Neglected Children
Abstract:
According to the critical age hypothesis, there is a period of time in child development in which language learning must occur. Children who have been neglected by their caregivers have major disruptions in their child development. They may develop mental disorders such as PTSD and anxiety problems, or encounter physical problems such as severe injuries and asthma. Neglected children are also likely to have cognitive and intellectual difficulties in social and classroom settings. In extreme cases in which children are forced to survive on their own, they become feral. They completely miss their developmental stages and are almost nonhuman. This paper explains the significant challenges children encounter as a result of neglect …show more content…
during development.
The critical age hypothesis states that there exists a certain time window during which language learning must occur. The idea of the critical period hypothesis is fairly old and well known. It also applies to other skills such as motor functioning and conceptual reasoning. The environment has a crucial impact on a child’s development during this critical period as children learn these skills from their surroundings (Tichacek, 2005). If children are forced to grow up without the support of a caregiver, they miss many key aspects of their development. To what extent does the environment make a difference on a child’s behavior and are these differences able to be rehabilitated? Many children who go through traumatic events can later elicit strong feelings of fear or helplessness.
These children are at a high risk of developing mental disorders, one being posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They develop symptoms of re-experiencing the event, avoidance/numbing the event, and hyper arousal. Often, traumatized young children have an increased number of distressing nightmares and increased irritability. They are in a constant state of alertness to danger. Along with PTSD, children are at risk of developing anxiety, depression, attention-deficit disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Finally, traumatized children may not be able to develop their mental health normally. They may have unstable emotion regulation, attachment and separation problems, and underdeveloped socialization skills. Many treatments have been applied to traumatized children to help with PTSD and other disorders. It is particularly important that young children receive treatment early on to reduce to potential significant impact on their healthy development and future. Significant improvements have been found in children with PTSD, depression, separation anxiety and oppositional defiant disorder. However there were no significant group differences in children with other disorders (De Young, 2011). Unfortunately, neglected children are highly likely to not receive treatment for these disorders at an early enough age and the problems tend to become more severe as time
progresses. Consequently, neglect can lead to physical problems before an infant is even born. For example, if a mother has little or no prenatal care during pregnancy, she may smoke or induce other drugs during pregnancy, thus harming her child’s physical well being. Usually, these children are born prematurely with complications at birth. After birth, children who are neglected by their caregivers are more likely to have physical injuries such as damage to the central nervous system, cranial injuries, fractures, and severe burns. These injuries are likely to happen because the proper overlooking care is not available and the injuries are likely to worsen if they are left untreated (DePanfilis, 2006). Also, children may be exposed to dirty, unhygienic toxins that may lead to anemia, cancer, heart disease, poor immune functioning, and asthma. These health problems may also occur due to a lack of regular medical attention. Treatment of these physical problems depends on their severity and time of diagnosis. In some cases, the health problems become permanent and life changing (DePanfilis, 2006). Along with the mental and physical effects of neglect in children, intellectual and social effects exist arise as well. Studies have shown that neglected children are more prone to academic and social defects when compared to those who are not neglected (DePanfilis, 2006). These intellectual or social problems can cause them to fall behind in their classes. For example, these children grow up to have lower scores on IQ and reading ability tests. If they fall behind in their classes, they are also more likely to have social and peer-related difficulties, as normal children progress onwards and are more successful in classroom and social settings. A surprising difference occurs between children who are physically abused and children who are neglected. Those who are neglected have shown to have the greatest delays in language and grammatical skills, have academic difficulties that are more serious, and also show signs of greater cognitive and socio-emotional delays at an earlier age than those who are just physical abused (DePanfilis, 2006). Therefore, although both are a factor in the disrupting the development of children, the affect of neglect is much larger than physical abuse.
According to Kenneth Rubin and Rosemary Mills of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, social isolation is composed of several parts that have different psychological characteristics (1988). Victims of child abuse and neglect are forced to develop their skills on their own, or in an abnormal environment. Animals, away from human contact, sometimes raise children, who have been forced to survive on their own due to neglect from their own families. In its most extreme cases, these children are known as feral, or wild children. They are confined and denied normal social interaction with other people, so they do not display the same skills and characteristics as normal children (LaPointe, 2005). Raised without love or social interaction, these children go through extraordinary circumstances that no one can naturally create. The emotional, social, and cognitive development of children is crucial during the critical period. Without a supportive caregiver, the development of the child can be highly disrupted (Osofsky, Lieberman, 2011). In the case of feral children, they do not have caregiving relationships, causing them to develop emotional, social, and cognitive problems.
