Maltreatment Essay

Difficulties with learning and impaired school performance are just some of the implications that result from child abuse. Multiple researches shows that child who is a victim of maltreatment of any kind, scores lower on tests that measures the cognitive abilities and display lower school achievement when compared with peers from normally functioning families. This differentiation can be caused by the altered relationship between abused child and caregiver. In families where abuse is absent, and caring relationships are formed, child can develop a sense of worth and confidence needed to perform successfully in a cognition task presented. On other hand, child who is maltreated is often overwhelmed with the negative emotions and is lacking any motivation to succeed at school. One study showed that toddlers who came from abusive families were more likely to respond in a negative fashion to their mirror images and make very few positive statements about themselves (Barnett, 1997 ). Maltreatment can be presented in many ways and it seems that it produces specific behaviors depending on a type of abuse experienced. Physically abused preschoolers are more likely to present with aggressive and rebellious behavior when compared with nonabused peers. Children who experienced abuse are also more impulsive, disorganized and districtabilie which affects their ability to perform at school. They are also lacking needed social and work skills that are necessary for age-appropriate adjustment in their designated class. Nearly half of all physically abused youth were assigned to special education by the time they were ready to leave kindergarten, not necessarily because of lacking intelligence, but rather by the negative environment in which...

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...buse, may suggest that the forms of abuse interconnect with each other. Victims may experience multiple types of abuse such as a combination of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, and neglect.

Two of the leading studies conducted on the subject compared characteristics of sexually abuse, physically abused, and neglected school-age children (Kurtz,Gaudin, Wodarski,&Howing, 1993;Eckenrode,Laird,&Doris, 1993). Children who experienced physical abuse show significant problems related to school. Their abilities fell short in all academic subjects but two areas that show the most effect were mathematics and use of language. They seemed to be unmotivated and underachieving. In later years they were also more likely to drop out from school. Both caretakers and teachers described their children as having evidently more behavioral problems than their nonabused peers.