1 Oscar Chacn Rosario INGL 3104 LK1 Prof. B.

Domnguez March 15, 2010 The Enemy of the Worlds Positive Progress: Child Neglect Our children are our hope, the new seeds the planet will need to change and transform itself into a new place in order to be able to live safe and sound. Children should be raised surrounded by attention, affection, support, and with all their needs covered. But in reality it is the total opposite. Nowadays, it is painful but real to accept that a great percentage of the child population, suffers the most common act of violence from their parents, which is called neglect. This type of abuse is the most common and the deepest, in terms of consequences that a child may suffer, creating a future adult with emotional disbalance, which is a big and sad problem for our societys development. First of all, we need to define neglect. Clearly, we know that child abuse is harming a person under 18 years of age. Neglect is a type of child abuse and it is the most common type. and the one that has the largest number of cases. According to Kraizer, neglect is when the childs legal guardian fails to exercise the appropriate care: the basic necessities like food, clothing, education and medical care, supervision, and putting the child at risk of being harmed (2008). The sad part of this problem is that, normally, there are victims of violence because someone did something to him or her, like physical violence, rape, insult, but in this case, the neglected child suffers because someone that is supposed to do something to help him or her, does nothing when needed. In essence, this is the real meaning of child abuse: harming a childs mental or physical health, because of a lack of care that he or she needs. As a result, like almost all types of child abuse, this abuse has delicate and serious consequences that may affect a childs health for life.

2 The most relevant and significant effects from this abuse, rely more on mental or emotional health, than on physical ones. This is because when a neglected child is encountered, physical harms can be cured by feeding, clothing or taking the victim to a shelter, but when there are emotional damages, these are really hard to cure, and they may persist for life. The biggest problems caused by neglect, are the impact on emotional functioning, inappropriate modeling, and the biggest one of all, the aggression and cruelty children present against others (Perry, 2010). This all, affects their behavior leading them to malfunction in society. It is true that in these cycles of mistreatment, the children that have received them, are almost 100% prone to be repeat them when they grow up and have kids of their own. And if these patterns persist generation after generation, our society will never be in a good status. There is an alarming trend of parricide in the world. There are three types of individuals who commit parricide. One is the severely abused child who is pushed beyond his or her limits. Another is the severely mentally ill child. And the third is the darling of the tabloids, the dangerously antisocial child (Heide, 2009). Do you not think that the base of this trend is neglect? How can you imagine yourself living in a society full of aggressors, who are a product of neglect? Responsive adults, such as parents, teachers, and other caregivers make all the difference in the lives of maltreated children (Perry, 2010). Society needs emotionally prepared people to go out and contribute forwards a positive future, but without the correct attitude, this idea becomes an illusion. We need to work forwards eliminating all obstacles to achieving a healthy and sure future generation. References Heide, K. M. (2009) Why kids kill parents tragedy in the family: When kids murder their parents. Retrieved March 16, 2010 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/2009

3 0/why-kids-kill-parents Kraizer, S. (2008) Neglect. Retrieved March 14, 2010 from http://www.safechild.org/childabuse 4.htm Perry, B. (2010) Bonding and attachment in maltreated children: Consequences of emotional neglect in childhood. Retrieved March 8, 2010 from http://teacher.scholastic.com/profes sional/bruceperry/bonding.htm