The most remarkable feral study is that of a Californian child known as Genie. Discovered in Los Angeles on November 4, 1970, Genie was only 59 pounds. She had been confined to a small room for a total of thirteen years and seven months, most of the time often tied naked to a potty chair, only able to move her hands and feet. To protect her identity and privacy, the child was given the case name Genie, like a creature that comes out of a bottle or lamp and emerges into human society after childhood. Genie’s parents were charged with abuse as they beat Genie for attempting to vocalize or make noise during her confinement. Her father, mother, and older brother rarely spoke to her and in the rare times her father did interact with her, it was to bark or growl. When she did utter a sound, he would beat her. The goal of psychologists and the most important aspect of the study, however, was to rehabilitate Genie. Her rehabilitation team also included graduate student Susan Curtiss and psychologist James Kent. Since Genie’s development had been largely disrupted, many of her qualities were malformed. Kent assessed her emotional and cognitive abilities and described her as the most profoundly damage child he had ever seen. The past 13 years of her life had been wasted. (Cherry). LaPointe states that her walk was strange; she held her hands in front of her, jumping and clawing, almost like a bunny (2005). During her tests, Genie was silent for the most part and she was unable to use language, causing her to score at about the level of a one-year-old. Over the next few months of her rehabilitation, she was able to progress in certain areas, being able to dress herself and use the restroom. However, her language skills still remained at a poor level. Psychologists began to face a question that boils down to the classic nature vs. nurture debate. Although Genie had missed her critical period, would she be able to overcome her disrupted development and sufficiently obtain normal language skills if given an enriched learning environment? As her tests continued over the next couple of years, Genie was able to put a few words together. However, she never reached the language explosion stage of child development. During the language explosion stage, children are able to rapidly acquire new words and begin putting them together in innovative ways (Cherry). Genie was unable to apply grammatical rules to her sentences and was not able to use language in a contextual and meaningful way. The debate remains as to whether or not Genie’s case leads to proof the critical age hypothesis. She missed the critical age of learning period, but she was also severely abused, malnourished, and deprived of cognitive stimulation on top of her neglect for most of her childhood. Currently, Genie lives in an adult foster care home in California. She is described as depressed and chronically institutionalized.
Another feral study is that of the wild child Oxana Malaya, born in November 1983. In this case, medical records prove that the child was healthy, both physically and mentally. At the age of three, Malaya was abandoned by her alcoholic parents. She crawled into a kennel where the family kept their dogs and was forced to stay there for the next six years where there was warmth and food. Malaya essentially forgot what it was like to be a normal human. The language skills she had developed as a toddler were lost as she learned to survive as a member of her pack (Grice, 2006). The effects of her time with dogs had had serious consequences in her development. As the dogs surrounded heart all times, she became more like a dog than a human. She walked on all fours, barking and growling like a stray dog. She showed her tongue and panted when she saw water and did not use her hands to eat. She could not understand what a mirror was and could not recognize herself when shown one. Now 20 years old, Malaya lives in a remote community in a home for the mentally ill. Unfortunately, she will never be considered as a normal human being.
In conclusion, the environment plays a significant role in the development of children. Those who experience gaps in social relationships, or experience abuse and neglect during the critical age hypothesis are largely affected in various categories including mental illness, physical problems, intellectual decline, and inhuman characteristics in extreme cases. Treatments for these complications are difficult to execute as children grow older and the critical age expires. The brain is an essential organ in our body that keeps us alive. (McDermott 2010) Children who have been neglected by their caregivers have not had any experiences that help then organize the objects and events around them. Some effects are so severe that they become irreversible and the child is permanently damaged.
Bibliography
Cherry, K. (n.d.). About.com. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/genie.htm
DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment and intervention. Retrieved from http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/neglect/chapterthree.cfm
De Young, A., Kenardy, J., Cobham, V. (2011) Trauma in early childhood: A neglected population. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 14, 231-250.
Grice, E. (2006, July 19). Retrieved from http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/07/18/1153166383022.html
LaPointe, L. (2005) Feral Children. Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology, 13, vii-ix.
McDermott, M. (2010). Feral (wild) Russian child Oxana Malaya (dog child) [0 series episode].
Osofsky, J., Lieberman, A. (2011) A call for integrating a mental health perspective into systems of care for abused and neglected infants and young children. American Psychologist, 66, 120-128.
Rubin, K., Mills, R. (1988) The many faces of social isolation in childhood. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56, 916-924.
