the role of an individual, there have things that people can do to support, help children escape from domestic violence, and receive treatment such as be their friend, check them regularly, be a good listener, and help children find things that they love( domesticshetters.org, 2016). Or reporting to Vietnamese state agencies, political organizations, WHO, if recognizing any perpetrators of domestic violence or victims.

In conclusion, domestic violence’s impact is enormous for both long-term and short-term effects or physical and psychological. However, this problem can be clarified by treatment programs for perpetrators and individual help for children to support their healing time or escape from violence.