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The effect of child abuse on children's development
Effect of child abuse
Negative effects of child abuse and neglect
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Recommended: The effect of child abuse on children's development
Most people do not know how to cope with abused children. I became interested in this topic because when I was a teenager I had a friend who was abused by her stepfather and I didn’t know how to help her. I would like to know how children’s psychological development is affected, and how we can help these children cope with their misfortune. The most common effect is that maltreated children are, essentially, rejected. These destructive experiences impact on the developing child, increasing the risks for emotional, behavioral, social and physical problems throughout life. The purpose of this paper is to outline how these experiences may result in such increased risks by influencing the development of the child’s psychology.
Psychological Development
Child abuse is not a new problem. Each year in the United States alone, there are over three million children who are abused or neglected by their parents or caregivers. Many are brutally beaten and permanently injured. Child abuse has been a problem that has existed through out history and in recent years many researchers have begun dealing with this issue. There is a variation among researches on their approach to the topic. Child abuse is not only the mental or physical injury it is also sexual. These kinds of abuses harm the child’s mental and physical health. The emotional and psychological effects of maltreatment may be far more harmful to the well being of the child than the apparent physical injury. Many studies indicate that abused children are at increase risk of becoming like their parents and repeating the abusive pattern of child rearing to which they were exposed (national committee for prevention of child abuse 1983).
Background
Child abuse and neglect has recently become the focus of attention of all prevention centers and organizations for children care. Mistreatment of children has existed through history. Children are unable to protect themselves of physical abuse. They have been abandoned, terrorized, beaten, killed and sexual abused. A major portion of the literature of my review focused on child abuse has dealt with the personality characteristics of the abusive parent and the abused child rather than focus on the psychological damage sustained by the abused child.
When we think of a “family” in a typical setting around the fireplace we may picture a beautiful and calm environment where everything is perfect. The reality here in this domestic tranquility is when we realize that the concept of “family” is the most frequent place of all types of violence (Gelles, 1979).
Child Abuse is a worldwide issue, children are being abused on a daily basis. Child abuse occurs more often than people think. Child abuse comes in many forms such as: emotional, physi-cal, sexual, neglect, and verbal abuse. In the study by Carpenter, Shattuck, Tyrka, Geracioti, and Price (2011), the reader can see how child abuse can alter the whole way someone looks at the world. Child abuse is a serious problem that affects even the victim 's family or friends. Victims of child abuse show many signs of the trauma they have faced.
Currently, there are many children whom suffer from emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in their family. Emotional abuse is the lack of interest or affection parents have towards their children. As a result of emotional abuse, children are left feeling worthless and unloved. Physical abuse refers to attacking children resulting visible bodily injuries from either being burned, pushed, punched, slapped, or whipped. Sometimes physical abuse can be extremely severe that children have broken bones, fractures, or hemorrhaging. Sexual abuse occurs when a person forces, tricks, or threatens children to have sexual contact. These acts of child abuse could prevent children from living a normal adulthood. In order to deal with such a traumatic childhood, adults abused as children should rid themselves of such burdensome, painful memories.
Psychological maltreatment, like many other forms of abuse can also be passed down through intergenerational transmission. It is not unlikely for parents to psychologically mistreat their children due to their own past or childhood experiences with psychologically abuse. For example, it is not uncommon during the course of an investigation of physiological maltreatment that it is discovered that the perpetrator had their own form of abuse history in the past. Often time’s people look at psychological maltreatment as a consequence resulting from some other form of abuse, mainly physical and sexual, but tend to overlook the fact that it may also occur as an individual form. Psychological maltreatment can take more than one form. During the course of researching for this paper I learned that there are three typical forms of behavior in which people follow when displaying this type of abuse against children. The three types are acting in an aggressive, rejecting, and lessening
Child abuse goes way back in history starting from the time when a little 10 year old girl got removed from her parents home in 1874. The case is connected to the founding of the New York Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which gave rise to the founding of similar societies (National Association of Counsel for Children). Most children under the age of 3 tended to have a higher rate of victimization and girls had a higher risk than boys. Sexual abuse was frequently associated with family problems such as parental alcholism, parental rejection, and parental marital conflict (Bright Futures 4 Kids). Throughtout history, child abuse seems to be less crucial and likely than it was before because back then there was a lower rate of child care. Man...
This paper will investigate the abuse of children and some of the ways which young children are affected developmentally. I will try and present an overview of the major types of abuse but my big focus and most of my research has been to cover sexual abuse and its effect on development in young children and how it can affect brain development.
Many children who have experienced sexual abuse do not realize the impact it has on their lives. Children are afraid to break the silence about their sexual abuse and report it because of the reaction from parents, family members, or the fear of breaking up the family. Children keep quiet about their sexual abuse because of their involvement and fear of being rejected by others. Children may also keep silent due to the fear of their perpetrator or their perpetrator has trained the child to believe it was their fault. Many children who have never received the proper help will suffer with long lasting effects from sexual abuse. It is very important to counsel children who have been sexually abused at a young age. Sexual abuse can be very harmful in a child’s younger and adolescent years when developing in the ...
Child abuse is a serious issue in today's society. Many people have been victims of child abuse. There are three forms of child abuse: physical, emotional, and sexual. Many researchers believe that sexual abuse is the most detremental of the three. A middle-aged adult who is feeling depressed will probably not relate it back to his childhood, but maybe he should. The short-term effects of childhood sexual abuse have been proven valid, but now the question is, do the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse affect middle-aged adults? Many contradicting views arise from the subject of childhood sexual abuse. Researchers and psychologists argue on this issue. Childhood sexual abuse has the potential to damage a child physically, emotionally, and behaviorally for the rest of his or her childhood, and the effects have been connected to lasting into middle-aged adulthood.
