The Impact on Children: Direct Victims, Not Witnesses

Developmental Trauma and Neurobiological Alterations

It is a serious and outdated conceptual error to consider children living in violent homes as mere "witnesses" or "bystanders" to violence between their parents.

Clinical and forensic evidence confirms that they are direct victims of psychological, emotional and environmental violence, even if the aggressor never lays a hand on them physically.

They live in an environment of "intimate terrorism" where their personality development occurs in a minefield.

Chronic exposure to conflict physically alters the developing brain architecture.

Children living in a constant state of alert have toxic levels of cortisol, which affects the development of the prefrontal cortex (responsible for emotional regulation, planning and learning) and causes hypertrophy of the amygdala (the fear center).

This results in cognitive sequelae such as concentration difficulties, memory problems and misdiagnosis of ADHD, when in fact it is a nervous system dysregulated by survival.

At the emotional level, they suffer from "complex trauma": inability to regulate anger, generalized anxiety and a distorted view of human relationships, learning that love and violence are compatible and that coercion is a valid form of interaction.

Symptomatology: Somatization, Regressions and Selective Fear

Because children often lack the vocabulary or cognitive maturity to verbalize abuse ("my dad abuses me"), their language is the physical and behavioral symptom.

A frequent clinical indicator is somatization: unprocessable emotional pain is transformed into actual physical pain.

Constant complaints of stomach pain, headaches without medical cause, recurrent nausea or dermatological problems are warning signs that the pediatrician or teacher should investigate.

Behaviorally, regressions to earlier developmental stages, such as returning to bedwetting (enuresis), baby talk or thumb sucking, occur as an unconscious attempt to return to a time of perceived security.

A critical sign is "selective fear": a child who panics, cries uncontrollably or stiffens the body when having to visit or be alone with a specific parent.

In the therapeutic setting, play becomes the diagnostic tool par excellence: children reproduce in their play activity the violence they witness, attacking dolls or sexualizing play in an age-inappropriate way, thus revealing t