Emotional Violence - The Major Threat to Childhood

“Childhood means simplicity. Look at the world with the child’s eye – it is very beautiful.” Kailash Satyarthi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Childhood is the most innocent period in the entire lifetime, during which lot of learning takes place. Children grab every possible thing they see or witness in their surrounding, which in turn, plays a vital role in shaping their future and personality. Upbringing a child is not an easy task and that every parent will agree. Parents try every possible method to provide protection to their offspring; however, still the child is vulnerable to abuses that are not physical but mental or emotional.

Many researches have shown that emotional violence in childhood is the most prevalent and common form of child maltreatment. Ridicule, rejection, intimidation, domestic violence and humiliation are some of the type of emotional abuses experienced globally by nearly 1/3rd of children, as per the report by World Health Organization. Though the emotional violence does not have any physical presence or scars on the body, it does leave a long lasting impression on the child’s mind.

Major reasons behind emotional violence in childhood include:

·         Emotional abuse, which also includes sexual and physical abuse, by parents, especially those who treat parenting as unrewarding and are more focused in fulfilling their own goals or needs rather than that of their kids.

·         Insult or humiliation publicly by parents, friends, teachers or any other elderly member of the family.

·         Praising or showing affection towards other siblings or other’s children by the parents.

·         Domestic violence, including shouting, by one parent on the other.

·         Isolating the child from participation in social interactions.

·         Threatening the kid by creating an atmosphere of fear or by giving him/her severe punishment.

·         By instigating a feeling of anti-social within the child or arousing false social values that may affect the developmental stages of childhood.

·         By ignoring the child’s need or psychological unavailability of the caretaker to the child.

·         Watching violence in front of the child on TV or any other medium, as it desensitizes the child to violence in future.

Symptoms

Those children who have faced or experienced emotional abuse in one way or the other show changes in their behavior and the way they perceive the worldly things. Some of the common symptoms are:

·         Such children shows over-affection towards strangers or those who show little love or care towards them.

·         They lack in confidence and can become anxious on small things.

·         They generally maintain an emotional distance from their parents.

·         They develop the tendency of picking up the fight with other children out of insecurity or can show nasty behavior towards animals.

·         They try to control their strong emotions or can sometimes burst out extremely.

·         They do not show interest in learning new things and generally lack social skills.

·         Such children have no or very few friends.

·         Feeling of unhappiness, distress and fear develop in them.

·         They lack in academic achievements and school attendance.

·         They might experience mysterious pains or incontinence.