The Consequences of Stress On a Child Develop

Emotional Abuse, Neglect, and violence

Emotional abuse is behavior that damages a child’s emotional development or sense of self-esteem. It may consist of pressures, continuous condemnation, as well as withholding love, support, or guidance. Neglect is a pattern of failing to provide for a child’s basic physical and emotional needs. Neglect is a very common type of child abuse, and according to Child Welfare Information Gateway, more children suffer from neglect than from physical and sexual abuse combined. ( (Parenting Should Not Be Hard You deserve Support., 2016).

   As a child growing up my very best friend was exposed to a tremendous amount violence because her parents fought all the time, plus, they were Alcoholics. She was beaten almost every day because her mother was angry at her father, and her father abused her because he was angry at her mother. Lynne was an only child, her only outlet was coming to my house, and playing with my siblings, at this time, were age six. Nonetheless, it was twelve us, and she loved to come over visit afterschool, on weekends, and sometimes she stayed overnight. My mom allowed her to come over anytime because she was aware of the situation, and what Lynne was experiencing with her parents. My mom reported it many times to the Bureau of Child Welfare, but nothing was ever done.  

However, when we got to Middle School, Lynne’s grades began to drop, from depression she had gained over 125 pound, and she barely made it to high school.  Nonetheless, the more she watched her parents fight, and her constantly being abused violently. Lynne began to feel insecure, unloved, and had very low self-esteem. After a while, Lynne became such a negative person, it hurt me emotionally to be around her, and she began to be distant, she felt her life would never be any better. I cried with her, so many times, she was so damaged from emotional abuse, and mentally, she was in darkness.

Her father ended up taking her mother’s life, and after losing her mom to violence and abuse.  She never had anything nice to say to anyone, unless it was something negative or ugly. The older she became, the bitterer she became, and Lynne lived in her own mental darkness. She only interacted with my family, never anyone at school or outside of school, and the worse her life choices came to be, and Lynne began to look for love in all the wrong places. 

In twelfth grade, Lynne left school because she had become pregnant and in those days you got married or else! After she got married it was not wedding bliss because after six months, Lynne realized, she married a man like her father, she was not aware of this before she married him. Here she was in another abusive and violent relationship. Her husband continuously abused her physically and emotionally. My emotionally damaged friend, ended having many different partners, and each one introduced her to a different drug and left her pregnant, heavily addicted to drugs, and with six children to raise. I helped as much as I could as a sister would. I offered to go with her to mental health, be her coach at her drug sessions, and anything else, as long as I was contributing to her life becoming stable and, out of this horrible darkness, and mental anguish.

Well, for about four years Lynne did great, she was going to school, Mental Health, working, her children were being loved and supported by a good mom, and then, she remarried. Once again, unaware that she was going into another abusive relationship. Regretfully, On April 7^th 1986 Lynne, then thirty, overdosed on the drug Heroin, and I raised her children. This is what could happen when children are subjected to emotional stress, neglect, violence, and abuse. In addition, as educators we need to know the signs, because sometimes these children can be saved from a horrible childhood and adult life, unfortunately Lynne did not get that chance because child abuse, and violence in a child’s home was over looked.

It is a shocking fact that one of the most unsafe places for a woman is her own home. Almost 40 percent of all murders of women worldwide are carried out by an intimate partner, according to the World Health Organization. One in three women across the globe has experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of her partner. And in the United States, some 1.3 million women are assaulted by their partner each year, according to CDC statistics (The Partnership of the Huntington Post, 2016).

Notwithstanding the frequency of violence against women in their own homes, dozens of countries around the world do not have specific laws against domestic violence. For instance, Kenya has no provision to outlaw domestic abuse and according to the U.S. State Department, police in the country usually abstain from considering cases of domestic violence, handling it as a private family matter. In Lebanon, debate roars on about finally passing a law to criminalize domestic violence, after a series of horrendous abuse cases hit the country’s headlines this year. “Liesl Gerntholtz, Executive Director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, explained to The World Post why it has been so important for countries to adopt specific legislation that targets domestic abuse. Gerntholtz pointed out that while ordinary criminal law does outlaw violence, and therefore domestic abuse should be treated as a crime, the issue has historically been ignored by governments and underreported by women. “Because the violence is so invisible you needed laws to enroll judges, police and other authorities to look for it and prosecute it,” she said” (The Partnership of the Huntington Post, 2016).

“Violence against women is frighteningly simple and complex. Violence will stop when criminals stop,” she added. The good news is that incredible progress has been made in recent years to outlaw domestic abuse. While detailed domestic violence laws were uncommon just a few decades ago, a lot of countries have created legislation that specifically targets the issue. Saudi Arabia for example, a country known for its restrictions on women’s rights, passed a landmark bill in 2013 that outlaws domestic abuse” (The Partnership of the Huntington Post, 2016).

One of the biggest challenges today is getting domestic violence laws implemented, such as making sure that women are able to go to the police to report violence or have access to shelters for protection, Gerntholtz notes. While public awareness of domestic violence has greatly improved, the shame attached to being beaten by your brother or husband is still a major challenge (The Partnership of the Huntington Post, 2016).

President of the World Bank Group Jim Yong Kim echoed Gerntholtz’s observations during a humanitarian conference in Washington D.C this week. “If domestic violence continues to receive inadequate attention, it tells women they have less worth and less power than men,” Kim said. “It undermines their ability to make choices and act on them independently, impacting not only them, but their families, communities, and economies (The Partnership of the Huntington Post, 2016).”

References

Parenting Should Not Be Hard You deserve Support. (2016, May 28). Effects of Emotional Abuse.

The Partnership of the Huntington Post. (2016, Msy 27). The Partnership of the Huntington Post & Berggruen Institute. Retrieved from These 20 Countries Have No Law Against Domestic Violence: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/08/countries-no-domestic-violence-law_n_4918784.html

Walden University M.S. in Early Childhood Studies

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Updated: 1.3.12