Child Abuse:
Another Form of Violence in the Home

Another form of violence in the home is child abuse. There is a high correlation between domestic violence and child abuse. Many of the personal and family factors that are involved in domestic violence are also involved in parents who abuse their children.

Abuse of children can involve physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Physical abuse is defined as any non-accidental injury to a child. Sexual abuse is any sexual act between an adult (or significantly older child) and a child. Emotional abuse is any attitude or behavior that interferes with the child’s social, emotional, psychological, or educational development. In regard to actual family violence, most physical abuse has an element of violence embedded within it. Usually physical abuse occurs when a parent is angry and taking his or her frustration out on the child. This usually involves some sort of abuse of power and force that has an underlying violent nature. Purposeful abuse, such as holding a child’s hand to a stove burner, is also an abuse of power, and although it may not be carried out in a violent atmosphere, the physical pain involved will cause the same types of psychological problems as if it were violent. Sexual abuse can be violent or not, depending on the situation. However, again it is an abuse of power and control, like that seen in domestic violence. Emotional abuse is verbal or psychological abuse; it can be violent or emotional in nature. Allowing a child to be exposed to domestic violence is considered a type of emotional abuse. Physical and emotional neglect rarely involves violence. However, frequently children who are neglected live in homes or neighborhood where violence is a regular part of their lives. While each form of abuse has its own outcomes, all forms of abuse are devastating in terms of the potential outcomes for children’s development.

Parents who abuse or neglect their children typically have a host of personal problems. Frequently they have experienced abuse themselves while growing up and have a poor relationship with their own parents. They often have an unfulfilled need for nurturance and dependence, which causes role reversals with their children. Abusive parents usually suffer from low self-esteem and often suffer from depression or mental illness. Often these families isolate themselves from friends and the community, use overzealous and authoritarian discipline methods, and have unrealistic expectations for their children. Environmental factors in the home that may contribute to abuse include marital problems, lack of support systems, various life crises, and stress. A high percentage of abusive parents abuse drugs or alcohol. The link between domestic violence and child abuse is also well-documented. Other factors include the child’s personal characteristics (temperament, disability, physical characteristics, behavior, etc.), cultural influences, and financial stressors.

Children who are physically abused not only have obvious physical injuries, but also may have emotional or social damage. The initial impact of physical abuse will be immediate pain, suffering, and medical problems caused by the injury. However, chronic physical abuse can result in long-term physical disabilities. The age at which the abuse takes place does influence the impact of the damage. When compared with their maltreated peers who have suffered other types of abuse and neglect, children who have been physically neglected show the most severe deficits in all areas. Adults who were abused or neglected in childhood often grow up to have a host of medical problems. Not only are they are at higher risk for obvious problems such as abuse of drugs and alcohol and teen motherhood, but they also have increased incidence of heart disease, digestive problems, eating disorders, and so forth.

Children incur the most physical damage when the abuse occurs during their early years of development. Infants and toddlers who experience abuse or neglect are at high risk for permanent disabilities or even death. Chronic malnutrition results in slowed growth, brain damage, and, potentially, intellectual disability. Head injuries in infants and toddlers can result in severe brain damage. Neurological dysfunctions can occur as the result of physical neglect. Current research shows that 85% of children under age six can make significant gains in overcoming their developmental delays if they are removed from their neglectful or abusive home and placed in a home that is consistent, predictable, stimulating, enriching, and safe. The longer the child was in the adverse environment and the older he or she was at removal, the more permanent and pervasive the developmental deficits were.

Preschoolers who have suffered either abuse or neglect often have severe speech and language delays. This is partly due to the fact that they have not been exposed to language enrichment such as being read to, talked to, and exposed to a rich language environment. Their speech may be absent, delayed, or hard to understand. Their receptive language skills may not match their expressive language skills. They may demonstrate poor articulation and pronunciation, may stutter, or may demonstrate incorrect use of sentence structure or words. The neglected or abused preschooler may demonstrate the cognitive skills of a much younger child. The child may have an unusually short attention span, be overly active, have an inability to concentrate, or have a lack of interest in new objects and experiences. As we read in Chapters 1 and 2, children who have experienced trauma or prolonged stress will have changes in their brain structure that will affect their learning. These changes include a persistent fear response that causes either hyper-arousal or dissociation, which will affect their availability for learning. Neglect from mentally-ill or drug-addicted parents may cause the child’s brain to not develop the neural pathways needed for normal learning. Severe neglect may even cause reduced brain growth and intellectual disability.

Children who reach school age and are still showing fine and gross motor delays, without an obvious medical reason, are cause for concern. They may continue to show generalized physical developmental delays and may also lack skills for activities that require perceptual-motor coordination. Inability to do well playing group games and sports may ultimately affect their social development as well. In addition, these children are often sickly or have numerous allergies. They are less prepared for learning and are less secure in their readiness to learn. They may show serious learning deficits. They tend to score significantly lower on measures of school performance than their non-maltreated peers, particularly in the areas of reading and math. They are also absent from school more often, and this creates additional learning deficits. Neglected children have a higher percentage of grade repeats and more problem behaviors in school than their non-maltreated peers. The lack of intellectual and language stimulation in the home results in significant receptive and expressive language deficits that further compromise their progress in reading. They may have great difficulty concentrating on school work and lack motivation. Their lack of experience and inability to concentrate and retrieve information may make school very difficult. These children typically struggle with academic content, even though they have normal intelligence. Many of these children eventually qualify for special education in the learning disabled category.

