DEALING WITH CHILD EMOTIONAL ABUSE

Wisdom Nugget: "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction..."

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Emotional abuse can be detrimental to a child's behavioural development. You are wondering how? Ok, let's take a look at what emotional abuse is - Emotional abuse of a child also referred to as psychological maltreatment is commonly defined as a pattern of behaviour by parents or guardians that can seriously interfere with a child's emotional, psychological or social development. Don't confuse it with physical abuse; emotional abuse is different from physical abuse, as there are no physical injuries or bodily harm. Therefore, people often do not realize or recognize this type of abuse.

Children that suffer from emotional abuse lack self-confidence. They have feelings of being unworthy, unwanted, and unloved. They may respond to this in one of two ways: They may become aggressive and hostile, with many behavioural problems, or they might turn their anger inward and become depressed, withdrawn, and even consider suicide. Children who are emotionally abused usually do not feel free to be in the company of others and may perform poorly at school. Some ways by which people can abuse children emotionally include:

Ignoring: By deliberately not speaking to the child or deliberately not calling the child by their name or calling the child abusive names.

Rejecting: By refusing to treat a child nicely, or an active refusal to respond to a child's needs.
Isolating: By preventing the child from having normal social interactions with peers, family members and adults.

Exploiting or corrupting: By teaching the child, encouraging or forcing a child to develop inappropriate or illegal behaviors.

Verbally Assaulting: By constantly belittling, shaming, ridiculing or verbally threatening the child.
Terrorizing: By threatening or bullying the child to create a climate a fear for them by placing them in a dangerous or chaotic situation or by placing them in rigid or unrealistic expectations on the child with threats of harm if not met.

Neglecting: By failing or refusing to give a child educational services, mental or health attention.
Jennifer  wrote; I am in my early teens and my dad yells at me, swears at me, constantly tells me there is something wrong with me and I am not good enough. He puts me down, wrecks my self esteem, tells me I have "psychological leprosy" and "compulsive shyness disorder", and tells all his friends that I am an ungrateful daughter. Then he stops talking to me totally sometimes and treats me like I'm not there. He acts like he is the victim. I never talk back or anything, but he acts like I am the one doing wrong. This has been going on all my life, he is controlling and oppressive and I am falling into depression because of this. I hope someday I will escape this.

Its imperative for us to bring up our children with the instructions that can instil the right mindset in them. We must not deny our children the love and care that they deserve or to speak to them abusively.

Why then will you find it in your heart to treat children like slaves when you ought to do otherwise?

"Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people." - Jean de La Fontaine. It is easy to overcome abusing your children emotionally or the people around you. It's simple - love them, appreciate them, praise them, tell them you love them but don't curse them when they do wrong, correct them lovingly.

Putting them down will drive them away.