Feral Children and their Integration into Society
I recall hearing an interesting story about a young child a while back, who was raised by wolves and behaved much like them. Feral children are the result of years of neglect and isolation. They are children who have been raised away from society in harsh and solitary conditions. These children are for the most part always mentally and socially underdeveloped. To understand feral children, one should examine how they respond to isolation, how they react to integration, and if they are able to acquire the skills they lost while being deprived of social interaction.
Before we can examine the behavior of these children, we need to determine the root cause of this transgression. Growing up, these
…show more content…
They can find themselves in this situation in many ways, with some children becoming lost or even being abandoned. In some cases, children don't need to be in a nature setting to turn feral, with extreme neglect being enough. The thing all feral children end up having in common is that they all miss out on the basic social interaction everyone else grew up with. It's obvious that when a human lacks these basic social skills and doesn't have experience with them during a developmental phase, they can end up with the abnormal behavior we see in “wild” children. A good example of the causes being shown dates back to the 1600’s, when John of Liège, a young man from Belgium, was found after living in the Belgian wilderness for almost the entirety of his youth. John reportedly fled into the wilderness at the age of 5, in order to escape war, which was when he became lost. Being here, he was deprived of the basic social constructs and general knowledge that children gain from being raised among other people. John managed to survive however, “...the boy remained in the …show more content…
These are the outliers when it comes to cases of feral children, since they are almost always, unfortunately, too underdeveloped to be able to do that. A very popular and well-known example of a person like this is Oxana Malaya, who was born in Nova Blahovishchenka, Ukraine in November of 1983. Due to the neglection she endured from her parents, she ended up living among dogs. In the process of this, she picked up the dog’s ways and behaviors and showed many of the tendencies that dogs usually have. Like all the other feral children, this was happening during an important part of her developmental phase, which really instilled these behaviors into her brain. At this point, she was behaving more like a dog than a human, down to behaviors such as quickly shaking back and forth in order to get rid of excess water. She was eventually found at the age of eight, and when they discovered her she apparently “could hardly speak and ran around on all fours barking, mimicking her carers,” (Grice 1). There is a lack of documentation regarding the situation and condition that she was in at the time she was found, but this is believed to be due to the fact that authorities didn’t want to keep such terrible cases of neglect on record, so nobody bothered to document it.
There are many causes on why a child or teenager may misbehave. There could be issues at home, with family, other kids, peer pressure, and the list goes on. This can affect family, friends and their own lives in a negative way. “Understanding why children engage in bad behavior is critical to curbing it”, illustrates Harvey Karp, M.D, a pediatrician and author of the book and DVD “The Happiest Toddler On The Block”. In that case, there is a lot to be learned about the cause of misbehavior.
I have heard many stories of the cruel and evil crimes that some children have committed. There are a number of causes that can occur during development, that can cause these, kind of criminal behaviors. Antisocial behavior which can be broken down into different types of behavior (1.) the presence of antisocial behavior for instance aggressive and disobedient behavior (2.) the lack of prosocial behavior, prosocial is a behavior that demonstrates cooperative, truthful and caring children. Behaviors such as these can really alter a child’s behavior. Most children show signs of some antisocial behavior during their development, and different children demonstrate different levels of prosocial and antisocial behavior. Some children however, may manifest extreme levels of both antisocial and prosocial behaviors; for example, a very loving but hostile child. Some children can experience low levels of both types of behaviors. Extreme levels of antisocial behavior are considered a mental illness. Young children may show extreme antagonism towards authoritative figures, and be diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder.
Naiveté and lambs are two common symbolic representations of children. However, these ‘pure’ children can also be some of the most ruthless and disturbed beings on the planet. Juvenile delinquents are the small percent of children who act on their violent urges. Juvenile delinquents are minors that are “guilty of antisocial or criminal behavior” (Houghton Mifflin Company 951). All juveniles who commit these atrocious acts have some discrepant factor whether it is genetic or environmental, that has affected them, and in turn caused them to be psychologically disturbed. A wide variety of crimes can be committed by a juvenile. Anything an adult has the capability of doing, a child can also. However, reasons why they commit these crimes have a great variation, ranging from personal to economical reasonings. Hope of rehabilitation for the juvenile never ceases, because there are many treatment options that are available and can be utilized to help. Juveniles can be treated with different types of therapy, surgery, prescription medicine, and treatment programs. Despite the contributing factors of juvenile delinquency, family background and structure, along with the influence of peer pressure are the two most significant in determining the success of the juvenile.