Martina, Harold P. The Abused Child: a multidisciplinary approach to developmental issues and treatment. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Pub. Co., 1976.
A lack of child development can be caused through physical abuse which can include severe harm to an adolescent through violence involving kicking, hitting, burning, cutting or any other act that may leave a visible mark on a child’s body. Emotional abuse is trauma to a child in which they are open to a world of shame and humiliation instead of their parents of legal guardian loving, supporting, encouraging, and caring for them they are humiliated with excessively severe criticism, unnecessary isolation, causing severe guilt and causing fear or terror. Also Sexual abuse can often fall under both physical and emotional abuse due to the experience of multiple traumas. Furthermore all of the abuse leads to a lack of child development, and child development is a major and critical step needed to become an adult which for most children in the United States is eighteen and that age is for teenagers whom are believed to be capable of supporting themselves in this world ,but the chi...
Child maltreatment can affect any child, usually aged 0-18, and it occurs across socioeconomic, religious, ethnic or even educational backgrounds. Arguably, child abuse and neglect is a violation of basic human rights of a child resulting from social, familial, psychological and economic factors (Kiran, 2011). Familial factors include lack of support, poverty, single parenthood, and domestic violence among others, (McCoy and Keen, 2009). The common types of child maltreatment include physical abuse, emotional maltreatment, neglect, and sexual abuse among others. Abuse and neglect can lead to a variety of impacts on children and young people such as physical, behavioral as well as psychological consequences which will affect the development and growth of the child either positively or negatively based on the environment and agency. More so, emotional, cognitive and physical developmental impacts from child neglect in the early stages of childhood can be carried on into adulthood. Research findings reveal that the experience of maltreatment can cause major long-term consequences on all aspects of a child’s health, growth as well as intellectual development and mental wellbeing, and these effects can impair their functioning as adults. Commonly, the act of abuse/ or neglect toward a child affects the child’s physical, behavioral development and growth, which can be positive or negative, depending on the child’s environment and agency. Another way to understand how the act has affected the child is to look at the child for who they are, and interviewing and observing their behaviors of their everyday life.
Childhood abuse, whether sexual, physical, and/or emotional, can have an immediate, intense, and long-term effect on not only a child’s development, but also an individual’s course of life in general. From infancy, abused children are more withdrawn and emotionally disengaged than most people, exhibiting less social interaction, prosocial behavior, and affective attachment (Mueller & Silverman, 1989; Solomon & George, 1999). These effects can be observed through high rates of substance abuse (alcohol and drugs), psychiatric disorders, and even through severe interpersonal relationship difficulties.
The effects of child abuse are multiple. The pain and trauma the abused child goes through is just a small part of how this cauldron of hidden depravity in our society affects all of us. Wrecked lives can be seen in persons of all ages and in all walks of life. Society as a whole is also effected by child abuse both in negative and positive ways. In this essay I will present some of the factor and results of this violent behavior on individuals as well as our culture.
When thinking of the effects of childhood events on adults, one might ask how does childhood sexual abuse affect a person in their adult life? The effects of childhood abuse on adults is a subject that has recently gained momentum in the research world. Being an adolescent sexual abuse survivor, this issue means a great deal to me. This problem needs further acknowledgement in our society, so that maybe people will think again before acting on their intent to abuse another human being. The research in the following text can benefit you by informing you of the signs and symptoms of childhood abuse in adulthood, look into the effects of childhood abuse on next generation parenting, define what childhood abuse actually is, and review the influence it can have on a person in their adult life.
One of the most obvious and damaging results of child abuse is death; however, research illustrating the effects on a growing child who has been abused has demonstrated many other lifelong negative factors (Felitti, Anda, Nordenberg, Williamson, Spitz, Edwards, Koss, Marks, 1998). In consonance children who suffer from abuse can show signs of depression, social withdraw, and even violent behavior. As a child grows older, they may suffer from poor physical health, such as high blood pressure, obesity, stress, and psychological disorders and disabilities (Herronkohl, T., Hong, Klika, and Herronkohl, R., 2013). Child abuse and neglect have also been associated with depression, anger disorders, and post-traumatic
Child abuse has become a chronic and common issue in the country today. In the United States of America, an estimated three million children are victims of abuse every year. Whether the abuse is physical, emotional, sexual, or neglect, the scars can be deep and can have a negative effect on a child’s education. According to academic research preformed at Brown University in April 1996, it was noted that abused children have a harder time maintaining good grades in school due to their stressful home lives, which leads to a lack of focus in the classroom. These issues are severely hurting the education of many children which damages their conscious development. Unstable households are the number one cause of children not performing at the level of proficiency in the classroom. (Family Mobility Helps) There are four different types of abuse, but the effects are similar, which is physical, or emotional harm placed upon the child. There are certain types of abuse that are often harder to identify. Neglect is the most common form of child abuse. Family members and caregivers are the abusers in most cases. Research has shown there are three major reasons why abuses children suffer academically. The reasons are withdrawal, poor communication/social skills, and behavioral problems. Child abuse does not only hurt a child’s education, but can lead to deaths. Therefore prevention is the key to the success of a child’s future. (Rynders)