The school-age child who comes from an abusive or neglectful home is often a challenge in the school environment. This child may display thinking patterns that are typical of a much younger child. They may be very egocentric, focusing solely on their own feelings and needs. They may lack problem-solving skills, both socially with other children and cognitively in the classroom. They may have an inability to structure and organize their thoughts, and difficulty remembering or retrieving information. If you think of our brain as a file cabinet for storing and organizing our knowledge, then due to the chaos in their life, these children’s file cabinet is totally unorganized. This causes problems with organizational skills and study skills as well as with the storage and retrieval of information. Like the preschoolers, they may show signs of inattention, impulsivity, and high activity levels. Teachers must be careful not to jump to the conclusion that this child has Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder when the problem may be due to a lack of consistency and structure in the home.

Adolescent youths who have been abused or neglected may go through puberty earlier or later than their peers. Girls who have been sexually abused may go through puberty earlier than their peers. Teenagers who have been abused or neglected often become sexually active at a young age, including girls becoming teenage mothers. Teens who become sexually active at a young age raise their risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. The physical consequences for a teen who has been sexually abused in childhood can be prostitution, addictions, and mental illness. Women who were sexually victimized as children are vulnerable; they may become rape victims or battered wives in adulthood. Sexual victimization of young boys contributes to their becoming pedophiles and rapists. Adolescent youth who come from abusive and neglectful homes often turn to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco at a young age, which leads to a host of other physical and social problems.

When school continues to be a struggle academically and socially, many neglected and abused teens tend to drop out. Recent changes in educational climates have brought about an increase in alternative high schools. The number of students from abusive, neglectful, and low income homes who enroll in alternative educational opportunities is high. By providing educational programs that meet their needs, schools can continue to provide youngsters with access to an education. An encouraging phenomenon that is seen with abused and neglected youth is that some of these teens excel in school. They use school and school activities as an escape from their home life. These are the resilient youngsters who have made good connections with the adults at school and understand that education is a way out of the cycle of neglect and abuse.

In the area of social-emotional development, there are serious long-term effects for a child who does not attach normally with his or her primary caregiver. Children who have been neglected frequently have attachment problems. Children who have been exposed to domestic violence or abuse also may have problems with attachment and trust. They have learned that their parents cannot be trusted to provide safety and nurturing and that their world is one of violence and pain. Problems in the area of early attachment may cause psychological and behavioral problems, which include problems in conscience development. This is shown by the child who does not feel guilty when breaking rules, projects blame onto others, or shows no remorse for aggressive or cruel behavior. Impulse control is another problem area, with the youngster exhibiting poor self-control, depending on others to provide external controls, having a poor attention span, and being unable to have the foresight to understand how current actions will affect future consequences. Generally, self-esteem is low in unattached youngsters. They see themselves as undeserving, incapable of change, unlikable, and bad. They do not get pleasure from peer interactions or a job well done. Their poor self-esteem affects their interpersonal interactions with peers. They do not trust others, especially adults, and need to be in control of the situation. They often exhibit impaired social maturity and hostile dependency. Although they may demand attention, their relationships with others are shallow. They have difficulty expressing and recognizing their own feelings, or empathizing with the feelings of others. Cognitively, they have difficulty with cause and effect. They appear to have a confused thought process and experience problems with logical or abstract thinking. They also have a confused sense of time, which causes problems with thinking ahead. Development problems may include difficulty with auditory processing, as well as delays or inconsistent levels in fine and gross motor development and personal/social development. They may have difficulty with verbal expression, which may be accompanied by delays in language development. Children who are physically or sexually abused also often grow up to have a host of psychological problems associated with the abuse. The long-term emotional consequences can be devastating. Although the social consequences may seem less obvious, they are still substantial.

Infants and toddlers who have been abused or neglected often exhibit a “frozen watchfulness.” This is a protective strategy in response to an abusive or chaotic home life where they must always be on guard. Abused toddlers and preschoolers often express that they are “bad.” This image of being a bad child can have devastating effects on their self-concept and self-esteem as they mature. Most probably they have been labeled as “bad” by parents who do not understand the normal active development of a toddler. Children who are punished in response to normal exploration tend to develop either dependent or rebellious behaviors. They may become clingy and insecurely attached, they may become subversive and hide what they are doing, or they may become very oppositional and rebellious. Underneath their insecurity and rebellion, these toddlers and preschoolers are often anxious and fearful children. They may withdraw from social interactions and act depressed, or they may become aggressive and hurt others.