There are many feral children that we know of, and Genie is one of the greatest discussed today. Genie was born in 1957 in Arcadia, California. Almost from the time of birth, Genie wasn't treated very well. There are reports done from different psychologists, police officers, and welfare authorities that all report she was being abused, neglected, and isolated socially from outside communications. Genie was reported to L.A. Child Welfare around 1970.
Thio, ., Taylor, ., & Schwartz, . (2013). Deviant Behavior (11th ed., pp. 5-7). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.
These individuals usually “seek immediate gratification, they are known to be physically active, insensitive to others and they often possess limited cognitive and academic skills” (Moon, Hwang & McCluskey, 2011). This insensitivity to others was evident in our scenario as Julie and Jane bullied Amanda for over 3 months without thinking of the consequences. Furthermore, their deviant behaviour towards Amanda in front of other children at the school showed their immediate need for gratification. Therefore, Gottfredson and Hirschi reported that effective parenting practices (i.e., monitoring, recognition of deviant behaviors, and punishment of deviant behavior), help children develop self-control (Moon, Hwang & McCluskey,
Feral children are humans that have lived away from human contact in as early as from immediately they are born. These children have little experience of human care that entails social care, love and especially, human language. Feral children live wildly in isolation. Sometimes, they interact more with animals than human beings.
"Good kid, bad kid; Children are born innocent, but what makes some turn to criminal acts? Experts say kids learn what is right or wrong through their experiences, environment and societal influences." Strait Times 10/29/2009, Print
In 1996 the Taliban took over Afghanistan and immediately imposed their fundamentalist ideals on the citizens. They effectively did this by oppressive tactics maintaining control on their people. The Taliban, lead by spiritual leader Mohammed Omar, has used many different ways to oppress the nation of Afghanistan. One way they did was was by destroying ancient art structures that have became a huge part of their culture. These acts had a great effect on the people in Afghanistan stripped them of a very sacred symbol in their eyes. The Taliban oppression has left citizens scared and powerless.
Most humans tend to live by example and studies prove that our behavior is learned, but how do we explained the bad behavior of those that have good parents that are excellent role models. Some people would said that the parents are too flexible and the kids take advantage of them in the other hand when parents neglect the kids and are bad role models for their kids we easily find the answer to the problem. As a society we contradict ourselves for example; sometimes we tell parents to not be too flexible with our kids but at the same time we do not want parents to discipline their children too harsh. The question of why juveniles commit crime does not have an exact answer. Some juveniles commit crime because of peer pressure, anger against life, and others might be just do it for fun. Even though the question does not have a conquer answer to why juveniles commit crime we know that different factors contribute to the issue. In the book True Notebooks Mark the author did not only explain his personal experience as a volunteer teacher at the juvenile hall, but also what he learned from his students and how his perspective change regarding the juveniles as he spend more time with them. Mark also discover that even though he was not aware of it he was making a positive change on some of them and the fact that he was willing to teach them a writing class meant so much for some of the students, and most important Mark present on the book the different reasons juveniles commit crime.
I personally believe that feral children are a result of severe neglect. Feral children are defined as children that have had little exposure to human contact. Due to extreme social isolation, some children are deemed feral. While feral children are more common in myths and movies, such as The Jungle Book, it does occur in rare instances in the real world. Feral children are often studied by sociologists in order to research the relationship between human development and socialization.
This prevalent issue causes turmoil and constant disruptions in a child’s life and in turn their adult life. This
As a parent, I have spent a great deal of time observing the behavior, motivation, and thought processes of my children. As they mature these processes have changed, and it has been fascinating to watch. I have learned a great deal on the limits of self control in the adolescent mind during this time, and I believe that families should be held responsible for crimes committed by their teenagers.
It has been popular to attribute deviant behaviour to a single cause or factor, such as physical, psychological, environmental etc. There are many different inside influences that are believed to affect the way a child acts both negatively and positively, some of which are as follows : -
Let’s take the feral children for an example. There were two kids that we learned about and their names were Jeanie and Oxana. Oxana was living with dogs for pretty much her whole childhood. When they found Oxana they noticed she did pretty much everything like a dog. Jeanie was beaten by her father, and she was left alone until she was 13 years old. Jeanie’s father hated noise, so she barely ever talked or heard others talk. Once she was found, her behavior was like a 3 year olds. She had trouble walking and talking, in fact, she only knew a few words and could barely even stand. Both of these examples of the feral children are nurture because their personality’s have been based off their surroundings.