The emotional abuse of children today is unfortunately a very widespread negative trend in any modern society. The number of families where children are constantly abused emotionally is rather high. The worst thing is that many parents forget the basic Christian moral and principles in child upbringing, since the Holy Bible says the following. The goal of the Christian parenthood is “to rise children to love and follow God” (Deuteromony 6:2) as well as “to meet their individual potential” (Proverbs 22:6). Abusing children emotionally, even without any physical abuse makes these goals almost impossible. There is no place for love and the development of any personal potential in such a place, where violence and cruelty reign.
What Is the Child Abuse and the Emotional Abuse of a Child?
First of all, it is necessary to understand what actually the child abuse is. Moreover, it is also important to know what the emotional abuse is. All people have heard about that many times in our life, but almost no one thought about what it is and how it is defined. According to the law of the United Kingdom and the Children Act of 1989, “the abuse should be considered to happen when someone’s actions make a child to suffer a significant harm to his/her health and/or development”. According to the same document, it is anything listed below: punishing too strictly, shaking angrily, or punching a child, frequently criticizing, blaming or rejecting a child, assaulting, or committing any sexual interfering, ignoring the kid by rejecting him/her, leaving alone at home for too long time, a careless treatment towards the child’s health and safety, as well as finally giving not enough food to eat. What is most shocking, the researchers from the RC PSYCH have concluded that in the biggest part of all cases children are abused by their own parents, elder sisters, and brothers as well as the closest relatives living at one home with them. As a result, the dearest and closest people for any kid may become their biggest emotional and sometimes even physical torturers ignoring such basic Christian background as a need “to raise children to love and follow God” (Deuteromony 6:2).
It has stated that due to complex connections between the emotional abuse and the abuse of all other existing forms, it is sometimes very hard for a wide public to clearly define the meaning of the emotional abuse. This term, using different existing scholarly sources, can be briefly written as a constant emotional maltreatment, which causes severe and regular adverse effects on the emotional development of a child. In addition, the emotional abuse exists in two forms, i.e. active emotional abuse and passive emotional one. The forms of the first one are rejecting, isolating, terrorizing, corrupting, and exploiting. Meanwhile, the passive forms of the emotional abuse are rather hard to identify from the first sight but anyway they also exist. Such forms of the passive emotional abuse be determined as emotional unavailability. It means that a parent or someone who takes care of the child is closed emotionally and mentally to this kid and ignores him/her by giving absolutely no love. Another form of the passive emotional abuse is a negative attitude towards the child by having a negative opinion about a young person and giving no praise or encouragement to him/her. Having the too high expectations and demanding too much from children is a kind of the passive abuse too. The kid in such cases is just not mature enough to meet such requirements made by parents. Talking to the child in an inappropriate way belongs to this group too. The next form of the passive abuse of the kid is, for instance, the failure or just absence of wish to recognize the child’s personality by making him or her fulfill parents’ emotional needs, implement some plans created by parents for satisfying their ambitions, or do that in order to implement something parents could not do in their own childhood. Finally, the last form shown in the list is not encouraging or sometimes even prohibition to make friends with other children, establish the contacts, and mix among the child’s social peers.
The Impact of Child Abuse on Young Personality
One of the volunteer organizations the field of work of which is a struggle with the child abuse called Adults Surviving the Child Abuse or shortly ASCAstates the following. When in any person’s childhood the world revolves mainly around the parents or care-givers if the biological parents are missing for some reasons safety, care, love, understanding, and support. The child abuse, especially if it is committed by the closest person, makes awful outcomes such as violating the trust at the core of a relationship of the kid with the outer world. The treatment towards the kid in such a way is a great sin. One can see such lines in the Holy Bible, “Children are the heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court” (Psalm 127: 3-5). Abusing children is making harm not only to those poor children, in general. We also trigger a great damage to our own soul by aggrieving our Lord with such unseemly Christian actions.