Tichacek Klaus. (2005). Duke. Retrieved from http://www.duke.edu/~kl41/DATA/CriticalPeriod.pdf
According to the critical age hypothesis, there is a period of time in child development in which language learning must occur. Children who have been neglected by their caregivers have major disruptions in their child development. They may develop mental disorders such as PTSD and anxiety problems, or encounter physical problems such as severe injuries and asthma. Neglected children are also likely to have cognitive and intellectual difficulties in social and classroom settings. In extreme cases in which children are forced to survive on their own, they become feral. They completely miss their developmental stages and are almost nonhuman. This paper explains the significant challenges children encounter as a result of neglect …show more content…
during development.
The critical age hypothesis states that there exists a certain time window during which language learning must occur. The idea of the critical period hypothesis is fairly old and well known. It also applies to other skills such as motor functioning and conceptual reasoning. The environment has a crucial impact on a child’s development during this critical period as children learn these skills from their surroundings (Tichacek, 2005). If children are forced to grow up without the support of a caregiver, they miss many key aspects of their development. To what extent does the environment make a difference on a child’s behavior and are these differences able to be rehabilitated? Many children who go through traumatic events can later elicit strong feelings of fear or helplessness.
These children are at a high risk of developing mental disorders, one being posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They develop symptoms of re-experiencing the event, avoidance/numbing the event, and hyper arousal. Often, traumatized young children have an increased number of distressing nightmares and increased irritability. They are in a constant state of alertness to danger. Along with PTSD, children are at risk of developing anxiety, depression, attention-deficit disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Finally, traumatized children may not be able to develop their mental health normally. They may have unstable emotion regulation, attachment and separation problems, and underdeveloped socialization skills. Many treatments have been applied to traumatized children to help with PTSD and other disorders. It is particularly important that young children receive treatment early on to reduce to potential significant impact on their healthy development and future. Significant improvements have been found in children with PTSD, depression, separation anxiety and oppositional defiant disorder. However there were no significant group differences in children with other disorders (De Young, 2011). Unfortunately, neglected children are highly likely to not receive treatment for these disorders at an early enough age and the problems tend to become more severe as time
progresses. Consequently, neglect can lead to physical problems before an infant is even born. For example, if a mother has little or no prenatal care during pregnancy, she may smoke or induce other drugs during pregnancy, thus harming her child’s physical well being. Usually, these children are born prematurely with complications at birth. After birth, children who are neglected by their caregivers are more likely to have physical injuries such as damage to the central nervous system, cranial injuries, fractures, and severe burns. These injuries are likely to happen because the proper overlooking care is not available and the injuries are likely to worsen if they are left untreated (DePanfilis, 2006). Also, children may be exposed to dirty, unhygienic toxins that may lead to anemia, cancer, heart disease, poor immune functioning, and asthma. These health problems may also occur due to a lack of regular medical attention. Treatment of these physical problems depends on their severity and time of diagnosis. In some cases, the health problems become permanent and life changing (DePanfilis, 2006). Along with the mental and physical effects of neglect in children, intellectual and social effects exist arise as well. Studies have shown that neglected children are more prone to academic and social defects when compared to those who are not neglected (DePanfilis, 2006). These intellectual or social problems can cause them to fall behind in their classes. For example, these children grow up to have lower scores on IQ and reading ability tests. If they fall behind in their classes, they are also more likely to have social and peer-related difficulties, as normal children progress onwards and are more successful in classroom and social settings. A surprising difference occurs between children who are physically abused and children who are neglected. Those who are neglected have shown to have the greatest delays in language and grammatical skills, have academic difficulties that are more serious, and also show signs of greater cognitive and socio-emotional delays at an earlier age than those who are just physical abused (DePanfilis, 2006). Therefore, although both are a factor in the disrupting the development of children, the affect of neglect is much larger than physical abuse.
According to Kenneth Rubin and Rosemary Mills of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, social isolation is composed of several parts that have different psychological characteristics (1988). Victims of child abuse and neglect are forced to develop their skills on their own, or in an abnormal environment. Animals, away from human contact, sometimes raise children, who have been forced to survive on their own due to neglect from their own families. In its most extreme cases, these children are known as feral, or wild children. They are confined and denied normal social interaction with other people, so they do not display the same skills and characteristics as normal children (LaPointe, 2005). Raised without love or social interaction, these children go through extraordinary circumstances that no one can naturally create. The emotional, social, and cognitive development of children is crucial during the critical period. Without a supportive caregiver, the development of the child can be highly disrupted (Osofsky, Lieberman, 2011). In the case of feral children, they do not have caregiving relationships, causing them to develop emotional, social, and cognitive problems.