School-age children who have been abused and neglected almost always have a poor self-image. They have experienced punitive and negative messages from their abusive parents or experienced a lack of attention from their neglectful parents. It is easy to see why these children feel that they do not matter and aren’t worth much when they have been told this for years. They may feel inferior to their peers, incapable of living up to expectations, and lack motivation to try. They feel overwhelmed by peer expectations of performance in sports, school activities, and so forth. They may have difficulty making friends and fitting in with their classmates, and may withdraw from social interaction. This may cause them to be ignored or bullied by their peers. This child may either be suspicious and distrustful of adults, or overly solicitous, agreeable, and manipulative. All these behaviors need to be viewed as the child’s attempt to control his or her interactions with adults. Such children often will not turn to adults when they need help, as this behavior has been punished in the past. Emotionally, children from abusive or neglectful homes are often very volatile youngsters. They will exhibit behaviors at the ends of the behavioral continuum, from withdrawal to aggression. They often are impulsive in their acts, demonstrating that they are unable to think ahead about consequences. They may have frequent emotional outbursts and may seem oppositional at times. These children have difficulty delaying gratification, for they have come from an environment of chaos and “here and now” thinking.

Socially, maltreated teens have difficulty maintaining relationships with their peers, due to their problems in attachment with their primary caregiver in infancy. Teens may withdraw from social interactions and become loners, or they may join groups of youngsters with similar problems, such as gangs. They are very adept at adopting group norms and behaviors in order to gain acceptance from their peer group, to the point of becoming dependent on them. These youth are often mistrustful of adults and avoid entering into relationships with adults. Those who do make a good bond with a significant adult will show much more resilience and achievement than those who do not. These youth may display little concern for other people and may have difficulty conforming to social rules. They may not conform to socially acceptable norms or engage in appropriate social and vocational roles. Although non-conformity is normal in adolescent development, these youngsters may take it to the extreme and get involved in delinquent behaviors. Those youth who have been sexually abused often have considerable difficulty developing normal sexual relationships. Their feelings of guilt, shame, poor body image, lack of self-esteem, and lack of trust can pose serious barriers to their ability to enter into a mutually satisfying and intimate relationship.

Maltreated youth may demonstrate a variety of emotional and behavioral problems. These include anxiety, depression, eating disorders, withdrawal, aggression, impulsive behavior, antisocial behavior, and conduct disorders. They often lack the coping skills necessary for dealing with intense feelings. They may have frequent and volatile mood swings. Abused and neglected youth may have considerable difficulty forming a positive identity. Identity confusion and poor self-image are common. They may act directionless, unmotivated, and immobilized. They may verbalize grandiose and unrealistic goals for themselves, but have no ability how to identify the steps needed to achieve these goals. Since they focus on the present and do not trust the future, they may fail to plan for the future. As they approach adulthood and the need to be self-sufficient, they often lack the education and vocational skills necessary to support themselves. Often their lack of skills and expectations of failure bring on failure.

More than 50% of teenagers who have been sexually abused develop at least partial symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a clinical syndrome whose symptoms fall into the following categories: reenactment of the traumatic event, avoidance of cues associated with the event or general withdrawal, and physiological hyper-reactivity. A third of children who have been sexually abused exhibit more sexualized behaviors. An additional third of sexual abuse victims report depression and anxiety. Other common behaviors associated with sexual abuse are promiscuity, general behavior problems, poor self-esteem, disruptive behavior disorders, sexual dysfunction, and substance abuse. Children and teens who have been sexually abused are twice as likely to attempt suicide. Mitigating factors can increase or decrease the distress caused by sexual abuse. These factors are the characteristics of the crime itself (how violent, how long it took place, who the abuser was, etc.), characteristics of the child (temperament, age, gender, etc.), and characteristics of the environment (family reaction, supportive adults, therapy, etc.).

The negative developmental consequences for neglected and abused children vary. There are multiple identifiable factors that may either buffer or add to the effect of the abuse or neglect. The stability of the child’s living environment is one major factor, as is the number of out-of-home placements. Multiple life stresses, including any exposure to violence including domestic violence, and parental depression contribute to more negative outcomes. Children with higher IQs also suffer less serious developmental effects.

Checkpoint: How does violence in the home contribute to child abuse? What are the long-term effects of child abuse in regard to student learning?

Conclusion
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, violence in the home is the basis for most community violence. Without support for families, early intervention for young children, and parent education, we will not be able to effectively curb community violence. Children who experience violence of any form in the home are going to exhibit symptoms of stress and trauma. They are going to learn differently than students who have not been exposed to violence in the home. Their brain development and the way they learn has been affected by the violence they have experienced. Teachers need to be prepared to accommodate these students in the classroom by changing their instructional techniques. Teachers also need to understand and support these students’ emotional needs and provide remediation so they can learn non-violent ways of reacting to their world. In Chapter 4, we will discuss how teachers can incorporate teaching violence prevention as part of their curriculum, as well as how to develop an emotionally safe classroom. We will also examine the reasons, effects of, and remediation for violence in the school, the community, and our culture.