Child Neglection

Child Neglection 

Neglection is defined by Polansky as a “condition in which a caretaker responsible for the child, either deliberately or by extraordinary inattentiveness, permits the child to experience avoidable present suffering and/or fails to provide one or more of the ingredients generally deemed essential for developing a person’s physical, intellectual, and emotional capacities.”

Neglect is the most common form of child maltreatment with 552,000 children being expected to be affected every year.

Examples of child neglect

• Not meeting a child’s needs for food, clothing, or shelter

• Leaving a young child alone

• Not having a child attend school

• Leaving a child in an unsafe place

• Not seeking necessary medical attention for a child

Consequences of child neglect

• Emotional Understanding

• When posted with the question of how to respond in a situation where there are negative emotional displays in others, most children that had undergone neglect often responded with disregarding the emotional display and withdrawing from the situation.

• These children do not have the ability to put themselves in another person's shoes to feel sympathy for them. Because they have an emotional disconnect they feel discomfort when situations that involve emotions come about.

• Neglected children often resort to avoidance strategies when dealing with emotional distress.

• These children learn to cope with their emotional issues on their own because they have no other choice, most of the time if not all they are by themselves.

• Emotional Dysregulation

• Neglected children have been reported to show less situationally appropriate emotions as well as less emotional self- awareness.

• Children learn how to respond to situations according to their caregiver and since they usually do not meet the basic needs they usually fail to teach these children proper emotion regulation.

• Emotion management and expectations of outcomes of emotional displays

• Neglected children have a lower expectancy of support from their mothers.

• They are less likely to display anger or sadness to their mothers in fear that this may result in negative outcomes from their mother.

Intervention/ Prevention

Child Neglection can potentially be prevented through awareness of child neglect and parental education. 

Becoming a parent is hard especially if you are juggling other things in your life. There is no guide to being the perfect parent, You learn as you go.

Teaching parents about essential developmental periods of children's growth can aid in the understanding of the importance of nurturing and care. Parental education workshops will support the acquirement discipline techniques, conflict resolution skills, and socially appropriate behavior.

Conclusion

Children that have been through neglectful experiences, as a result, have lower levels of emotional understanding, lower adaptive emotional regulation as well as lower coping strategies. As a community, we must come together and support our children and parents in this challenging quest of raising children because these children are our future. We must provide parents with the necessary tools to raise their children.

Related Resouces on Child Neglect

• InBrief: The Science of Neglect
• Risk Factors for Child Neglect: A Meta-Analytic Review

Works Cited

Department for Education. Childhood neglect: Susan Miller’s story. YouTube.Department for Education, 12, Jun. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROIGfGGx80U

Polansky, Norman A. Damaged Parents, an Anatomy of Child Neglect. University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Shipman, Kimberly, et al. “Managing Emotion in a Maltreating Context: A Pilot Study Examining Child Neglect.” Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 29, no. 9, 2005, pp. 1015–1029.

Tyler, Shannon, et al. “Child Neglect: Developmental Consequences, Intervention, and Policy Implications.” Child and Youth Care Forum, vol. 35, no. 1, 2006, pp. 1–20.