Child Abuse

Child Abuse

"Help me!" This is the plea of many children in America. As you read this, one little girl is crying out in pain, one little boy is begging not to be touched anymore. Many children live through everyday being abused sexually, physically, and emotionally. "More than two million cases of neglect and physical abuse are reported annually. Studies have shown that most parents who abuse their children were once abused as a child" (Funk & Wagnall's 121). According to the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, 185 children died from child abuse in 1996. There are a lot of ways to put an end to this; it just takes some work and time.

First of all there are the children who are emotionally abused. The question is what is emotional abuse? Emotional abuse is when the child is hurt emotionally causing changes in behavior and low self-esteem. "For example, the parents may use extreme or bizarre forms of punishment, such as confinement of a child in a dark closet, and less severe acts, such as habitual scapegoating, belittling, or rejecting treatment" (NCCANCH). Children who suffer from this type of abuse grow up being called bad things and never really knowing what love is, take 10-year old Carla for example. She was both physically and emotionally abused. She was neglected; the only attention she got was bad attention. Her mother called her worthless and some of her mother's boyfriends hit her. Childabuse.org was there for her and now Carla is doing much better (Bob Cooper). Emotional abuse, in my opinion, is a terrible type of abuse that a child could go through. Although it may not seem too harsh, it causes many social problems for the child. These social problems include, fear of meeting people, shyness, withdrawing from classmates, and an introverted personality.

Secondly, there is physical abuse. Physical abuse is when the child has "physical injury as a result of punching, beating, kicking, biting, burning, shaking or otherwise harming a child. The parent or caretaker may not have intended to hurt the child; rather, the injury may have resulted from over-discipline or physical punishment" (NCCANCH). There is no point in physical abuse for discipline; all it does is make the child more violent and blurs their sense between right and wrong. "Battered-child syndrome is one form of physical abuse, common with infants and preschool children.