WHAT DO THEY EXPECT?
I’m just a little kid!

Previous: Partner Abuse

SITE: “Emotional Trauma in the Womb”

Abuse PATTERNS: the following categories come from several Child Abuse sites. These 13 categories are mainly perpetrated by immediate family, but can also come from other caretakers, teachers & peers.

1. REJECTING
DEF: Absence or withdrawal of parents of warmth, affection, care, comfort, concern, love, nurturance, support or warmth

Expressed in a variety of physically & psychologically harmful actions & emotional reactions (disgust, anger, disappointment…):
🔸indirect (lack of emotional validation, encouragement, feedback…) or
🔹direct (“I never wanted children in the first place”). Negation tells the child it has no value as a human being.

• Children rejected from the start develop a range of disturbed self-soothing behaviors. Such infants have very little chance of developing into a healthy adult.

Rejecting child’s Actions, Needs, Worth – BY:
• constant criticism – nothing is never good enough
• excluding child from family activities or expel child from ‘inner circle’
• expressing regret the child wasn’t born the opposite sex
• frequent teasing about child’s body type or weight
• physical abandonment, deny child’s existence
BY:
• regular verbal humiliation, name-calling with : demeaning jokes, labels such as geek, over-sensitive, selfish, stupid, ugly, worthless ….
• refusing hugs & other loving (non-sexual) gestures
• not allowing the teen to make own reasonable choices
• treating a teen like she/he is still a young child
• yell, swear at or verbally attacking the child

FACT:  Rejection is the most insidious form of emotional abuse.   In the ‘Baumeister: Rejection’ study students were randomly assigned ‘rejection experiences’. It found that subjects’ IQs dramatically dropped, disturbing their ability to reason, while increasing aggression.
💔
2. NEGLECTING 
DEF: “An ongoing pattern of inadequate care (4 types) – the parent not providing many fundamental, age-appropriate childhood needs (education, emotional nurturing, health care, nutrition, safe housing, supervision….) — even though financially able, to such a degree that the child’s health & safety are endangered (NCANDS, 2007)….

• Neglect can be the result of parents abusing drugs & alcohol, being physically incapable, depressed, hospitalized… but more often because they don’t want to deal with the many PMES needs of their children.
EXP: Anger at a young child for not meeting parental expectations re. a developmental stage (walk, talk, potty train – by a certain age. Infant not ‘allowed’ to cry …)

They may provide the Physical basics (food, clothing, shelter), but NOT▫️ Emotional  = love, comfort, acceptance, admiration …
▫️Mental  = general conversation, specific info, teaching, what to expect in the world…
▫️Spiritual needs = moral & spiritual modeling…. ( “7 Spiritual needs”  )

😪 Often, neglected children don’t want to go home at the end of each school day, are constantly tired, depressed & feel like they don’t belong anywhere.
IGNORING children deprives them of all the essential stimulation & interaction necessary for emotional, intellectual & social development. (RESULTS….)

3. EMOTIONAL Abuse (E.A.)
DEF: ✒︎”Acts of omission by parents or other caregivers that have caused, or could cause  – serious behavioral, cognitive, mental, or emotional disorders  (Nat. Cen. on Child Abuse & Neglect)
✒︎”When a child is regularly threatened, yelled at, humiliated, ignored, blamed or otherwise emotionally mistreated”.  (AMA)

❖ E.A. is a type of brainwashing which leaves deeper & longer-lasting scars than physical ones, eventually showing up as problems in all 4 PMES levels. E.A. includes:
• excessive teasing of infant or child, ridicule youth in public
• repeatedly tell the child it caused the divorce or death of a patent ….
• telling a child it’s adopted (when it’s a lie) as a punishment
• threaten to give them away or send them to an orphanage

Belittling – one of the most common forms, when the caregiver acts as a extremely distorted mirror – so the child sees themselves described as : lazy, selfish, unlovable, worthless….
This slows the growth of the child’s talents & skills, or inhibits them altogether, severely limiting the child’s own sense of identity & what they can accomplish

E.A. systematically wears away the child’s:
• ability to judge situations realistically
• ability to take in compliments & trust positive reinforcement from others
• belief that anyone else could ever want or love them
• self-confidence, sense of self-worth, value & identity
• trust their own perceptions, thoughts & experience
• willingness to try new experiences, or to take appropriate risks
SEE posts on E.A.

NEXT: Abuse of Children (Part 2)