CHILD ABUSE
Child abuse is the most talked about
problem in today’s community. Parents, who often abuse children, often raise
children who abuse their own children. It is a vicious cycle. There are so many
cases that are so severe, that it makes a person uneasy. I don’t know why some
parents thinks that it is okay to treat children in this manner and try to
justify why they did what they did, but I believe that they may have been
treated that way themselves and therefore that is how they treat their own children.
Many
children go for a long period of time without the abuse being reported until an
outsider happens to notice some bruises on the child. The child usually tries
to defend their abusive parent in some way by lying for them. Unfortunately
there are no rules or laws about who can have children, and how many, but the
law only applies after the abuse has been done. If a law could be established,
it would very difficult to decide what the law could or should be to defend the
children and how to best protect them.
It is
difficult to fathom why people abuse children. It happens more often that most
people can imagine. The sad thing is that even family members know about the
abuse, but refuse to report it for fear of possible retaliation from the
abuser. Abuse or violence is sometimes passed from generation to generation. Abuse
is a learned behavior. If a person grows up with abusive behavior in their
family all of their lives, then that is what become the norm for them and that
is what they teach their children. Some
people ask why a child who was abused in their earlier years, would grow up and
treat their child that way, and the answer would be because all children tend
to trust their parents and would not think that the parents would cause them
any harm, therefore, the behavior becomes acceptable and they don’t know that
the behavior is wrong. Most abused children don’t realize that the behavior is
wrong until they leave the environment in which they grew up and become better
educated in other behavior and what society has labeled as right or wrong
behavior for children or others.
Some
parents are abusive because they are stressed out for reasons like finances, unemployment,
drugs, economic reasons, death or even marital problems. If a person doesn’t know
how to deal with stress, they often lash out to the nearest person, for the
smallest reason, which seems to be the children. A major reason for abusive
parents is because they live in poverty and there seems to be to relief in
sight. It is also believed that families who are less fortunate, have the most
reported cases of child abuse, not to say that wealthier families don’t have
abuse going on in their household, it’s just not reported.
When a child comes to school and
they appear to be abused, it is an educator’s duty to report the incident to
child protective services. When this is done, sometimes the child feels that
they have been betrayed and become withdrawn. Therefore, it could put a teacher
in a bad position by trying to help the child, but the child doesn’t see it as
help and starts to become more and more removed from class discussion and class
participation. No one wants to see a child suffer or being abused. The problem
seems to be how to help the child without causing more damage in their lives.
When a child trusts’ an adult, and the adult does something in the child’s mind
to help and it backfires, it can be a dangerous thing when dealing with ethics
on how to help an abused child. Doing the right thing can cause more problems
because if the parents find out, they may punish the child because they feel
like the child has been discussing their personal business at school. There are
always ethical and moral issues, but a person has to decide if they are going
to do what is right by the law or what is right in their heart.
