Preventing and coping with child abuse
Child abuse is one of the most serious problems in any society. Your character is often formed early in your life, and child abuse is therefore something you can carry with you throughout your life. You may not report it to everyone if a parent abused you, but the memories stay with you. Child abuse can still have a lot of impact even in your adult life.
To suffer less from this and prevent child abuse, in this article I will go over what child abuse is, what causes it and what you can do to stop it.
What is child abuse?
Child abuse can take many forms. The most well-known form of child abuse is physical or sexual abuse.
Child abuse occurs when a parent or caregiver harms a child. This is most evident with physical harm, but child abuse also includes emotional harm and thwarting children's social development.
Different forms of child abuse
There are different forms of child abuse. In some cases, multiple forms of child maltreatment are carried out, so it is not limited to 1 type of maltreatment.
The different forms are:
- Physical abuse
- Sexual Assault
- Neglect, which can be divided into emotional and physical neglect
- Emotional Abuse
A well-known form of emotional abuse, for example, is Münchhausen syndrome by proxy.
Recent Dutch research shows that 27% of children in grade 7 or 8 have experienced one of these forms of abuse at one time or another. That is slightly more than 1 in 4 and almost 1 in 3 children may suffer from this ( 1).
Consequences of child abuse
Child abuse can haunt you for the rest of your life. These are painful memories that can drastically change your view of the world compared to how it was before the abuse.
Workings of the brain
Research on the long-term effects of child abuse shows that adults who were emotionally neglected as children have more difficulty recognizing emotions and processing images of a neutral or positive nature.
Children who were physically abused had more difficulty recognizing neutral images.
Victims of sexual abuse and/or neglect had more difficulty processing positive images than adults who were never abused or neglected.
As a result, accurately assessing social situations can sometimes go wrong in “real” life because there is a great deal of distrust toward other people ( 2).
Other research also shows that childhood abuse in adult life can cause your memory to malfunction.
Mental Problems
In addition to these practical problems with processing stimuli, there are other mental problems that can develop as a result of child abuse. Adults are then more likely than average to suffer from the following mental disorders:
Relational Problems
In addition to these mental health issues, childhood abuse can also cause disrupted relationships in adult life. Adults who were abused in childhood are more likely to have a partner who also abuses them( 4).
In addition, it is also common knowledge that some adults will abuse their own children( 5).
Processing child abuse
To minimize these effects and avoid the possibility of disrupted relationships with others or your own children, it is important to process child abuse and do something about the way you view the world and how relationships work.
It is best to treat a child as soon as possible to cope with child abuse, but even in adult life there are still many things that can help to break the vicious cycle and suffer less from mental problems caused by child abuse.
This is also important to avoid mistreating your own children.
Preventing child abuse in your own children
To prevent, or stop, child abuse, it is important to seek help. Usually mental problems, such as depression, low self-esteem or addictions are the basis for child abuse. Violent behavior copied from the parent may also be a cause.
Therefore, it is important to address this so you can break the vicious cycle.
Causes of child abuse
Child abuse can stem from childhood abuse, but there are many more possible causes for child abuse, such as:
- Poverty
- Lack of training
- Serious problems in marriage
- Moving regularly
- Violence between other family members
- Lack of support from family members outside the family
- Loneliness
- Unemployment
- Workload
- Wrong Enclosure
- Excessive expectations of what the child can or should achieve
- Inadequate knowledge of parenting
- Finding it okay to physically correct children, after which things go from bad to worse.
- Feeling that the children are owned by you and you can do whatever you want with them.
- Gender inequality is normal.
If you look at the list of these causes you will see that many are also a major source of stress. Taking the stress out on the children may then be the actual cause of the child abuse.
That’s why it’s important to find other strategies to reduce stress. Ultimately, child abuse only leads to more stress—for example, due to the guilt it can cause, or when child protective services intervene and remove the children from the home.
Men and women can be guilty of child abuse although the majority of abusers are male.
Child abuse assistance
There are multiple times to seek and give help to prevent or stop child abuse.
Preventing child abuse
If you want to process child abuse and avoid abusing your own children, it is important to seek help. If you do not yet have children but would like to and are afraid of falling into your parents' trap, it is important to improve your self-confidence regarding parenting.
Various methods are available for increasing your self-confidence, treating depression and changing your beliefs.
For example, a psychologist can help you with cognitive behavioral therapy combined with hypnosis to figure out certain beliefs and change them where necessary.
In addition, self-confidence can also be increased through hypnosis and self-hypnosis. It is wise to see a hypnotherapist first, as he can give you appropriate "homework" for the self-hypnosis exercises.
For example, a self-hypnosis exercise can be a visualization to improve self-confidence regarding (future) parenting. For example, you can visualize how you would deal with a naughty or nagging child, without repeating behaviors from your past.
In addition, you can also visualize how you do have a great time with your children and why you do become a great parent.
Research also shows that little knowledge about parenting can cause child abuse to occur. By immersing yourself in nonviolent parenting methods, you will know more about parenting and also reduce the likelihood of recurrence. This automatically increases your self-confidence in parenting.
Stopping child abuse in the adult
If you find yourself abusing your children, even if it's just a slap or just 1 swear, it's important to get help right away. There is obviously something going on that makes talking and normal interaction of parent with children not go well.
As seen in the list of causes, it appears that stress, because it is often the result, can play a major role in child abuse. Therefore, it is important to eliminate the cause of stress or reduce stress in other ways than taking it out on your children. Ultimately, that will only cause you more stress.
Another way to better interact with children is mindfulness.
This will also help you recognize the feeling of stress faster and stop an unwise reaction to it.
In addition, it’s important to reduce stress—this can be done, for example, through yoga, exercise, simply relaxing, or meditation.
If it is possible to take your children to grandparents, or someone else you trust with your children, for a little me-time, that is also a good idea.
Stopping child abuse by recognizing it
Child abuse is a big problem. If you hear or see a child being abused, it is important to report it.
In some cases, a child may also decide to spontaneously tell someone they are being mistreated. If this happens to you, it is important to believe the child. Children usually tell the truth about this. If a child is then not believed it can be extra harmful.
Also, let the child know clearly that you believe what he says and that you will seek help so he/she will not be abused again. Do remain calm in the child's presence.
Other ways to recognize child abuse include:
- The child is suddenly fearful of certain people.
- The child withdraws, isolates himself.
- The child can no longer concentrate well.
- Child suddenly behaves sexually provocative.
There are many ways to help people with mental health issues. Would you like to play a role in this or further your own growth? Then check out the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands or attend a seminar.
Sources:
http://www.nji.nl/Kindermishandeling-Probleemschets-Cijfers
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014521341400101X
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395612000064
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10896-012-9474-9
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cbm.2014/full
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/tc/child-maltreatment-treatment-overview
http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/for-individuals/children,-families-and-young-people/child-protection/about-child-abuse/w hat-is-child-abuse/what-are-the-causes-of-child-abuse