I understand those who do not want to follow the news most of the time and I share the same feeling. I understand that feeling of fatigue and learned helplessness that is felt after every news I hear, see, listen to, or after the destructive and disrespectful expressions of anger I witness and sometimes experience in traffic on the street. Or sometimes it is possible to understand increased sensitivity and emotionality, alertness, desire to create change, or many other emotions. A brutally committed murder, children expecting greater things than they are capable of, the door being slammed in the partner's face, an insult to the child, an elderly person being made a laughing stock for various reasons, a disabled individual being raped, looking at the child's soul waiting for attention with blank eyes... Yes, maltreatment and violence can occur in hundreds of different ways. There is a reflection. I will tell you about a type of "maltreatment" from childhood in the social environment where I believe everything has its roots. Our topic is child maltreatment, that is, abuse and neglect.
You will see that child maltreatment is defined on the Ministry's page as follows: Physical and/or psychological abuse of children or adolescents by their parents, individuals responsible for caring for and educating them, persons such as guardians, or strangers. We define attitudes and behaviors that harm their health and hinder their physical, emotional, sexual or mental development as child maltreatment.
The World Health Organization defines child maltreatment under 4 headings. ● Physical Abuse
● Sexual Abuse
● Emotional Abuse
● Neglect
Like abuse, neglect also falls within the scope of child maltreatment. Because, like types of abuse, the consequences of neglect harm the child and prevent his development. We can separate these two concepts in terms of "action
or inaction". In abuse, the abuser actively harms the child physically, sexually or emotionally and hinders his or her development. In neglect, the neglecting person harms the child by not meeting some of his needs and hinders his development. As a result, under the title of child maltreatment, abuse is an active action and neglect is a passive inaction. We can define it as . However, in the end, in terms of the child's experience and development, the child has been treated unfairly, harmed, and his development has been hindered or undermined.
According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, development, survival, participation and protection are the most basic universal rights of every child. While the problems related to the fulfillment of these rights at the systemic and universal level are a completely different social-political-economic issue, the usurpation and obstruction of these rights within the family and the close social environment with active or passive attitudes causes wounds in the child that are not impossible to heal, but very difficult to compensate.
In a story we created by drawing pictures in an art therapy meeting, disasters were constantly happening to the universe created by human hand or natural causes such as meteor impact. The living creatures inside were harmed by this. Our work that day made a great contribution to my ability to distinguish between traumatic experiences that we experience through human action or inaction and negative traumatizing experiences that occur naturally. My feeling was this: To put it plainly in daily and colloquial language, "Coping with the destruction that comes from God and the destruction that a human being causes to another person, this must be a pain that is difficult to describe." Especially if this person is a member of the person's family... If he is a relative, someone he trusts, whose attention and care he needs... Moreover, if the rest of the society is unaware of what the person/child is going through, or if the person's/child's neglect deepens your wounds with their inaction by ignoring you... And most importantly, as a child While they do not have the mental, language and emotional development capacity of an adult... Do not let their silence mislead us! Can you imagine the extent of the horror experienced in the child's soul?
Let's learn the types of maltreatment closely:
Physical abuse: Against the child; The child is exposed to physical abuse in case of intentional use of physical force that harms or has the risk of harming the child's general health and integrity, life, development and dignity.
Sexual abuse: Abuse that the child (all “individuals” under the age of 18) cannot fully understand, that it is not developmentally possible to give consent to, and that is also developmentally correct. It is any kind of sexually explicit or suggestive behavior that is applied or made to be applied to the child by the abuser of an action that he or she is not consenting to.
Emotional abuse: Any behavior that harms the child's emotional, behavioral and cognitive development processes, causes problems or prevents its development is emotional abuse. Negating the child's wishes and skills, threatening to abandon the child, discriminating between siblings, calling the child names, making fun of the child, humiliating the child, harming the child's honor and pride, applying excessive pressure or avoiding excessively, swearing, intimidating, shouting, threatening to dislike, Expecting behavior and skills beyond the child's capacity is among emotional abuse behaviors.
Neglect: Unlike other types of maltreatment, neglect; The child's basic needs are ignored and not met. Neglect includes failure to act, such as failure to meet shelter, nutrition, clothing, physical, self-care, health, educational, or emotional needs such as being loved and cared for.
So, what are the consequences of neglect and abuse in the development of the child? Let's continue to define, learn, distinguish.
● Attachment issues
● Relationship problems
● Negative self-perception
● Separation anxiety
● Trust problems
● Intense feelings of anxiety, fear and anger
● Difficulty in learning accompanied by distraction, memory and focus problems despite normal mental capacity
● Problems adapting to school
● Difficulty in peer relationships
● Difficulty regulating emotions
● Low self-esteem
A society's most valuable asset is children. It is the responsibility of every member of society to recognize all kinds of maltreatment, from its most invisible form to its most visible form, and to prevent it from occurring.
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