People who have suffered some abuse in their childhood usually have serious problems in the next periods of life such as adolescence, maturity, and adulthood. They experience conflictual relations, chaotic lifestyles of different sorts, have serious problems in intimate connections (especially if they suffered the sexual abuse). In general, they display such behavior, which threatens a lot to any close relationships with people around. Moreover, the hardships and sufferings of survivors of such treatment are not limited to interpersonal relationships: disappointments in their job, financial setbacks, relocations, and other problems of different nature. All of them are the outcomes of unsolved issues of the child abuse committed towards them at their young age. Moreover, child abusers, as it has been shown in the research do not take into account the fact that their actions also lead to such an output as future psychological deviations: addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, and even the personality disorders. Everything like this stuff is also the fruit of the emotional child abuse of any nature, i.e. an active or a passive one. It is absolutely not necessary to commit any abuse towards the child: even the emotional maltreatment, according to his research conducted in 2010. It can drive to such consequences as substance abuse, obesity, and even a suicide. In addition, Dr. Hornor also has marked such an important detail that early emotion maltreatment towards the child drives to another negative result, RAD, defined as Reactive Attachment Disorder. It is markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness which usually begins before the age of 5 years. This disorder can be recognized by a constant failure to admit or respond in an appropriate way to most of social situations happening around us every day. As the research provided by the American Psychiatric Association has showed, all the problems described are the lack of care, love, and comfort in childhood. The psychological child abuse is really a very complex phenomenon. So establishing a simple relationship such as a cause-and-effect works with any other phenomenon being impossible in this one. The reason of such peculiarity is that the simple relationship between a direct act of violence (no matter whether it is active or passive) and the consequences caused by it can be observed very rarely. The relationship between the cause and effect is usually very complex and supported by many other factors. It has only in a certain sum driven to the specific outcome. The researcher also has depicted the list of families where children usually suffer from the abuse of different sorts. Such families are most likely to have the following problems: coping with substance abuse, poverty and/or unemployment of one or both parents, separated or divorced parents, and socially isolated families. Such issues may also involve as criminal activities of one or both parents including sometimes even the other family members, intellectual disabilities, and others.
Behavioral Outcomes of Child Abuse
in the Next Age Periods
The expert working on the issue of the child abuse has come to many important conclusions. They state that a strong and safe attachment to a caregiver is a main basis of the formation of the healthy personality. The strong and reliable family bonds are the main conditions of the normal development of any child into the mature personality. They form the abilities of the kid to cope with stress in an appropriate way, regulate emotions wisely, providing a social support, and form nurturing relations. Taking into account such a fact that the child is especially sensitive emotionally, the caregiver must be very careful with such kid. In this period of life, in childhood, the emotional abuse is sometimes even more harmful than the physical one affecting even the further brain development. Moreover, the bad interactions between a kid and a caregiver lead to the formation of neural circuits and pathways. The most incredible is the fact that the quality of exchanges between the child and its caregiver serves as a foundation of the individual’s signaling system, mental health, and especially the infant’s capacity to interact with others. Thus, the emotional relationships play a vital role here. This message can be seen even in the Bible, which as we know to be written far before the appearance of any science. Colossians 3:21 admonishes fathers “not to exasperate or embitter their children”. As we see, the emotional abuse is really much worse than we think. It is harmful not only to the personality and feelings of the child but may even cause some irreversible physical changes in the brain as well as in other parts of his/her body even in spite of the possible absence of any physical contact with an abuser. The relations of a child and a parent can be usually spoilt by the natural anxiety of a child to tell the truth if it threatens the safety of a kid, which drives to child abuse by the punishment in almost all the families, no matter whether they are prosperous or not. Therefore, parents must remember the mentioned facts and avoid the abuse of a child by creating a context, in which this natural tendency if an infant to hide can be overcome. Another important moment which must never be ignored or forgotten is that each child is an individual and there is no correctional program or discipline which would work with all children even if they are siblings and were brought up in a firm and friendly family, since the wrong approach may also cause an abuse. The researchers have defined the emotional abuse as a type of abuse which is inflicted by “ignoring or dismissing child’s emotional reaction or by shaming or humiliating child”. It can be verbal, i.e. in the form of some bad names or offensive words, or comparing the child to his/her sibling or a friend or a neighbor’s child and showing him/her from the worse side. It may be also as claiming that the ones whom he/she is compared to is being better in virtually all aspects. The nonverbal form of emotional abuse is ignoring child’s needs, asking for help, or treating the child as some undesired person or just a bad child.
