The purpose of this paper is to show the effects of verbal and emotional abuse in children. This does not only apply to the verbal abuse that is received from parents but also from kids at school or even siblings.
The first article that I chose is based on a survey done in Slovenia by the Faculty of Education. This article is written over a survey that was done in kindergartens and primary schools and shows how verbal abuse is shown as a result of misbehavior and juvenile behavior in younger children (Skubic, 2018). This article is relevant to my topic because it shows how young children receive many different examples of verbal abuse during kindergarten and their primary school years.
The second article that I chose is written on a study done about maltreated children and their mothers. According to this study, “RET facilitates elaborative and emotionally supportive parent-child communication, which is an essential component of the parent-child relationship and is especially relevant for the preschool age period” (2019). There were 248 participants that were split into two different groups, one being a non-maltreating parenting group and the other group received written parenting information. It ends by giving the results of the study and how the two different parenting styles effected the overall growth of the children (2019). This article is relevant to my topic because it shows the positive and negative effects of maltreating parents and how differently the two groups of children developed.
The third article that I chose is an article that talks about how the prevalence of parental verbal abuse can change or alter the structure of the brain. The study consisted of 848 participants who had no previous exposure to any type of physical abuse, including sexual, who were asked to rate their level of verbal abuse from peers during their childhood. 63 participants who were not exposed to abuse or parental verbal abuse were asked to take diffusion tensor images. According to the study, the results were that the “analysis of covariance revealed dose-dependent effects of peer verbal abuse on anxiety, depression, anger-hostility, dissociation, ‘limbic irritability,’ and drug use” (Valentino et. all, 2010). The study also states “These findings parallel results of previous reports of psychopathology associated with childhood exposure to parental verbal abuse and support the hypothesis that exposure to peer verbal abuse is an aversive stimulus associated with greater symptom ratings and meaningful alterations in brain structure” (Valentino et. all, 2010). This article is relevant to my topic because it shows the way that children’s minds are altered when they are exposed to verbal abuse at young, formative ages.
According to Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame, a supportive parent-child relationship is essential for successful early childhood development, and maltreatment can increase the risk for abnormal psychology and other negative tendencies (Valentino et. al, 2010). Development and the daily life of a child is heavily impacted from child maltreatment and abuse (Maquire et. al, 2015). A child is known to be in their formative years from birth till the age of five, so everything that they encounter during these years is extremely influential to their development. Facts For Life Global says the formative years are “the foundation that shapes children’s future health, happiness, growth, development and learning achievement at school, in the family and community, and in life in general” (FFL, 2020).
Parent and child interactions form a child’s cognitive and emotional development and behavioral patterns and supportive parenting is crucial for a child to develop successfully. Children who have more supportive parents have shown to have more emotional knowledge, better memory development and literacy development (Valentino et. al, 2010). According to Darija Skubic, there are many different ways to interpret what verbal abuse is, this includes teasing, ridiculing, shaming and putdowns, as well as many other examples (Skubic, 2018). Other than parental abuse, the most reoccurring verbal abuse in a child’s life will come from their peers at school, this is also known as bullying. This type of abuse can lead to less school participation, lower grades and a decrease in mental health.
Students can also show higher levels of emotional and social distress when harassed by peers. Bullying done by teachers also has a reasonable impact on the development of a child, a child who has negative feelings against their teacher can have a harder time wanting to please the teacher and therefore may miss out on educational opportunities that will lead to academic success (Skubic, 2018). A study conducted by the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences concluded that the most prominent behavior in maltreated children was aggressive and destructive behavior (Maquire et. al, 2015) The University of Illinois found that “All forms of childhood abuse were associated with BPD symptom factors. Emotional attention and clarity moderated the effects of childhood physical and emotional abuse on behavioral dysregulation and disturbed relatedness” (Westbrook & Berenbaum, 2017).
Millions of kids in America are victims of verbal abuse from their parents or other peers around them (Valentino et. al, 2010). For a long time there has been a standing question over whether verbal and emotional abuse or physical abuse causes more damage to the development of a person, and although a large amount of people would argue that physical abuse is more harmful, there is no doubt that verbal and emotional abuse has just as much of an impact on psychological development, especially during the early, formative years of childhood. My research will show the effects that verbal and emotional abuse have on the development of children and how important a supportive environment is for a child to be both emotionally and physically successful.
This research study will aim to find if there is a relationship between child maltreatment and issues in child development, both academically and socially. Because of ethical guidelines, there will be no use of young children in this type of experiment. Instead, participants in this study will include 2 groups of 20 college students, both male and female. These volunteers will be obtained through ads that would be posted around campus. In exchange for their cooperation, students will be compensated with extra credit in certain classes.
The research design of this study is correlational because it will study the relationship between child maltreatment and child development. Before the experiment, the two groups of students will be divided into groups based on how they rate their childhood. One group will be filled with students who claim they did not have a good childhood, or were mistreated or abused, and the other group would be filled with kids who claimed they had a very good childhood. The main part of this study will be a questionnaire. This will include questions about what their environment was like when they were a child, as well as the quality of care they received. It will also have questions about the students’ academic career, dating back to even preschool, and will have the students rank the effort they have put into school. Questions about social life, work history and criminal activity/delinquent behaviors will also be included. The final set of questions will ask about the behaviors of these students and will have them rate the level of prominence of these behaviors in their personalities.