The most remarkable feral study is that of a Californian child known as Genie. Discovered in Los Angeles on November 4, 1970, Genie was only 59 pounds. She had been confined to a small room for a total of thirteen years and seven months, most of the time often tied naked to a potty chair, only able to move her hands and feet. To protect her identity and privacy, the child was given the case name Genie, like a creature that comes out of a bottle or lamp and emerges into human society after childhood. Genie’s parents were charged with abuse as they beat Genie for attempting to vocalize or make noise during her confinement. Her father, mother, and older brother rarely spoke to her and in the rare times her father did interact with her, it was to bark or growl. When she did utter a sound, he would beat her. The goal of psychologists and the most important aspect of the study, however, was to rehabilitate Genie. Her rehabilitation team also included graduate student Susan Curtiss and psychologist James Kent. Since Genie’s development had been largely disrupted, many of her qualities were malformed. Kent assessed her emotional and cognitive abilities and described her as the most profoundly damage child he had ever seen. The past 13 years of her life had been wasted. (Cherry). LaPointe states that her walk was strange; she held her hands in front of her, jumping and clawing, almost like a bunny (2005). During her tests, Genie was silent for the most part and she was unable to use language, causing her to score at about the level of a one-year-old. Over the next few months of her rehabilitation, she was able to progress in certain areas, being able to dress herself and use the restroom. However, her language skills still remained at a poor level. Psychologists began to face a question that boils down to the classic nature vs. nurture debate. Although Genie had missed her critical period, would she be able to overcome her disrupted development and sufficiently obtain normal language skills if given an enriched learning environment? As her tests continued over the next couple of years, Genie was able to put a few words together. However, she never reached the language explosion stage of child development. During the language explosion stage, children are able to rapidly acquire new words and begin putting them together in innovative ways (Cherry). Genie was unable to apply grammatical rules to her sentences and was not able to use language in a contextual and meaningful way. The debate remains as to whether or not Genie’s case leads to proof the critical age hypothesis. She missed the critical age of learning period, but she was also severely abused, malnourished, and deprived of cognitive stimulation on top of her neglect for most of her childhood. Currently, Genie lives in an adult foster care home in California. She is described as depressed and chronically institutionalized.
Another feral study is that of the wild child Oxana Malaya, born in November 1983. In this case, medical records prove that the child was healthy, both physically and mentally. At the age of three, Malaya was abandoned by her alcoholic parents. She crawled into a kennel where the family kept their dogs and was forced to stay there for the next six years where there was warmth and food. Malaya essentially forgot what it was like to be a normal human. The language skills she had developed as a toddler were lost as she learned to survive as a member of her pack (Grice, 2006). The effects of her time with dogs had had serious consequences in her development. As the dogs surrounded heart all times, she became more like a dog than a human. She walked on all fours, barking and growling like a stray dog. She showed her tongue and panted when she saw water and did not use her hands to eat. She could not understand what a mirror was and could not recognize herself when shown one. Now 20 years old, Malaya lives in a remote community in a home for the mentally ill. Unfortunately, she will never be considered as a normal human being.
In conclusion, the environment plays a significant role in the development of children. Those who experience gaps in social relationships, or experience abuse and neglect during the critical age hypothesis are largely affected in various categories including mental illness, physical problems, intellectual decline, and inhuman characteristics in extreme cases. Treatments for these complications are difficult to execute as children grow older and the critical age expires. The brain is an essential organ in our body that keeps us alive. (McDermott 2010) Children who have been neglected by their caregivers have not had any experiences that help then organize the objects and events around them. Some effects are so severe that they become irreversible and the child is permanently damaged.
Bibliography
Cherry, K. (n.d.). About.com. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/genie.htm
DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment and intervention. Retrieved from http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/neglect/chapterthree.cfm
De Young, A., Kenardy, J., Cobham, V. (2011) Trauma in early childhood: A neglected population. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 14, 231-250.
Grice, E. (2006, July 19). Retrieved from http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/07/18/1153166383022.html
LaPointe, L. (2005) Feral Children. Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology, 13, vii-ix.
McDermott, M. (2010). Feral (wild) Russian child Oxana Malaya (dog child) [0 series episode].
Osofsky, J., Lieberman, A. (2011) A call for integrating a mental health perspective into systems of care for abused and neglected infants and young children. American Psychologist, 66, 120-128.
Rubin, K., Mills, R. (1988) The many faces of social isolation in childhood. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56, 916-924.
Tichacek Klaus. (2005). Duke. Retrieved from http://www.duke.edu/~kl41/DATA/CriticalPeriod.pdf