Is a Child That You Know Being Abused or Neglected?

There can be no doubt that child abuse and neglect are truly terrible things. It is difficult to think of things that are more appalling to us than the abuse of a child – after all, children have no power do to anything about the abuse that they experience and should be looking to adults for love and care rather than anything else. We think of child neglect in very bad terms, and all right-thinking people consider it to be truly heinous and unforgivable. But sometimes we are guilty of thinking of child abuse in only the most egregious examples which can lead us to only think of abuse in black and white terms.

 

This is apparent that many of us, when considering child abuse, only think about the cliché of the child ‘walking into a door’ or the evil step-father hitting the child when the mother is absent. While these are obviously very serious issues they put us in danger of missing some other important, but perhaps less visually obvious child neglect issues. Indeed other forms of abuse such as serious neglect or emotional abuse can leave deep problems for the child that is just as problematic as physical attacks.

 

It’s true that abuse of a child is a very horrible thing, and while we can work hard to eradicate child abuse as much as we can, there will always be those who will slip through the net and we will see instances of child abuse. This will happen no matter how hard we try to prevent the situation from occurring. So the important thing to think about is how we can stop it occurring once it has started. This can obviously be a very difficult thing to do – but the sooner that we notice abuse happening and the sooner that we put a stop to it, the more benefit will be seen for the child, and surely at the end of the day that is the most important thing.

 

Unfortunately, there are a number of myths flying around that can make it more difficult for us to recognise that child abuse is happening. That’s because these myths make it seem that child abuse can’t possibly happen or would be very unlikely in the situations that we live. One myth is that it only counts as abuse if it’s violent. This clearly is not the case as we have already pointed out – abuse can be anything from name calling, sexual humiliation or almost anything mentally damages the child.

 

Another common myth is that only bad people abuse their children. Remember that with issues like bringing up children, it can be true that some parents don’t know any different and might believe that their behaviour is acceptable when it is not. It’s also thought that child abuse only occurs at the hands of strangers, when clearly much child abuse happens within the home and at the hands of otherwise loving parents.

 

Some people would also contend that abused children will always grow up to be abusers. It is important to note that this is not true either. It has been well documented that if a child is abused and they never receive any treatment or counselling for it, they may be more likely to abuse their children when they have them, but this is not always the case. Indeed, many abused children feel far more protective of their own children because they know how awful it was to experience it when they were young. It is time that we face up to these myths and expose them.

Categories: abuse, abused, abused children, Child, child abuse, child neglect, Children, nbsp, neglect, Violence

How Does Neglect During Childhood Affect Development?

It is clear to us that childhood is a very important time for the development of a child. It is during this time that so many cognitive skills begin to make a big difference in the brain and personality and emotions begin to come out in a way that will change you the child for the rest of their lives. It makes sense, then, that if a child is to suffer neglect during this critical period their brain development is likely to suffer as a result.

 

Increasingly, science is showing that neglect could be considered as harmful to a child’s brain development as physical abuse. This might sound like an extreme way of putting it, but a new study has shown that this may be the case. This recent study looked at mice placed in isolation early on in their lives – although it may appear on the surface that the research can’t really tell us anything new, as it’s very clear that neglect is a very bad thing for a child to suffer is highly likely to affect the way that a child develops.

 

However, it seems that in this study there is actual a more scientific principal in mind rather than one of common sense. During the research, the team found that there were striking abnormalities in the tissues that make it possible for electrical signals to be sent to the brain. This suggests that neglect isn’t just bad on the level that a lack of social interaction altering skills and stunting cognitive development, but from a scientific perspective it actually alters the physical nature of the brain. This could mean that the child can never hope to develop beyond a certain level in some mental faculties due to the neglect.

 

“This is very strong evidence that changes in myelin cause some of the behavioural problems caused by isolation,” said one of the co-authors of the study, Gabriel Corfas, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School. The team placed mice that were 21 days old in isolation for two weeks, and then returned them to their colonies. When the mice that had been placed in isolation reached adolescence, the researchers compared their brains and their behaviour to other mice that hadn’t been isolated – in this case the isolation was to mimic the conditions suffered by a neglected child.

 

The mice that were placed in isolation were noted to be far more antisocial than other mice, with apparent deficits in memory. On further inspection it was noticed that their myelin, a cell layer that forms around neuronal networks, was unusually and unexpectedly thin, especially in the prefrontal cortex, which is a region of the brain that is thought to be critical to cognition and personality. It would seem that the isolation that the mice were placed in, actually made a big difference to their lives, not just in terms that it made them antisocial, but it also contributed towards damaging physical effects as well.

 

It has been shown many times that children who grow up in orphanages have similar behavioural and social problems, due to the isolated nature of their lives and inability to connect with a loving parent.

 

“This is incredibly important data, because it gives us the neural mechanisms associated with the deleterious changes in the brain that arise from neglect,” said Nathan Fox, who is a cognitive neuro-scientist at the University of Maryland.

 

It is therefore clear that we need to treat the neglect of children very seriously, as it has now we shown to have truly damaging effects on their wellbeing and ability to develop normally.

Categories: brain development, Child, child abuse, Isolation, mental problems, Mice, nbsp, neglect