Permissive Child Abuse

There are no signs of physical abuse from his parents. His parents’ parenting style is permissive and show little or no signs of control of his behavior. Mary and Joseph have been nurturing to John because of his witness of his grandparent’s accident. Mary stated in the first few visits they use the time out method for John and it rarely works because John becomes argumentative. According to Broderick (2015), permissive parents exercise less behavior control by putting few maturity demands on their children especially when they display anger and aggressive behavior. Both parents drink alcohol heavily and John witnessed his father abuse his mother verbally and state often he never wanted children. Two years ago, Joseph separated from the
household and moved to another state and birthed another child by someone else. After the birth of the child, Mary filed for a divorce but wanted Joseph to come back home for John’s sake. Joseph blames Mary for John’s behavior because of her poor diet during pregnancy. Mary continued to drink and smoke cigarettes during her pregnancy with John. “Cigarette smoking during pregnancy can have teratogenic effects on the developing fetus, from slow growth to cleft palate (Broderick, 2015)”.