The scholars have described a negative reaction of a child at the different age periods. It helps to identify what is wrong with this kid in some time and helps to start looking for a solution earlier. So, at the toddler age, when the child is about two years old and the outcomes of this stress are frustration and distress, this reaction is fighting with caregivers and/or peers. If the physical abuse here is present, the fight of this kid becomes even more active and aggressive. At the stage of the preschool age, children start reacting on different types of abuse depending on their gender. The boys on this stage become more aggressive and start using offensive words towards their peers, while girls suffer more and face with such issues as depression and even somatic symptoms like abdominal pain or headache. At the primary school age, children suffering from abuse often have problems with their academic performance, a poor concentration during lessons, and some problems with communication with peers. In addition, such kids frequently limit the number of people who can easily interact with them and sometimes even let have some contact with them. The period of adolescence is characterized by even more serious signs. The abused child can be identified by having such problems as depression, social withdrawal, and anxiety. At this age period, they engage into different risky types of behavior such as committing some dangerous actions and consuming different substances, smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, and using illegal drugs. They try to escape from the unpleasant and frightening reality. In addition, such children start their sexual life much earlier than their peers being not abused in their childhood and living in positive and complete families with their parents or other caregivers as a positive example. The top stage of children’s aggression caused by abuse in earlier periods is joining gangs and even bearing or using guns. To put it bluntly kids start expressing their protest against adults they start to hate for the abuse got in their childhood. Saying that in the Bible language, the abuse leads kids to disobedience, and Matthew 18:1-6 and Mark 9:42 explain that in such words, “It would be greater for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea”. These lines mean that there is nothing worse than pushing an infant away from God’s love. The spiritual and emotional abuses as well as the physical one are the factors, which actually make this terrible thing. It is good only for devil willing to get as many souls as possible. Here it comes out that we can easily realize parents abuse their children. They make everything to become far away from Jesus and give away their own souls and the souls of their children to Satan even not knowing that. Meanwhile, the famous statement that non-acquaintance of laws is no excuse works not only with official state laws, but with spiritual ones too.
The outcomes of the emotional abuse do not finish with adolescence. If the proper assistance is not made the consequences of the abuse will follow a poor person even in the adulthood. This issue has been observed by a Ph. D. Douglas LaBier stating that many people mistakenly percept the child abuse as only a physical one towards children being constantly bet by their alcoholic or mentally sick parents. They may as well be closed in dark basements for a long time and so on, while the child abuse is really far beyond the understanding mentioned. It has many more forms such as emotional and others. Moreover, many parents that think of themselves as being good even do not realize that such actions committed towards their children as leaving their son or a daughter at home or in a car for hours, rebuffing child by telling not to bother him/her are also the child abuse. Many of them (especially younger parents, who have their first child) often answer the way as, “Stop bothering me”, or “Leave me alone, I am tired”. They do not even not know how hard they abuse their child and how painfully the kid understands such words from the beloved parent. The children think that the parents just do not want to see or not love them. Such attitude towards kids has a significant impact on their further mental and even physical health. However, it seems to be unbelievable due to the absence of the physical abuse. For example, the results of the research shown in his article clearly has depicted that there is a strong connection between the negative experience in the childhood, some psychological and physical disorders in the adulthood. Taking into account the fact already described earlier that children are especially sensitive to the emotional impact, we can see that all the negative actions connected with emotions are perceived and remembered by kids much more than any other experience. Moreover, our brain remembers such moments even if we think that we have already forgot them and will never recall this. As a result, the negative programs are saved by our brains. Later, they are running just like a computer program in a shape of mental and physical problems.
To conclude everything said above, we can easily see that the emotional abuse is not just a very actual issue of today. It is more severe and serious than most of us have ever expected. In addition, the articles used for this paper and the quotations from the Holy Bible show how terrible the outcomes are not only for children innocently being the victims of abuse, but for their parents. They commit the emotional and other forms of abuses towards their offspring. Mental and physical problems, riots against the public, and the perversion of the Christian worldview lead to the death of the soul. It is not a complete list of outcomes of emotional and other forms of abuse towards kids. This material was provided by Tony Logan who is a writer https://order-essays.com/memo-writer-online source.