Emotional abuse is where a child may feel unloved and unwanted by people. It can include things like belittleling, insulting, threatening, isolating, exploiting and ignoring. Emotional abuse can consist of either a pattern of such abuse of extreme examples in isolation. Children who may be emotionally abused may seem to be unattached to their parents. May have physical and emotional development delays, or may show extremes in behaviour, the child may also exhibit mature behaviour early, such as caretaking for other children.
Physical abuse is where a parent carries out physical harm on a child this can be hitting, burning, choking, shaking or kicking. The abuse may result from physical discipline which may not be appropriate for the child, it could also be the parent who may not be able to control their anger and misdirects it and takes it out on the child. Children who come from homes which punishment is physical may not realise they are being abused. Signs of physical abuse may include unexplained, repeated, or excessive bruises, broken bones, black eyes, or other injuries. Abused children may have long absences from school and may wear inappropriate clothing for weather in an attempt to cover up injuries. They may also be scared to go home, or to be alone with their parent.
A child being physically abused can impact them intellectually by not showing up at school or paying less attention to any lessons due to in pain from any of the physical acts done upon them by their parent. Although it is likely they may fall behind on their education they may seem slightly advanced when it comes to their mental development.
A child who is physically abused may harass other children and other people around them; this could be because they want to take things out on other children, as they feel it helps them or it’s the appropriate thing to do. If a child doesn’t understand that physical abuse is wrong they may feel its okay to do it to other children. The abused child may not be the one doing the harassment, it may come from the other children as they may know what they child’s parents have been doing and may harass the child about it and torment them.
Neglect is where a parent may struggle or not bother to provide the basic needs for their child/children. These can include food, clothing, housing, education, medical care or supervision. Emotional neglect may include allowing the child to take part in the use of drugs or alcohol or to participate in other maladaptive or dangerous behaviour, allowing the child to witness domestic violence, refusing to obtain needed psychological care which is needed for the child, or failing to provide the necessary nurturing the child will need.
A child who is chronically neglected may have a poor attendance for school and also may wear inappropriate clothing for the weather; they may also have poor hygiene. The child may steal food, beg or thieve money. There may be an obvious need for dental or medical care, which they child may not be receiving. The child may be unsupervised for long periods of time and could be out getting into trouble and no one notices or does not care enough for them to even want to notice.
