Speaker: Domestic violence can affect unborn child

By Ed Runyan | October 17, 2015 at 12:07a.m.

WARREN

An overflow crowd at Friday’s daylong Trumbull County Domestic Violence Task Force round table at DiVieste Banquet Room heard a presentation on the effects on the development of a child’s brain when domestic violence is present.

Barbara Oehlberg, a child-trauma consultant and author, said a child whose caregiver is stressed by the trauma of domestic violence passes that stress on to a child.

“The mother cannot attach to her infant if she does not feel safe and secure,” Oehlberg said. One reason this is important, she said, is that a strong attachment stimulates brain development.

A mother or other caregiver experiencing the stress of domestic violence can even pass along the stress hormone cortisol to her child in the womb.

“The [cortisol] travels right to the umbilical cord and affects the fetus as its very, very vulnerable brain is being developed,” she said.

In the first eight to 18 weeks after birth, part of the child’s brain is building the “scaffolding” used by the brain “which serves as the foundation for the child’s lifetime capacity for stress management, for self-regulation and empathy,” she said.

What Oehlberg tries to teach educators is to look at unacceptable behavior among children as “stress behavior,” the result of not getting a strong attachment to another human being in infancy, which produces fear of abandonment.

Oehlberg said the damage to brain development that results can last a person’s entire life “unless we find a way to intervene,” she said, noting that many of the professionals in the room – such as social workers and counselors – do that kind of work.

People with behaviors tied to attachment issues can demonstrate problems with adult relationships, but it usually doesn’t present itself in the dating stage of a relationship.

It’s more typical of the early stages of marriage if things aren’t going really well “and the new wife begins to hold back,” Oehlberg said. The person with attachment issues may perceive that his partner “is separating from him, and that brings on the anxiety ‘I am going to be abandoned again,’ and that starts the round of aggression.”